Though it was announced in 2010, it wasn't until their 3DS showcase at E3 2012 that Nintendo finally pulled back the curtain on Paper Mario: Sticker Star. In the past few months, we’ve seen a steady stream of information released on the upcoming 3DS RPG, and it wouldn't be too far fetched to imagine that some of that information has slipped right by you, the faithful reader. But fret not! We here at Nintendo World Report have compiled what's known about the paper-thin plumber's sticker foray and presented it below.

A return to form... sort of.

Super Paper Mario was a departure for the Paper series, intended to create a game more akin to Mario's original 2D exploits on the NES and SNES. It retained the always-appealing visual style, but ditched a lot of the RPG tropes that had defined the series to that point, specifically the turn-based battle system. With Sticker Star, developer Intelligent Systems has decided to return to the RPG conceits of the first two games. Well, mostly, anyway.

Turn-based battles are back, but with an entirely reworked structure. Rather than equipping items and leveling up, Mario has only his handy sticker album to defend himself. Mario uses the stickers he acquires (more on that in a bit) to perform attacks in battle. The typical jumps, hammers, and fireballs are all accounted for, but Mario relies on stickers to initiate the attacks, and once he uses a sticker, it is gone forever. This finite limit to Mario's offensive output forces the player to approach each battle with care, as bigger, more powerful stickers need careful rationing for use at only the most important of moments. Despite the sticker motif, the ability to press a button at exactly the right time to increase damage is still present, as it has been since Super Mario RPG.

The new Battle Spinner also plays a role in making battles more interesting and random. The Spinner is a slot machine that may grant Mario more stickers during battle or offer him the ability to use more than one attack during his turn. Mario can also spend coins to rig the Battle Spinner and give him a better shot of getting a matching spin. So, much like in real life, the wealthy get to create their luck.

The reliance on stickers means the removal of Mario's ability to level up. You can find items that increase Mario's overall HP, sort of like heart containers in Zelda, but you gain no experience points. Instead, Mario's power grows as he finds more powerful and useful stickers. This, again, illustrates the importance of collecting and managing stickers throughout the game.

Sticker Star eschews the large, connected worlds of the past games in favor of a more traditional world map that features different levels, titled in familiar fashion as 1-1, 1-2, and so on. However, this doesn't mean you play levels only once. Secrets and alternate exits require stickers Mario may not have the first time through, creating an impetus to revisit levels as Mario's sticker album grows. It isn't clear yet if revisiting levels is essential to progressing through the game's story or if it’s simply for the completionists, so we'll have to wait and see.

Stickers, stickers, everywhere.

Sticker is the word this time around for Mario, and it invades every aspect of playing Sticker Star. The game opens with Mario visiting the seemingly annual Sticker Fest (you remember all the times Mario talked about the Sticker Fest, right?), where, as is always the case, Bowser intrudes and is actually turned into a shiny, foil sticker, gaining power so great even Mario is left defeated. Enter Kersti, who imparts Mario with the ability to use stickers, and encourages him to collect the six Royal Stickers in order to defeat Bowser.

As mentioned earlier, Mario relies entirely on stickers to battle enemies and solve puzzles. Naturally, this means no shortage of stickers to collect. Mario finds them stuck to surfaces around the environment and simply plucks them off for his own use. He can also use his coins to purchase them from shops. Thus, the game encourages the player to explore levels for "free" stickers while also accruing funds to purchase the more powerful, rare stickers that are useful in tougher battles.

Appealing to the collector in us all, the stickers vary visually depending on their ability and rareness. Plain, silver, gold, and shiny stickers litter the world and are progressively more worthwhile depending on their color. So, much like finding a foil in a pack of Pokémon cards, a shiny sticker's worth is instantly made clear to the player by its sheen alone. While the lesser stickers still serve an important purpose in making sure Mario always has a move to make in battle, those rarer stickers look quite nice waiting in Mario's sticker album until just the right moment.

A conviction to theme.

Sticker Star seems to push and play with the paper/sticker atheistic more than any of the previous games in the series. The world is as bright and paper-esque as ever, and the ways Mario interactions with it exude creativity. Characters bend and reshape themselves in order to make platforms Mario can use to access new areas. Enemies pluck structures from the world, ball them up, and throw them away, forcing Mario to find and replace them. Termed "Paperization," Mario has the ability to affix stickers to the levels to gain access to new places or trigger events that change the landscape.

Mario also happens upon objects plucked from the real world, such as fans, scissors, the cat figure we've probably all seen in trailers, and more. While he can convert these items to stickers and use them in battle or to solve puzzles, they also build the meta-world of Sticker Star. They imply a world beyond the screen of the 3DS, where the events of Paper Mario would appear to play out on an artist's desk, with the items on that desk accidently becoming incorporated. It all builds and strengthens the paper theme of Sticker Star, and isn't unlike the superb use of crafts and fabrics seen in Kirby's Epic Yarn.

***

So that's what we know so far. Paper Mario: Sticker Star hits America Nov. 11 before arriving in Japan and Europe during the first week of December. Keep an eye out for our review, which will be posted before the American launch.