Papercraft Tactics

Papercraft Tactics is a run-based roguelike with a grid inventory and semi-automatic, turn-based combat. You arrange and wire items so their inputs and outputs connect, then watch your backpack trigger effects and build action chains. Between fights, you draft items, visit shops and rearrange your gear; during battles, you use cards to alter the action queue. The game uses a paper-theater style, with cut-out characters, stage-flat scenery, hand-drawn lines and cozy lighting.

Build your backpack

Your grid inventory is the core of each build. Items have distinct inputs, outputs and tags, including elemental, heavy, fragile, scaling and mimic. Rotate them to align green inputs with yellow outputs, place them next to each other for adjacency bonuses, and create links that set off cascading effects.

You progress through events, shops and increasingly difficult encounters, refining your build before facing the boss. Shops, events, elite encounters and bosses vary, and different enemy resistance profiles make item placement matter. After a run, you can try a new hero.

Chain reactions

Combat resolves automatically in turns. At the start of your turn, linked items trigger in order and add actions to the queue, including Attack, MagicCast, Recover, Block, InflictEffect and Special. Clear trigger events such as OnSlashHit, OnReceiveFireDamage and OnEvade govern effects, while scaling items grow from HP, MP or SP and mimic items copy linked behavior to extend chains.

You can also play a handful of clutch cards during fights to manipulate the queue or inflict effects. Cards can duplicate or remove actions, reset exhausted cards, or trigger an item immediately; examples include DuplicateNextAction, ClearAttacks and ResetExhaustedCards. Defensive builds can use blocks, conversions and queue changes to stay active.

Heroes and resistances

You choose from distinct heroes with unique passives and stat profiles. Core stats include HP, SP, MP, STR, DEF, MND, SPR and Evade. Enemies have resistances to physical damage types—Slash, Thrust, Strike, Projectile and Spell—and elements: Fire, Ice, Wind, Thunder and True.