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Papers, Please


DANGERMAN
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I've tried explaining this to a couple of gamers and they don't seem to get why it's such a good idea for a game. You are passport control for an 80s Soviet country that has only just opened its borders after years of being closed. You have to check their passports, and eventually work permits, ID cards, travel passes for any discrepancies before letting them through or turning them away.

Letting someone through who should fail gives you a penalty, too many of these and your wages get docks, but not letting someone through who should be allowed also results in a penalty. At the end of the day your wages are totalled against rent, food, heat, and medicine, your family will suffer if you don't pay for the heat, food and medicine, but if you don't pay the rent, as I've found out, you are an enemy of the state and are imprisoned.

Then there's all the sub stuff. I won't go in to too much detail because I don't know if any of it changes, but there's stories from the people you see or in the papers where you can play some part. So for example, if someone warns you that there's a terrorist in line you could believe them and reject that person when it comes to their turn, but if they have the right credentials then you'll be punished.

Time is the real killer. The problem I ran in to within 3 days was not earning enough, I wasn't making many mistakes but once my rent went up I also wasn't letting enough people through

Glory to Arstoska

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I played the demo of this a few months ago having heard about the amazing stories from it on Idle Thumbs but it really confused me as there was no sound and no dialogue, just the checking mechanic over and over.

I will get the proper thing though, it does look bleakly fascinating..

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  • 3 weeks later...

Bought this and started playing last week.

It's great but extremely stressful - not regarding the people you have to do deal with, more balancing your money. It's not long before your whole family ends up fucked from lack of food or medicine.

Also stress from how fast you have to move in each day to process people. You can guarantee I'll fuck up from checking over someone's details, letting them through and then find out that they're from a town that I'm not meant to let in. Unless you've got a good memory, you have to continually refer to your guide of which towns are ok.

I had a couple of miserable attempts on Normal and then I started on Easy which is much easier because they give you extra money which means that the budgeting is never a real problem. I'm happy to go through it a few times on Easy before tackling Normal again.

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  • 2 months later...

Well I've gone into debt twice and gotten the same jail ending. But the good thing is you can pick up from any day you've played so you don't have to spend time replaying through all the early days (unless you want to!). At the moment I'm on Nov 29. Nov 28 added the work pass, that was the most recent addition to the entry requirements... $15 in the bank! :)

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Made it as far as day 12 and picked up my first achievement, the Obristan Token. I started over from the beginning and have been flying through each day trying to maximise my profits. Going well so far, I've made it to day 7 with $60 in the bank. I had $75 on day 6 but it ended early with a terrorist attack...

Papers, Please is this year's FTL. It takes a really solid concept and executes it brilliantly.

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  • 3 months later...
  • 5 months later...

This is unexpectedly great, but man it is depressing. Some of the things they expect you to pick up on are a bit odd as well, I got ticketed for letting a guy through that wasn't the right height. I guess it's just something else I'm supposed to look for when checking people through.

Also managed to get one of the achievements, they seem a bit random, not even sure how I unlocked it in all fairness. Just saw it pop up.

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I can't do that, the games promotion material was peddled by pouring sugar on various industry scabs. ;)

This is really difficult, I can get through between 10 and 15 people a day depending on how much crap I have to sort through, although the time limit is a tad strict. If you don't want people to come in blowing shit up, then at least let me do the job properly to ensure that I don't miss any details, Arstotzka.

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I don't think I can play any more of this, it's making me miserable. It's the endings, man. None of them offer any hope at all.

I've been arrested and my family has been rehoused.

My family has died from starvation.

I've been caught taking a bribe I didn't ask for and been punished for it.

I've shot a guy that was getting lairy.

I got arrested for some reason I'm not really sure about

I've been summoned to do hard work because I had a family photo in my booth.

I've had a bomb dumped on my booth and got blown up trying to defuse it.

This is before you counter in the terror attacks, the people getting pissed off with you, the human trafficking, the child murdering, the polio outbreak, constant wanted criminals, the confiscation of passports of honest people and a goddamn police state slowly strangling the citizens it's meant to be protecting. No more. I've seen enough. I get it, life in this situation is shit and I don't want to witness anymore of it, despite it all being crudely done in a way that wouldn't look out of place on a C64, it's incredibly heavy material for consuming in a videogame.

This doesn't stop me recommending it to others to play if they have not already, there's nothing quite like it and you're doing yourself wrong not to play it if you're able to. It's just really fucking depressing, to a point sometimes where you feel bad for the things you're seeing, but having to turn off and just cut through as much red tape as possible. So yeah.

I'm not sure what to put down in the tombola thing. I've seen so many endings, but I don't know if I could consider it finished. However many endings there are I bet they're all absolutely fucking heartbreakingly miserable.

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  • 3 years later...

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