Paper Shredder

Someone at this company signed off on a "minor" paperwork backlog, handed you a shredder, and promised a $1,000,000 payout once the disposal hits 100%. Paper Shredder, an incremental sim from developer Embers, turns that premise into a full game about shredding documents by the ton, sweeping up the confetti, and upgrading your way from desk toy to industrial destruction. The corporate satire is the load-bearing wall: a Happiness Manager watches you work, the pile of paper hides things that were never supposed to be destroyed, and the ending asks whether you'll sign.

This guide breaks down every confirmed system, explains how the incremental loop will grow, and collects practical expectations for your first hours. The game is in "Coming soon" status on Steam, so this all comes from the official store page. We'll expand it into a full walkthrough once the game launches.

Last updated: October 25, 2026. Written from the official Steam description.

What Is Paper Shredder?

Paper Shredder is a single-player incremental game for Windows PC. You play a new hire whose entire job is destroying the company's paperwork. Shredding documents and sweeping the mess earns company merit points, merit points buy upgrades, and upgrades turn a pathetic desktop shredder into whatever passes for heavy machinery in an office supply closet.

The framing is pure corporate satire. Management calls the mountain of paper a "minor backlog." Your objective is 100% disposal efficiency. The prize is a seven-figure payout the company presumably has no intention of paying quietly. And the store page ends on a question that tells you there's a real narrative under the confetti: "Will you sign?"

Paper Shredder Details

How to Play: The Core Loop

Three verbs run the whole game, and the store page names them as a cycle: shred, sweep, repeat.

Shredding is the main action. Documents go in, confetti comes out, and the sensory payoff ("turning tower-high piles of rigid bureaucracy into weightless confetti") is the reason incremental players click. Volume scales with your tools, so early shredding is sheet-by-sheet and late shredding should feel like feeding a woodchipper a phone book.

Sweeping clears the mess. The confetti isn't cosmetic clutter; sweeping it earns merit points alongside the shredding itself. That second input matters for pacing: incremental games live or die on whether the player always has something worth doing, and a second action doubles the options.

Merit points are the currency. Every upgrade in the game presumably runs through them, which means every upgrade decision is a question of shred-rate versus sweep-rate versus whatever the third conversion path turns out to be.

Upgrades and Progression

The store page promises that you'll "upgrade basic tools into heavy-duty setups, skyrocketing your processing speed and document destruction." No full upgrade tree has been published, but the incremental genre has a well-worn shape, and the game's own language points at it:

• Throughput upgrades. Faster shredding, bigger intake, fewer jams. These are your bread-and-butter purchases and usually the safest early spend.
• Automation upgrades. Every good incremental game moves you from doing the work to owning machines that do it. "Heavy-duty setups" strongly suggests the game travels that road.
• Sweep-side upgrades. If sweeping earns the same currency, tools that make sweeping faster compound with shredding tools. Two production lines, one wallet.
• Scale milestones. The piles are described as "tower-high," which implies visible, checkpoint-style growth. Expect the office to fill up as proof of your career.

The classic incremental trap applies here too: early on, buy the upgrade that shortens your loop, not the one with the biggest number on it. A modest boost you trigger ten times a minute beats a spectacular one you trigger once.

The Happiness Manager

Most memorable supporting character on the page. The Happiness Manager is "always watching, offering continuous, highly mandatory psychological support, and toxic positivity to keep your motivation at an optimized 100%."

Read that as a game system, not just a joke. Characters who "watch" you in games about workplace obedience usually do one of two things: gate your upgrades, or punish slacking. Either way, expect the Happiness Manager to be mechanically present, not set dressing. The phrase "highly mandatory" is doing a lot of work, and the satire writes its own predictions: performance reviews, mandatory fun, motivational interruptions at the worst possible moment.

The Story Buried in the Paper

Here's where Paper Shredder separates itself from clicker games with no back half. Three separate lines on the store page point at a mystery:

1. Shredding is a $1,000,000 job. Somebody is paying seven figures to make paper disappear. Legitimate companies don't.
2. "Dig through paper mountains to find more than just forgotten files." The documents themselves are content.
3. "Rumor says past associates couldn't bear the grind and shredded a path to freedom instead." You are not the first person in this chair, and your predecessors left something behind.

The game asks "Will you sign?" at the end, which means the ending branches on a choice. Whether you follow the past associates, cash the check, or find a third door is the narrative hook, and incremental players who stick around for the finale are the ones the story is written for. Practical tip for launch: read the documents you shred. Files that were never supposed to be destroyed are usually the ones that tell you why.

Tips for Your First Hours

No launch build to test against yet, so treat these as genre-informed expectations rather than walkthrough steps:

• Click everything once early. Incremental games hide interactions in the world. The paper mountains, the shredder itself, the sweepable floor: poke all of it in the first hour.
• Balance shred and sweep spending. Two income streams mean two upgrade economies. Neglect one and your loop develops a bottleneck the other can't fix.
• Watch for the first "weird" document. The moment the game hands you a file that isn't normal paperwork, the story has started paying attention to you. Keep it.
• Don't fight the grind, ride the curve. If the pacing feels slow, the answer is supposed to be an upgrade, not endurance. Slow usually means you're spending in the wrong column.

System Requirements and Platforms

Windows PC, single-player, mouse-driven. No spec sheet yet. Given the genre, this is near-certain to be one of the least demanding games on your wishlist; there's no physics or heavy 3D implied anywhere in the description. Steam Deck compatibility is unconfirmed until Valve badges it, but the input scheme (pure mouse) translates to trackpad without friction.

Release Date and Price

Unannounced on both counts. The Steam page is live for wishlisting. Embers is self-publishing, so the Steam news hub and the store page itself are the channels where a date or demo announcement will surface first.

How Paper Shredder Compares

The obvious shelf-mates are the workplace-sim incrementals: Supermarket Simulator style job sims for the fantasy, and clickers like Universal Paperclips for the escalation curve. The satire lineage runs through Papers, Please, which made paperwork feel heavy; Paper Shredder wants it to feel good, then makes you suspicious of why it feels good. If the document-reading mystery pays off, it lands closer to Papers, Please's moral territory than anyone expects from a confetti game.

FAQ

When does Paper Shredder release? No date yet. Coming soon on Steam.

How much will it cost? Not listed yet.

Is it multiplayer? No. Single-player only.

Is there an ending? The store page implies a branching conclusion ("Will you sign?") on top of the endless incremental loop.

Is it just clicking? Clicking plus sweeping plus upgrade decisions, with a narrative layer underneath. The satire and mystery are the stated differentiators.

Mac or Linux support? Unannounced. Windows is the only listed platform.

Do I need to play attention to the story to progress? No, the shred-sweep-upgrade loop stands on its own. But the page teases secrets in the paper for players who do.