PAPERHEAD: pencil-drawn bombs and doors

You can draw a bomb in PAPERHEAD, then kick it at an enemy. The same pencil can sketch a door into a wall. It is a wonderfully literal tool for a first-person shooter set in a cardboard research facility, where the paper creatures bleed and a shotgun remains close to hand. Paperhead te4m gives you something to draw, something to shoot and plenty to boot across a room.

The full game launched on Steam for Windows on 9 October 2026, published by HypeTrain Digital. The developer moved it from 18 September to give the team another three weeks for polish and fixes. This article began as a pre-release preview; it has been updated for launch, while keeping its older demo observations tied to the builds they describe.

A pencil with two jobs

The pencil is both a weapon and a way to change the surroundings. Sketch a bomb and send it towards an enemy with a kick, or draw a door to kick down. The lab's paper-and-cardboard construction gives that second action a lovely physical logic: a drawing can become an opening in the surface that holds it. Drawing and kicking meet in both uses: one creates an explosive to launch, the other creates a doorway to break through.

Your boots have work to do beyond moving you around. Combat includes tossing enemies into the air, kicking explosive barrels towards them and jumping onto their heads. A shotgun supplies the more familiar blast amongst those improvised attacks. Loose objects and enemies both become things you can propel around the facility, giving the sketching a rough, physical companion. It's an appealingly messy collection of tools for such neatly folded opponents.

The abandoned research facility also gives you a mystery to investigate: why its cardboard inhabitants have begun to bleed. That clash between papercraft and gore is the game's most striking visual detail. A little folded creature can occupy the same scene as a blood-spattered wall, and a drawn doorway can sit amongst pipes and industrial fittings. Steam's content notice warns of cartoonish blood and gore; the craft-project appearance comes with a horror setting.

From the demos to the full game

GameGrin's Jacob Sanderson found light puzzles and platforming between fights in the 2023 demo, including drawing bombs and doorways and erasing certain elements. His account praised the responsive movement, while noting a dash-kick fault in some directions. These are observations of that early demo. They give the pencil a useful history as a puzzle tool as well as a weapon, with movement carrying the player between encounters.

A separate demo arrived in February 2026 with an exclusive level from the full game, narrative and atmospheric horror moments, fast combat and full controller support. The released Steam game also lists full controller support. The developer's 2025 devlog outlined shops for supplies and upgrades; our feature on PAPERHEAD's paperclip economy follows that system into the release. It covers the rewards for searching secrets in more detail.

The free prologue, PAPERHEAD EP.0, has its own availability rule. Its Steam page closed to new claims on 24 September. Players who added it before then keep it in their library and can still download and play it. The full game is the new, purchasable release. For anyone returning from that earlier episode, 9 October marks the move from a free introduction to the complete cardboard horror shooter.