PAPERHEAD review: Your pencil is a weapon, and your foot wants a promotion

The big picture

PAPERHEAD is what happens when a stationery cupboard develops extremely bad intentions. Its world looks like cardboard, the cardboard bleeds, and the pencil can draw bombs. Anybody expecting a wholesome craft activity should probably reconsider before learning what the boot is for. This is single-player movement shooting mixed with adventure horror, set in an abandoned research facility that has found several unfortunate uses for everyday materials.

The full Windows game released on October 9, 2026. PAPERHEAD EP.0, which arrived in November 2024, is a separate free prologue, not an earlier commercial Early Access version of this release. Earlier demos are separate too. Old impressions of those builds can provide context, but they do not describe every decision in the completed game, which has already received postlaunch revisions by the October 18 cutoff.

Erasing your mistakes has become literal

The pencil can draw bombs and doors, connecting destruction and navigation through the same tool. That fits the fabricated world neatly: you are allowed to alter it using an object associated with making things in the first place. A pencil has finally escaped its usual fate of being chewed, lost or borrowed indefinitely by somebody who insists they returned it.

The developer's combat account describes healing by erasing corpses and obtaining ammunition from defeated enemies. It also explains armour weaknesses designed to encourage particular attacks. These are the developer's stated combat decisions, with aggression and recovery intended to connect rather than sending you away from every fight to inspect cupboards.

That connection can make the aftermath useful. A completed encounter supplies resources for carrying on, while different enemy weaknesses give you reasons to reconsider the tool in your hand. The potential tension is between encouraging variety and prescribing one correct response. A system of vulnerabilities is most interesting when recognising one still leaves room to do something unnecessarily inventive with it.

Paperclips with purchasing power

The clips-and-upgrades devlog distinguishes ordinary clips, used for supplies, from golden clips hidden in secrets and spent on upgrades. The stated aim is optional customisation instead of a compulsory grind. Object carrying and an associated midair prop-jump are among the stranger upgrade ideas described there. It is an ambitious career change for something usually employed to keep three sheets together.

Secrets can serve a quick shooter well when they reward curiosity without forcing every player to examine every corner. An upgrade that changes how you manipulate objects or move through a space is a more expressive reward than another small increase to a completion total. It gives the curious player something new to try when the shooting resumes.

That still needs to suit your taste. Some players enjoy altering their toolkit; others prefer a tightly fixed set of abilities and uninterrupted forward momentum. The extra choices are appealing if experimentation is part of the action you want, less so if every menu feels like someone temporarily confiscating the interesting game.

The horror has a loud companion

Joonas Turner composed the soundtrack, pairing industrial music with the cardboard violence. The combination gives the crude materials an appropriately threatening setting. A room can look handmade without sounding like anybody expects you to appreciate their lovely school display.

Horror and spectacular power do pull in different directions. Someone capable of kicking explosive objects around is not necessarily going to feel helpless for long. The mixture is more naturally suited to players who enjoy disturbing imagery and strange discoveries alongside aggressive combat than those seeking sustained vulnerability. The pencil may be sinister, but it is also yours.

A few edges still need attention

The October 15 patch notes cover optimisation, progression-blocking fixes and dialogue skipping for completed levels. They describe a crash fix tentatively, so that problem should not be treated as definitively solved. Active repairs are welcome without becoming a promise that every route and machine is trouble-free.

Those notes also confirm Survival Mode and remove prop-jumping from it. A movement trick can suit campaign experimentation while making a structured repeatable challenge less useful. Different modes have different reasons to restrain the silliness.

PAPERHEAD is an appealing prospect if you want to interfere physically with a firefight rather than merely aim through it. Its tools, materials and violence belong to the same peculiar idea, while the technical caveats deserve attention. Bring an appetite for unsettling action and improvised solutions. Leave any expectation of a quiet afternoon with art supplies somewhere considerably safer.