Even though Tearaway is a single player game – a personal journey shared by you, and your little messenger friend, iota or atoi – we couldn’t resist giving Tearaway players the chance to express themselves creatively. We’ve already talked at length about the oodles of papercraft models you can collect as you play through the game, but there are also in-game challenges that will allow you to personalise the world as you travel through it.

A squirrel who needs a new crown, a chap whose moustache has been stolen by crows, a pig that’s too ugly… these are all examples of problems you’ll be asked to solve through the cutting out of virtual paper shapes.

When the time comes to get crafty, you’ll be presented with a virtual cutting mat, and a selection of coloured paper sheets. Using the pencil tool, you can trace a shape that you want to cut out using the front touch. If you make a mistake, you can erase your flawed pencil lines with the eraser tool, but once you’re happy with the shape, hit the scissors icon to cut it out.

You can layer multiple sheets on top of one another, just like using real paper, and once you’re happy with your decoration, you can save into your collection. Now you can use it to decorate certain things in the world, and bring a smile to unattractive pigs everywhere.

Most importantly of all, you can customise your papery messenger. You can remove any or all of their features and replace them with whatever you like, either choosing from a list of pre-made animated items such as eyes, mouths, and various shapes like hearts or stars, or you can make your own from scratch. The pre-made ones must be purchased with confetti, colourful paper fragments that you’ll collect as you play, but making your own is free! We’ll be working on releasing some extra decorations later down the road too.

The whole process is pretty similar to convincing someone to hold still whilst you glue paper all over their face, except you can also peel off their existing features too (eww). You can merely change atoi’s smile, or you can make them look completely different. Our lead designer Rex decided to model the messenger below after himself, but check out these other examples to see some of the other weird anew wonderful things the team have been making recently.

Tearaway is out on 22nd November, and you can pre order now!