Going into this game, I was expecting it to be some kind of over the top exaggeration about the troubles of every day life, but I can gladly say that I was pleasantly surprised. Paper Cages show us the horrors of every day life as experienced by the normal person; the normal routines, the normal conversations, the normal thought process of things just not going your way and life really being a struggle to just go through. What kind of gets me is that this is marked as a horror game when in reality, this is what it's like to go into the real world regardless of where you are in the totem pole of life. Even without looking at it from the POV of mental illness, the existential dread that looms over everyone is really looked into in this game.
My only real gripe with this game is in the middle section where the game turns into a keyboard typing test, there isn't any indication on which word your spelling out or if you've typed everything right until the word/s just vanish. It was a fun section to play as it's the player trying to focus on things in their mind as their world looks to be falling apart, but better indication would've made that section feel better to play out.
All in all, it's nice to find a short story game that doesn't outright feel like it's only talking about mental illness, but really about feelings that the normal adult can go through in their daily lives.
The most important part of this game is that yes, you can pet the cat :)
My playthrough: