Papers, Please: A Dystopian Document Thriller

[shammack]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=138290904

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_QP5X6fcukM

 

I'm pretty excited about this game. You play as an immigration inspector on the border of a fictional eastern European country. People queue up to get into the country and you have to examine their paperwork and determine whether or not to let them in. You do this by looking for discrepancies in their documents and/or what they tell you verbally, checking for forgeries, and sometimes searching them for contraband and detaining them if necessary. It's stylistically similar to something like Cart Life, but lighter on the pathos and with a more streamlined set of mechanics.

 

You're compensated based on how many people are processed in a day, so if you want, you can try to cut corners and move people through faster, but there's a risk/reward associated with doing so. If you make a mistake, you get a citation; the first few are just warnings, but then your pay starts getting docked. Plus, if you let somebody through that you shouldn't have, there's a chance they'll detonate a bomb, resulting in your booth being closed for the rest of the day. Your wages go toward rent, food, heat, and medicine for your family, who can get sick if you don't provide well enough for them.

 

Most of the immigrants are procedurally generated, but there are a few scripted events sprinkled in that are pretty well written. I don't want to give anything away though. It's on Steam Greenlight, but there's a playable beta/demo sort of thing that you can download for free right now. I recommend it!

[Max Ernst]

This is a really interesting game. Thanks for the heads up. I hope it gets a Steam release.

[Ucantalas]

This looks really interesting.

I really dig the bleak, sort of dystopian setting going on here.

[Corelli]

This looks AWESOME.

[clyde]

  On 4/15/2013 at 3:41 AM, shammack said:

Most of the immigrants are procedurally generated, but there are a few scripted events sprinkled in that are pretty well written.

Are they really procedural?

[ChattyWhacker]

Interesting premise.  Sounds pretty depressing which I'm totally for.

[shammack]

  On 4/24/2013 at 2:14 PM, clyde said:

Are they really procedural?

 

Yep. The author talks a bit about how it works in the game's TIGSource thread.

[clyde]

I don't know why

 

  On 4/24/2013 at 3:41 PM, shammack said:

Yep. The author talks a bit about how it works in the game's TIGSource thread.

I don't know why, but that makes it so much better for me.