It was Friday night, 7pm. The weekend was stretched out in front of me. I had a beer in one hand, and a controller in the other. Then I put the beer down so I could hold the controller. Then I put the controller down and plugged it in to charge. Then I turned on the controller and found out I needed to open up some storage space to download my new game, and so I did that. Then, around 8:30pm, I finally started the game we’ve all been dreaming of: the Resident Evil 4 Remake.
Let me just say it is just as good as you heard. The graphics are beautiful. The gameplay has been smoothed out. Everything feels similar enough to make you smile at every recognizable moment; everything feels different enough to keep you terrified and on your toes. It’s truly a great game. Congrats to all. But I’m not going to talk about that.
I’m going to talk about the game that ate up more of my Friday night after I took a break and made the mistake of checking out the Switch eShop. Because right there waiting for me, like the warmth of God’s love and the brightness of the Lord’s light was one of the most beautiful video game titles I’d ever seen: Give Me Toilet Paper!
I wasn’t going to buy it. I was only curious. But then I saw it was $5 and I was like, yeah, that seems right. $5 is the exact price to trick me into buying a video game. It’s just a small enough amount to make me throw caution to the wind and buy a game that is, again, called Give Me Toilet Paper!
So instead of continuing Leon Kennedy’s journey into Spanish architecture, I downloaded a real game made by real people onto my Nintendo Switch. I had no idea what the game was. I had no idea what the game would do. You know when you go to a bookstore and they have those books wrapped in brown paper that you can buy to ‘surprise’ yourself with something random? That’s basically how I bought this game.
Now, my expectations for dirt-cheap games are usually low. If I get five minutes of goofy Mystery Science Theater 3000-style laughs out of a random cash grab, I’m fine with wasting my money. At worst, I’ve blown the price of a large coffee. At best, I’ve found something kind of amazing hidden under a pile of shovelware. Honey, I found something amazing.
I’m not joking when I say this: Give Me Toilet Paper is actually a pretty good game. Even more important: It’s a game that uses a real roll of toilet paper for a controller.
This isn’t a bit. You really need these objects. I didn’t have tissue paper or a cardboard box handy, so I ended up using paper towels and a Godzilla Blu-ray collection.
At this point, I still didn’t know if the game was going to be good. It’s a $5 game that takes more time to set up to play than the full-priced Resident Evil 4. There was a chance I was going to be wasting a lot of my time for a gag. Because, at my core, I’m an asshole. And I still thought that I’d play this game and laugh at it for being for idiots while burying any self-awareness that I’m the idiot who spent the money. I was wrong.
Here’s what the game is. You stick a Joy-Con in the middle of a toilet paper roll and then use the tissue paper (or paper towel) to pack it in there so it doesn’t fall out or move on its own. Then you use the cardboard box (or Godzilla collection) as a platform to roll the toilet paper back and forth, thereby moving it on the screen. The challenge is navigating the on-camera toilet paper roll around obstacles and getting it to the desperate man waiting below.
The best way I can describe it - and this is certainly a reference that still works today - is like a downhill Lode Runner. You’re finding keys and avoiding traps and sometimes going up because you want to go back down. You get mad at yourself for falling into the same trap fifteen times and then pat yourself on the back for finally clearing a stage. It’s a simple puzzle-y platformer!
But it’s hard! Toilet paper rolls fast, girl. More than once I dropped the ‘controller’ onto the ground and it rolled to the other side of the room and the game basically went, “Babe, what are you doing?”
But it’s not impossible! And because of the nature of the game itself, if you’re frustrated, you can just roll the toilet paper on a table. So, you know, try to keep it to rolls of toilet paper that haven’t been used for business yet.I wanted to hate it. Or make fun of it. But I kind of love it. It feels like an arcade game in the classic sense of being a short, almost toy-like experience that you don’t usually get on a home console. And despite it being ostensibly a single-player game, it’s the type of thing you want to show all your friends and make them try. With a roll of toilet paper. And a Joy-Con.
If you enjoyed the Labo games, you might understand the appeal. But instead of spending five hours building a cardboard piano, you’re shoving a controller into a roll of butt wipes.
By the way, that little white rectangle you see at the top of the in-game screenshots? It’s an indicator of where the game thinks your real-life toilet paper roll is on the cardboard platform, allowing you to reset it the way you’d do any sort of motion control. The game is trying, man! It’s not the biggest budget title of the year, but shit (no pun intended), it’s giving you your money’s worth.
I’m not here to convince you to buy Give Me Toilet Paper!. I’m not a game reviewer and, honestly, that job sounds exhausting. God bless. I’m just here to say that sometimes when you dig into the digital bargain bin, you pull out something completely random that works.
I’m still going to play and finish Resident Evil 4. Don’t get me wrong. But as we move from Dead Space to Resident Evil to Zelda, it’s fun to remember there are hidden gems out there. And behind those hidden gems are smaller hidden gems. And behind those smaller hidden gems are games where you use a toilet paper roll for a controller.