The Indie Challenge: Papers Please - Week 8
I'm not the sort person who is fond of Indie games. I like my big name titles, my polished graphics and my big budgets. I dislike titles that I can't add to Steam or that can't use the processing power I've lovingly paid out for in my gaming rig. I am, for lack of a better term, a gaming snob. For this reason, I have given myself The Indie Challenge.
Each week, I will be playing at least one lesser known Indie game. I may not have enough time to complete said game, but I will at least try it. I'm doing this to attempt to expand my gaming horizons and stop being so focused on a small selection of game types. There is a whole world of gaming out there ready and waiting for me to come across.
I'll be posting a weekly blog following this challenge and detailing the game I've been playing as well as the game I will be playing next week. If you want to follow along with me, I'll be posting a link to the game.
Previous weeks:
Week 1 - Receiver
Week 2 - FTL: Faster Than Light
Week 3 - Reus
Week 4 - Thomas Was Alone
Week 5 - Home
Week 6 - Gunpoint
Week 7 - Guns of Icarus Online
This week I've been playing Papers Please, the viral game from Lucas Pope. Having recently been Greenlit for Steam, I was eager to see what all the fuss was about. I was not disappointed.
Papers Please sees the user as the immigration insepctor for state of Arstotzka's border town, Grestin. You're tasked with the job of letting in those that your state deems fit to enter and decline those that it does not.
This title is a very light hearted game with darker undertones of communism, poverty and the pressure citizens of the state are put under to 'do what is right'. It follows a simple premise. At the start of your working day, you are given instructions of who should be let into Arstotzka. This will be something along the lines of "Nobody may enter that is not a citizen of Arstotzka" or "Nobody may enter unless they have a valid visitor's pass".
Simple enough until people start lying to you or trying to decieve you and you have to begin to look at more and more criteria for entry into your beloved state. It's this slow transition of simplicity to manically difficult that I really love about Papers Please.
If this wasn't enough, at the end of every working day, you are shown how much you have earned for your chores and then must decide how to distribute this money around between things such as your heating bills or food. Neglect to keep food on the table and your family will begin to go hungry and you'll have to try and clear more viable individuals through the border to earn more money the next day.
Papers Please also has a great sense of humour which left me chuckling on multiple occasions. A noteable experience was when somebody tried to hand me an obviously fake passport and pass themselves off as a citizen.
This title is definitely one to look out for this summer as it joins my (and I hope your) Steam Library. However, if you'd like to try your hand prior to it's release, you can pick up the beta version for free from here: http://dukope.com/
This week I shall be playing The Night of the Rabbit from Daedalic Entertainment. This will be quite a big step for me because besides TellTale's The Walking Dead and Sam & Max, I haven't really got on with point and click games all that much.
You can read our review of The Night of the Rabbit here: http://www.gamegrin.com/game/review/pc/the-night-of-the-rabbit-pc-review
You can also play along with me by visiting Daedalic Entertainment's website here: http://www.daedalic.de/en/game/the_night_of_the_rabbit
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