How long is PAPERHEAD
The game is not on HowLongToBeat yet, so we collected times from reviews and playthroughs:
| Source | First playthrough | How it was played |
|---|---|---|
| NoFrag (review) | about 8 hours | Normal difficulty |
| Yōkoso Otaku (review) | about 8 hours | Story difficulty, lots of exploring |
| Yappy Dot (full playthrough) | about 5.5 hours | in-game timer |
| The Homie Dot (review) | 4–5 hours | first run |
| No-commentary longplays | about 3 hours 40 minutes | deaths cut out |
Bottom line: plan on 5–8 hours if you collect lore and secrets, and around 4 hours if you head straight for the ending. 100% of the achievements (PERFECT on every level, runs with other characters, HARDCORE) means several playthroughs.
List of chapters
| No. | Chapter |
|---|---|
| 1 | The Descend |
| 2 | Project G.E.P.P.E.T.T.O. |
| 3 | Object 808 |
| 4 | Let's Talk |
| 5 | Subjectz |
| 6 | The Shelter |
| 7 | Hunting Grounds |
| 8 | On the Way to…? |
| 9 | The Farm |
| 10 | Interlude: Critical Error |
| 11 | Depth Dweller |
| 12 | Broken Paper Man |
| 13 | G.PRJ HQ |
| 14 | New Project |
| 15 | Vivisector |
| 16 | Rituals |
| 17 | Assault |
| 18 | The Manager (final boss) |
You can unlock Jeb in chapter 12, and chapter 2 hides a trick for the maximum score ("Aha!" achievement) — details in achievements.
Difficulty levels
- Story — the easiest, for players who want the story and the world.
- Normal — the standard difficulty.
- Hardcore — the hardest. According to The Homie Dot's review, enemies deal double damage. Finishing every level on HARDCORE gives the "Hardcococococore" achievement.
PERFECT rank
- Each level awards medals for time, score and secrets found — the full set gives a PERFECT rank (The Homie Dot: "Time, score, and secrets are what grant medals that lead to perfect levels").
- Score is a combo counter. Only losing health breaks it — losing armour does not. Style ranks go from "Draft" up to "Ultimate Being".
- Level progress is tracked separately for each character and shown in level select.
- Levels can be replayed from the main menu, even before you finish the story.
- The easiest first PERFECT (P33 RANK achievement): chapter 10, "Interlude: Critical Error" — it takes under a minute.
- Whether medals can be earned across several attempts at the same level is not known yet.
Characters, skills and golden paperclips
- Besides the main hero there are five unlockable characters. How to unlock Drone 0 and Jeb: see achievements; nobody has documented the other three yet.
- The characters play very differently. Reviews describe, among others, a character with one hit point and very high damage, and one that is slowly dying and has to keep killing enemies to restore health.
- According to The Homie Dot, each character has its own skill tree, loadout and currency.
- Skill-tree upgrades are bought with golden paperclips hidden in secrets around the levels — worth searching for (developers' Devlog 4, NoFrag review).
Survival mode
A separate survival mode: you start with only a pistol, and character skills do not apply.
Known issues at launch
The developers run an official bug thread on Steam. Most often reported in the first reviews:
- enemies not spawning after a checkpoint reload, which blocks progress (e.g. the first Summoner fight),
- frame drops for some players (others, including on Steam Deck, report smooth play),
- a very dark chapter 11,
- a corrupted save after force-closing the game.
A day after launch there is no patch yet. We will add it here when it arrives.