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Tearaway is a PlayStation Vita 3D Puzzle Platformer by Media Molecule featuring a papercraft artstyle and gameplay elements influenced by the front and rear touch screen (such as trampoline pads that bounce the character when they are tapped on the rear touch screen, or even let the player tear up the floor and appear to stick their finger into the game world).

It stars one of two messengers named Iota or Atoi, and they need to deliver a package to the player. Unfortunately, their idyllic papercraft world is overrun by monsters called "Scraps", so they need to slog through various levels and get to the end where a device is waiting that will let them send the message to the player (such as a catapult that will launch them and the message into the sun, where the player's face appears).

Throughout the game, players can unlock various papercraft projects that they can upload to their computers for printing.

Tearaway was released on November 22, 2013 in the US and Europe, and December 5, 2013 in Japan.

An Updated Re-release, Tearaway Unfolded was released on September 8, 2015 for the PlayStation 4.


Tearaway features the following tropes:

  • 100% Completion: The game keeps track of absolutely everything for its completion percentage. To get 100%, you have to complete all main stages, do all the side-quests, escort every Misplaced Gopher, and collect all Presents, Papercraft, and, most importantly, every single scrap of confetti and every single enemy in a level.
  • Abnormal Ammo: You can throw, among other things, gophers, squirrels, giant acorns, giant apples, and rocks at enemies.
  • And I Must Scream: The Second Messenger is stuck inside your controller as a ball, completely alone with no You to guide them, with a message undelivered, singing its song with no-one to hear it. Until you and Atoi/Iota intervene, of course.
  • Astral Finale: The second to final level, The Tear, starts with the Messenger progressing through a canyon in the desert until the platforms gradually shift into metallic sheets of paper, rotating asteroids, and planets before finally accumulating into the Messenger rolling through space and into the hole in the sky. A squirrel even arrives by meteor and asks The You to design some stars for the galaxy.
  • Awesome, but Temporary: The Messenger at one point is given the Weaponized Squeezebox, an accordion powered by The You's Changing Winds that can power wind turbines and be used to suck up enemies and send them flying. You get to use the Squeezebox for one level before falling into some caverns and losing it in a river.
  • Be the Ball: The Messenger gains the ability to turn into a ball and roll around a ways into the game. Handy for getting into tight spaces or rolling down chutes. The Second Messenger is also stuck this way until you save them.
  • Bleak Level: The Mislaid Message, a dark and desolate level inside the You's controller with a lot of sad music that houses a lost Messenger with an undelivered message without a You to guide them.
  • Blow You Away: The Changing Wind ability allows the player to create massive gusts of wind to literally blow enemies away, or to manipulate the world around the Messenger.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: Pretty much the overall point of the game. The protagonists are messengers that deliver a message to the player, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Tearaway makes full use of the Vita's touchpads, in order to shove platforms around, tear things out of the way, activate "drum pads" to use as trampolines, or smash certain kinds of enemies. That's not even getting into the camera or the collectible cutouts you can unlock via website by playing the game.
  • The Cameo: If you know where to look, you can spot Yellowhead from another Media Molecule franchise. There's even a trophy for taking a photo of him.
  • Console Cameo: The Vita in the original version of the game and the Dualshock 4 Wireless Controller in the remake appear in many crucial moments like the loading screen and in the scraps' Lair, where you see that they're building their own "button box" to steal control from the player. In addition, the scientists of Coggage Cove are researching button technology, which means there are the trademark Playstation buttons littered all over the place.
  • Critical Annoyance: The game beeps once you take one hit, warning you that the Messenger won't survive the next one. See Regenerating Health for more.
  • Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: There are checkpoints spread generously throughout the stages, but in many areas, if you fall, you appear right where you fell off (or even where you're trying to jump to) even if there's not a checkpoint there. And if you die in the middle of a battle, you'll just appear right back in the battlefield and you don't have to kill the same scraps again. Though the amount of times you die is counted and shown to you at the end.
  • Defeat Equals Explosion: Regular enemies explode on death, though into confetti and paper scraps. The Messenger also explodes when slain.
  • Diabolus ex Machina: Various things happen for no reason except to prevent the Messenger from delivering the message and transition to the next level.
  • Disc-One Final Dungeon: Two, actually! The first is Gibbet Hill, which is set up as one final, climactic climb to deliver the message, which ends up cut short when a random Scrap intercepts Atoi/Iota mid-flight and sends them crashing back down to earth. The second is The Lair, which has all the trappings of a final boss, complete with the scraps building their own controller to steal control of the world from the You. But after it's over, there's still one final stretch of levels to go.
  • Escape Sequence: There's a level where you have to run away from angry Wendigos. Expect Jump Scares, Painfully Slow Projectile boulders that kill the Messenger in one hit while forcing them to dodge in a narrow area, and shifting to a (reverse) third-person perspective to enhance the experience.
  • The Face of the Sun: It's the player's face, and the Messenger's ultimate goal.
  • First-Person Snapshooter: There's an in-game camera that the Messenger can use to take pictures of the surroundings and themselves. You can use in-game currency to purchase additional filters for the camera such as Sepia or Black and White. The Black and White filter allows you to see ghosts in a manner similar to Fatal Frame.
  • Follow the Money: Floating balls of confetti populate the world and most of them are arranged in a way that helpfully lead the player to hidden presents and paths. After you collect them, they're replaced by transparent balls of light in future playthroughs. Collecting them all is one of the things necessary for 100%.
  • Gainax Ending: The package contains a pop-up picture book of all of the Messenger's adventures. The moral as stated by the narrators is that you, the player, should imagine and create your own stories rather than simply enjoying stories created by other people. Atoi/Iota also asks you to make them in real life, unlocking their papercraft plans for you to print.
  • Green Hill Zone: Most of Valleyfold, but the Standing Stones and Wassail Orchard stand out, being verdant, relatively-tranquil levels set up to introduce the player to the game.
  • Grievous Harm with a Body: Your most oft-used attack will be grabbing enemies that are knocked down and throwing them at others.
  • Heroic Mime: Atoi and Iota are not voiced, though they have grunts and worried shrieks from time to time.
  • Hope Spot: Your Messenger tends to reach various objects that can help them deliver their message. At this point, expect one or both of the Unreliable Narrators give the messenger a Diabolus ex Machina.
  • Horse of a Different Color: You can ride a pig in some levels.
  • Lemony Unreliable Narrator: The game actually has two, competing for attention. And, besides describing Scenery Porn to kick off the levels, they are particularly cruel storytellers too, affecting the player character in various twisted ways.
  • Medium Blending: There's this papercraft-styled world, which is mixed with your face on the sun and also the finger that appears in various puzzles...
  • Mini-Game: Basketball, cutout creation, photography... and that's just a few.
  • Papa Wolf/Mama Bear: The reason why Wendigos attack you at first. Once you find/rescue the baby Wendigo and return it to them, they become friendly.
  • Regenerating Health: With few exceptions, the Messenger is a Two Hit Point Wonder. Getting hit results in a heart stamp appearing on the upper right corner of the screen with some beeping. Spend some time without taking damage and the stamp goes away.
  • Ridiculously Cute Critter: Baby Wendigos. Just look at them! Compared to their more vicious grown-up selves, you wouldn't think they're the same creature.
  • Scenery Porn: The papercraft world is beautiful to behold.
  • Schrödinger's Player Character: Whether you pick Atoi or Iota, the other simply won't exist in the rest of the game.
  • Sdrawkcab Name: Iota is Atoi backwards and vice versa.
  • Shifting Sand Land: The Desert, a long, sandy level with a few waterfalls and even some pigs to ride through the immense dunes at the beginning.
  • Speaking Simlish: The only characters in this game that speak in full, comprehensible English are the two Narrators and Iota/Atoi reading their message to The You at the end of the game. Everyone else speaks in rodent squeaks, grunts, or fish gurgles.
  • Super Drowning Skills: The Messenger dies instantly if they touch any body of water including waves or waterfalls, even if the bodies of water in the papercraft world are just aggressively waving pieces of paper.
  • Super-Scream: An ability has the player yelling into the Vita, which makes your character let out a yell that knocks back foes and straightens the folded paper for certain puzzles.
  • Temporary Platform: Prevalent in the game, but fortunately not Bottomless Pits. Falling usually results in the Messenger having to climb back up, or losing the pickups on top of the platforms, though.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: Any small animal like the gophers and the squirrels can be picked up and thrown. Not only is nothing stopping you from throwing them in a bottomless pit, but you actually receive a trophy in both versions of the game if you throw a gopher at one of the scraps.
  • Video Game Flight: At some points, you can make a paper plane for the Messenger to fly on with the use of Changing Wind. The flight is restricted to a couple of areas, but other than that, the player can, for the most part, go nuts.
  • Video Game Perversity Potential: When it comes to creating papercraft for the people of the world, there's nothing to stop you from plastering penises everywhere, to name one example.
  • Virtual Paper Doll: Perhaps literally in this case, but the Messenger can be customized at any point during the adventure and the player can do things like swap out facial features, change clothing colors, and place stickers on their clothes and backpack.
  • Wall Crawl: The messengers can do this with sticky, glue-covered walls. Their friend can't, however.
  • You Have Researched Breathing: Your Messenger doesn't know how to jump of their own accord until the second world. Before then, pressing the button to jump will just display a confused thought bubble.

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