Fold the Storm

In a city made of paper, rain is the enemy. When the crumpled newsprint clouds roll in over the Margins, you fold your arms into a gutter or your whole body into a crane, and the water goes where your crew sends it.

The Paper Republic is a world where everything is folded: origami peaks, cardstock towers and the kraft-paper houses of the Margins. You join the Fold Watch, the crew Foldtown keeps after the great Deluge to fold the streets dry each storm, wearing your own avatar with a paper finish and a green Watch sash. Kai, a boy of blank white paper, teaches the folds in the yard; Penny reads the creases on your sash after every storm; little Scrap keeps the Remnant Gutter; and Forecast reads the barometer and calls the waves.

In the calm you gather paper stock, from sturdy kraft to fragile tissue. Then you fold gutters, roofs and channels across the streets to steer the rain away from eight paper houses. When the waves come you change form on the fly: a crane to spot and clear roof pools, a frog to stomp surges and puddles, a boat to carry families to safety, or a brace, arms out, to become a living gutter. The water follows rules you can read and predict, so every storm is a puzzle you solve together.

One fold is nothing; a thousand folds together are a river. Channels run stronger with every player who built them, and once a storm, when the Deluge surge comes, the whole crew braces on one river at once to push it through the drains: the Collective Fold. Nobody dies. Houses soak, families float to safety in paper boats, and the city refolds after every storm.

The first release has one storm map, the Margins, in three variants, a hub for 24, four folds, five paper stocks, seven building pieces and twelve Remnants to catch, for one to six players per storm. A storm is a calm, three waves, a clearing and a debrief.

Every storm earns creases on your sash that show what you did, and the Remnants, little paper creatures that wash down the drains, fill the frames of the Remnant book. Sidegrades, feats and a featured Daily Forecast storm give you reasons to come back, with an update every Saturday and an event each month. Next on the roadmap: the Plane fold, a Night Storm, the Inner City and a Highland Village of tissue houses.

Based on The Paper Republic by Oliver Marsh: the folding city, the line "You cannot stop water. But you can shape how it flows" and the climax where every citizen's fold joins into one river are all from the novel.

Fold the Storm is a finished game design for Roblox, and Greenlight Games is looking for a studio partner to build it.