PAPERHEAD combat
Kick barrels before you spend shells. Stomp when they are airborne. Shotgun is the honest backup.
PAPERHEAD combat is a boomer-shooter joke that keeps landing because the room is made of paper. Kick first. Shoot when the kick is not enough. Draw when the room itself is the enemy.
The four verbs
Steam's own combat blurb is the kit. Paraphrased into verbs you can actually practice:
| Verb | Official idea | How it plays in the prologue-era footage |
|---|---|---|
| Toss | Throw enemies into the air | Creates a stomp window |
| Kick | Boot exploding barrels at them | Barrel is a grenade you already had |
| Stomp | Jump on heads "like an Italian plumber" | Movement kill, not a finisher cutscene |
| Blast | Shotgun | The honest answer when paper won't cooperate |
None of those have published damage numbers. Do not trust a spreadsheet that lists pellet counts or headshot multipliers — the store does not.
The movement is the real weapon. If you stand still and treat this like a cover shooter, you will eat the cost of every shell. The facility rooms in the trailer and store shots are short corridors, stacked props, and red light. That geometry wants you airborne.
Shotgun vs boots vs pencil
Use this as a priority list, not a tier list:
- Barrel in the room → kick it. Ammo you did not spend.
- Enemy clustered / airborne → stomp or toss. Saves shells for the thing that does not flinch.
- Pencil bomb → when you are dry or the barrel already went. Sketch, then kick. That is the documented craft loop.
- Shotgun → when the above three are gone, or the thing in the door is bigger than a stomp.
The grinning doorway creature in the store shots is the reminder that "cute cardboard" is a lie after the first hour. Treat large silhouettes as shotgun problems until 1.0 says otherwise.
Slow-motion, dual wield, and named gun attachments are not in the public kit. If a video overlay shows a slow-mo bar, log it as that creator's build, not as a system this site will list.
Controllers and the body
Full controller support is on the store, including DualShock and DualSense lines. That is a listing, not a gyro bible. Play the first arena with whatever you already aim with in other FPS games, then only change stick accel if the prologue feels sticky.
The industrial soundtrack is part of the combat read. When the music ramps, the room is telling you the next fight is a chain, not a single target. Don't reload in the doorway — the store shots put enemies in doors on purpose.
What 1.0 changes about fights
Devlog 4 does not retune pellet damage. It adds economy around the fight:
- Regular clips refill HP, ammo, armor, and can buy extra weapons
- A huge clip dump can buy a skill point (no number given)
- Golden clips upgrade "abilities and weapons" plus joke extras
- Prop-carry — the Half-Life 2-ish "am I holding this?" habit from EP.0 — becomes an optional upgrade instead of a maybe-bug
So the combat verbs stay. The shop decides whether you are allowed to be sloppy with ammo. A pencil-only run is an explicit developer example. That is the closest thing we have to a "build".
Read clips and upgrades before you spend your first gold clip on a funny extra.
FAQ
Is there a parry? Not listed.
Are barrels friendly fire? Not documented. Kick them away from yourself.
Will guns other than the shotgun be in 1.0? Devlog 4 says extra weapons are a shop purchase. Names and counts are unpublished.
