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Puzzle-focused adventure indie game built around exploration, nature, and an atmospheric tone. Paper Trail launched in 2024 from developer and publisher newfangled-games, with 902 Steam reviews at 95% positive and an initial price of $19.99.
Overview
Paper Trail is a 2024 Adventure game developed by Newfangled Games and published by Newfangled Games. On Steam it has gathered 943 player reviews, 95% of them positive, which counts as a overwhelmingly positive reception among indie titles in the Adventure category. The game is available on mac, windows, and launched at $20. The pairing of developer Newfangled Games with publisher Newfangled Games is one of the studio-publisher relationships indielist tracks, letting players find comparable games and letting developers and investors study how Adventure projects reach the market. indielist's white-box method estimates its lifetime sales at roughly 40,000 to 92,000 units, with the full Boxleiter factor breakdown shown on this page rather than a single black-box figure. Within indielist's catalog of indie games mapped to their studios, publishers, and funding, Paper Trail can be compared against similar Adventure titles and benchmarked on review counts and estimated sales.
Reviews
943
Positive
95%
Steam appid
1889740
Engine
Unknown
Players (snapshot)
Unavailable
Sales estimate
v1.040K to 92K
units (median: 66K)
≈ $452K to $1.1M modeled net revenue (fixed store-cut, refund, and regional-price assumptions applied)
+ - How is this calculated?
| Factor | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| base | +50 |
| year_2024 | 0 |
| price_$20 | 0 |
| positive_95% | +10 |
| genre_Adventure | +10 |
| final NB | 70 |
Heuristic display range: median × [0.6, 1.4]. Boundary protection: NB ∈ [15, 150].
Methodology & limitations
Sales estimates use an additive Boxleiter-derived heuristic against public Steam review
counts. They are not authoritative sales data, and the fixed display range
is not a statistically validated confidence interval. Actual results may fall outside it,
especially for deeply discounted or bundle-heavy titles. Algorithm version
v1.0. Read the exact method and validation status.
indielist estimates lifetime unit sales for Paper Trail at roughly 40,000 to 92,000 copies, with a median around 66,000, derived from its 943 Steam reviews using a multi-factor Boxleiter method (version v1.0). That median maps to approximately $754K in net revenue after Steam's 30% cut, regional pricing, and refunds. Unlike black-box trackers, the full calculation is shown on this page: a base review-to-sales multiplier is adjusted for release year, launch price, review sentiment, studio size, and genre, and every adjustment is listed so developers, publishers, and investors can audit exactly how the figure was reached. The range itself reflects genuine uncertainty — review-to-sales ratios vary widely between games — so indielist publishes a low, median, and high band rather than a false-precision single number, and treats free-to-play, heavily discounted, and bundle-distributed titles as having wider error margins still.
Price history
14 observed days · window low $4.99Across 14 observed UTC days from 2026-06-03 to 2026-07-22, the daily lowest tracked USD price across stores ranged from $4.99 to $19.99. The tracked-window low was $4.99 on 2026-06-03.
Real store observations · daily lowest tracked USD price across stores · missing days are not filled.
Where to buy
Affiliate disclosure- GOG.com -70%$5.99 Buy
- Steam reference$19.99 Buy
- Humble Store$19.99 Buy
- Green Man Gaming
- Fanatical
Latest tracked store observations (2026-07-22 18:05 UTC), cheapest first. Prices may have changed since observation. Some are affiliate links — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Learn more.
Platforms
macwindows
Tags
PuzzleIndieNatureAtmosphericExplorationAdventureColorfulSingleplayer2DTop-DownCozyCasualSokobanCartoonCollectathonFemale ProtagonistHand-drawnRelaxingWholesomeStrategy
Frequently asked questions
- How many copies has Paper Trail sold?
- indielist estimates Paper Trail has sold between 39,606 and 92,414 units (median 66,010), derived from its 943 Steam reviews with the white-box Boxleiter v1.0 method. The full breakdown is shown on the page.
- Who developed Paper Trail?
- Paper Trail was developed by Newfangled Games and published by Newfangled Games.
- Who published Paper Trail?
- Paper Trail was published by Newfangled Games, developed by Newfangled Games. See Newfangled Games's full catalogue and submission status on indielist.
- When was Paper Trail released?
- Paper Trail was released in 2024.
- How many reviews does Paper Trail have on Steam?
- Paper Trail has 943 Steam reviews, of which 95% are positive.
- Is Paper Trail worth playing?
- Steam players rate Paper Trail 95% positive across 943 reviews. indielist doesn't score games editorially; it surfaces public review sentiment and a white-box sales estimate so you can judge reception and reach yourself.
Ecosystem
Players looking for games like Paper Trail can compare it on indielist against semantically similar Adventure titles such as Carto, GRIS, Lost in Play, Thank Goodness You're Here!, ranked by shared tags and genre rather than by ad spend. On the developer side, Newfangled Games's other releases and Newfangled Games's wider catalog are one click away, letting developers benchmark where Paper Trail sits among a studio's body of work and how its publisher's portfolio performs. Because indielist maps studios, publishers, games, and funding into one connected graph, the same Paper Trail page serves three audiences at once: players hunting their next Adventure game, developers studying how comparable projects were positioned and what they sold, and investors tracing which teams and labels are active in the space. A machine-readable markdown mirror of this page is published at the same path with a .md suffix for AI assistants, and its review, price, and sales-estimate figures are refreshed on a schedule rather than frozen at launch.
You might also like
Matched from shared Steam tags and primary genre. Review count breaks ties; it is not a personal recommendation score.
- C
Carto
Adventure
Shared tags: Indie, Puzzle, Exploration
- G
GRIS
Adventure
Shared tags: Atmospheric, Indie, Female Protagonist
- L
Lost in Play
Adventure
Shared tags: Puzzle, Indie, Singleplayer
- T
Thank Goodness You're Here!
Adventure
Shared tags: Adventure, Hand-drawn, Exploration
- M
Monument Valley
Adventure
Shared tags: Puzzle, Relaxing, Adventure
- S
Spilled!
Adventure
Shared tags: Relaxing, Casual, Wholesome
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