Game: PAPERHEAD
Developer: Paperhead te4m
Publisher: HypeTrain Digital
Genre: Boomer Shooter · Horror
Released: October 9, 2026
Price: $19.99
Platform: PC (Steam)
Steam Deck: Verified
✏️ How we reviewed it: we played PAPERHEAD on PC. Our take also draws on the experiences of other players since launch, and it currently sits at Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam.
586Steam Reviews
~6–7Hours
25Achievements
1Magical Pencil
$19.99Price
🩸 Know this first: it’s short, sharp and very bloody. Expect around 6–7 hours for one playthrough. How Long to Beat puts the main story at 5.6 hours, and one player took about 7 while finding nearly every secret. Normal difficulty is on the easy side for genre veterans, but you can change difficulty at any time in the Options menu. The content is cartoonish blood and gore, so the cute cardboard look is not a sign that it’s for kids.
📦 Why Would Cardboard… Bleed?
In a cute cardboard world, something has gone horribly wrong. Armed with a magical pencil, a good old shotgun and the strength of your mighty boots, you explore an abandoned research facility to uncover the dark truth.
PAPERHEAD is the full game following the hit free prologue, PAPERHEAD EP.0, and it mixes a fast-paced movement boomer shooter with an adventure horror story. It’s a cute world with far more meat than you’d expect.
Strafe. Slide. Kick. Draw. Bleed.
One player admits they came looking for a joke game and found something brilliant instead, and that sums up PAPERHEAD’s appeal. Under the paper-craft charm is a seriously polished shooter with great movement, satisfying weapon feedback, and a soundtrack (by Joonas Turner) that players can’t stop talking about. With 586 reviews and an Overwhelmingly Positive rating in its first two weeks, it’s clearly struck a nerve.
Our verdict: “This charming indie action game subverts its cute cardboard aesthetic with genuinely disturbing horror elements that demand answers.”
Kick First, Draw Second
🥾 The Mighty Boot
Kick boards, kick enemies into the air, and kick exploding barrels and bombs at baddies and doors.
✏️ The Magical Pencil
A weapon and a tool: sketch bombs to kick, draw doors to kick down, and scribble on the walls.
🏃 Movement Tech
Strafe, run, slide, duck and jump. Slide then jump to build speed, or bounce on heads like a certain plumber.
📎 Paperclip Upgrades
Collect paperclips to buy upgrades for your weapons and your cardboard self.
Movement is the star. Players rave about how fun it is just to get around the levels, and one fan who’s played most FPS games of the past says this one feels completely different. Another compared its speed to ULTRAKILL, and a third says that if you like the modern DOOM games, you’ll like this. The weapons hit hard too: one player calls the combat really sharp, and another highlights the satisfying weapon feedback.
Cute… But Scary
🎵 A Soundtrack That Slaps
“Why does the soundtrack slap this hard?” asks one player, and they’re far from alone. Several players single out the music as a highlight, and one finished the game genuinely shook by how good it all was. The industrial soundtrack pumps high-octane cardboard through your veins, and the sound design is just as strong. One player calls both “really good”, and says the whole game runs smoothly and feels polished.
The other big draw is the world. Several players love the unique art style, the creepy atmosphere and the bizarre story. One calls it a weird, intense and unforgettable experience that stands apart from typical horror games. Another, who played the original demo, explains the hook perfectly: it’s the clash between a simple cardboard world and blood and human flesh that makes it so absorbing.
⚠️ Mild spoilers (bosses, enemies & the ending): tap to reveal
• Big Boy is the first boss, and one player was already hooked by the time they’d beaten him.
• Beware the meat pencil sharpeners. One player hated them even back in the demo.
• Finishing the game unlocks new characters for another run.
• A sequel tease? Players spotted a nod to more PAPERHEAD in the end credits, and several are already begging for a Part 2.
Where It Stumbles
⚠️ A Few Paper Cuts
1. It can feel samey. The game is built around big arena fights against waves of enemies, broken up by light exploration, corridor shooting and key hunting. A couple of players found that once you’ve figured out each enemy type, you can use the same approach all game, and one noticed reused room layouts. One veteran says individual enemies are far less threatening than in Selaco, Ion Fury or ULTRAKILL.
2. Too easy on Normal. A couple of players wish it were harder. The fix is easy, though: bump the difficulty up to Hard whenever you like.
3. It’s short. Several players finished wanting more, and one, who’d unlocked the extra characters, didn’t feel much pull to replay.
4. Some levels are very dark. One player found roughly half the levels so dark that enemies were hard to see, and it gave them a migraine. They hope for lighter scenes in a future update.
5. Post-it note storytelling. One player loves the story but found the delivery, through post-it notes scattered around story levels between combat levels, a bit dull.
🎮 Performance & Platforms
PAPERHEAD is Steam Deck Verified, has full controller support (Xbox and PlayStation), and is very light on hardware: the minimum is 2 GB of RAM and a GeForce 9800GT. Steam lists Windows only, but one player reports it running on Linux too. The developers are patching actively, with Patch v50 landing on October 22.
Things to Know
📋 Before You Buy
• $19.99 on Steam. The Supporter Pack and Soundtrack are $7.99 each, and there are bundles with games like ULTRAKILL and Buckshot Roulette
• Single-player · roughly 6–7 hours · 25 achievements · Steam Cloud
• 11 languages, including English, French, German, Spanish and Japanese
• Missed the free EP.0 prologue on Steam? One player found it on itch.io and says it’s really just a teaser for this game
• Content: cartoonish blood and gore
The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
| The Good |
The Bad |
The Ugly |
| MovementSliding, kicking and strafing feel fantastic. |
Samey ArenasOne strategy works for most fights. |
Dark LevelsHard to see enemies, and a migraine for one player. |
| The SoundtrackIndustrial bangers from start to finish. |
Easy on NormalVeterans should start on Hard. |
— |
| Cute-Meets-Gruesome ArtCardboard that bleeds never stops being unsettling. |
Short RuntimeAround 6–7 hours, with limited replay pull. |
— |
| The Pencil & BootDraw bombs and doors, then kick them. |
Post-It LoreA great story told in a slightly dull way. |
— |
| Polish & PerformanceSmooth, Deck Verified, and actively patched. |
— |
— |
The Verdict
PAPERHEAD takes an idea that could easily have been a one-note joke (cute cardboard, gallons of blood) and builds a genuinely great shooter around it. The movement is slick, the kick-and-pencil tricks give combat its own personality, the soundtrack slaps, and the creepy-cute world keeps you hunting for answers between arenas.
It’s not the most demanding boomer shooter around. Arenas start to blur together, Normal is a breeze for veterans, a few levels are far too dark, and it’s over quickly. But for a polished, endlessly stylish few evenings of carnage, there’s very little to complain about.
The honest read: if you love DOOM, ULTRAKILL or any shooter that rewards speed, PAPERHEAD is an easy recommendation. Start on Hard if you’re a genre veteran, and turn the brightness up.
For more game reviews, check out our full reviews section.
Score Breakdown
Polish & Performance9.0/10
Level Design & Lighting7.0/10
Enemy Variety & Challenge7.0/10
Final Score
8.5/10
PAPERHEAD — Paperhead te4m
Cute cardboard, gallons of blood, and a shooter that’s sharper than a meat pencil sharpener.
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