PAPERHEAD hides the clipsthat pay for your skills

The paperclips in PAPERHEAD finally have somewhere to go. Ordinary clips buy supplies; golden ones, hidden in secrets, unlock skills. That gives the cardboard shooter a reason to reward a rummage through its levels, but it also attaches character development to a particular appetite for exploration. You can enjoy booting monsters around a room without wanting to inspect every corner afterwards.

Paperhead te4m's game, published by HypeTrain Digital, launched on Steam for Windows on 9 October. Its earlier demos left players collecting clips without a shop to spend them in. The full release supplies that missing destination, and NoFrag's launch review confirms the two currencies are in use. Its shops now give collecting a purpose, with a different reward for each kind of find.

Supplies on one side, skills on the other

In its October 2025 devlog, the developer described ordinary clips as money for health, ammunition, armour and extra weapons. Golden clips would fund the upgrade tree, including improvements to health, ammunition, abilities and weapons. NoFrag's Loulou found the same basic division in the finished PC game: ordinary clips purchased health, armour and ammunition, while secret golden clips opened skills. This isn't just a change of colour for the same shopping trip.

Buying more ammunition addresses an immediate shortage. Opening a skill changes the options available to your character. Attaching those purchases to different currencies makes a secret reward harder to dismiss as another handful of supplies. It's an attractive reason to look around a shooter whose official description also invites you to explore an abandoned research facility.

Yet a skill is also a tempting reward for someone who would rather keep moving. Loulou criticised the secret-hunting requirement because it restricts players who don't enjoy searching levels closely. The reviewer also found the tree too broad and ended up unlocking the skills best suited to their play style as the adventure progressed. That account doesn't establish that every player will struggle; it identifies a concrete cost of making exploration the route to upgrades.

An optional home for a disputed trick

The developer's stated aim was gentler: coins and upgrades were extra activities for players who enjoy them, with room to build around the pencil or collecting currency. That was a design intention, rather than proof that a completed run needs no upgrades. The distinction is useful here. A system can be intended as optional and still hold things a player wants behind an activity they don't particularly enjoy.

The devlog's strangest example shows a more appealing use for that tree. Object carrying had been added at the last moment before PAPERHEAD EP.0 released. The developer said some players loved it and others found it confusing or annoying. Rather than simply cutting it, the proposed solution was a purchasable upgrade, with a second rank allowing jumps off objects in mid-air. NoFrag's review doesn't independently confirm that particular upgrade, so it remains an attributed development example.

There is a neat idea in giving a divisive trick its own place on a skill tree: someone can choose the behaviour that another player wanted removed. The golden-clip requirement complicates that choice. The released game's split offers a strong reward for curiosity, but NoFrag's account exposes the tradeoff for players drawn chiefly to the fights. Wanting a particular skill and enjoying the search that pays for it are two separate tastes.