Paper Strike, a French 3v3 arena where you draw your spells

In Paper Strike, every spell is cast by drawing its rune, whether you use a mouse, a controller or a finger on a phone screen. Two teams of three fighters battle through short rounds over an objective, in a set of floating arenas. The game comes from a small French company based in Aytré, just outside La Rochelle. Its demo went up for free on itch.io on 31 October, ahead of a Steam demo and a Kickstarter campaign. The big question is whether drawing can hold up in the heat of an online fight, since tracing a rune leaves you standing still.

At a glance

Drawing a rune in Paper Strike roots you to the spot

You pick a spell, trace its rune by linking a set of points with the mouse, and as soon as the shape is complete, the spell flies into the arena. The rule that shapes everything is spelt out on Paper Strike’s Steam store page: drawing means standing still, and a physical hit can interrupt your cast. Every exchange becomes a matter of timing, so you either finish the rune under pressure or move before the blow lands.

On the game’s official website, you can even practise tracing two spells right there on the page. Ice Barrage sends a volley of ice across the fight, while Earthwall raises a wall of stone that advances and shoves opponents out of position. The site’s Grimoire lists six runes so far, with the rest of the table still blank. All of this plays out in a world of ink and steel made of colourful arenas and living pages, a papery setting that brings to mind PAPERHEAD, the cardboard shooter that took off on Steam, even if the two games have little else in common.

Three minigames decide who controls Armageddon

Each player in Paper Strike controls a Striker, a Warrior Mage who mixes weapons and magic. The first character revealed is Arin, a curious miner carrying a crystal cannon, and his signature spell happens to be Earthwall. Arin has eight abilities arranged in four pairs, and you keep one per slot before the match, combining drawn spells with instant physical moves depending on what your team needs. Two more characters are still under wraps on the site, one described as taking shape at the studio and the other as waiting in the sketchbook.

The rounds lean on formats most players will recognise. There’s a zone to hold in the middle of the map, crystals to grab before the other side does, and a straight team fight where every opponent you knock out scores a point. That said, drawing changes how they play out, because a teammate can cover you while you finish a rune, and a well-placed wall can push the enemy off the point.

Winning a round hands your team control of Armageddon, the huge spell at the heart of the match. The winners also pick the next arena, and the match is won by pushing Armageddon all the way to the far end of the enemy’s side. Both teams start at the central shrine, and the modular maps reshuffle themselves every game. The studio pitches the whole thing as a natural fit for game nights and streams.

A small studio near La Rochelle starts out on itch.io

Paper Strike SAS is registered in Aytré, and its president is Alexandre Hecquet, according to the legal notice on the official website. Much like Glee-Cheese Studio, the French team whose MR. RECORDS demo has passed 25,000 players, it’s leaning on a demo to get noticed. The Paper Strike demo runs on Windows and macOS, in English and French, and you’ll find it on the demo’s itch.io download page. It’s free, and the studio even asks players not to pay, explaining that the pay-what-you-want option only exists to push the download button to the top of the page. Anyone who donates anyway will get an outfit called First Defender for the online Steam demo.

Ahead of that Steam demo, the Paper Strike team is looking for testers to help hunt down bugs. Everyone who fills in the feedback form gets a Steam key and an exclusive in-game item. The itch.io page also states that the game collects telemetry such as playtime, spells used and tutorial completion, with no personal data involved, and that no generative AI was used to make it. The game is built in Unity.

As for what comes next, Paper Strike will launch on PC through Steam first, then on Google Play and the App Store with the help of a Kickstarter campaign. That campaign has yet to start, and for now the site simply invites players to follow it or sign up for an email when it goes live. Amusingly, the Kickstarter page’s address still carries the project’s very first pitch, ‘the swordsman battle royale on smartphone’. No release date has been announced, and the Steam page still lists it as to be determined.