‘Papers, Please’ gets a Game & Watch demake for its 10th anniversary
Papers, Please got a Game & Watch-inspired demake to celebrate its 10th anniversary, as well as a “hard mode” featuring wanted posters and VIP travellers.
The demake – which is playable on itch.io and is titled LCD, Please – has been a hit with fans who have asked developer Lucas Pope to think about potentially releasing this version for the Playdate. Check it out below:
While it is not as colourful as the original, it functions in an identical way to Papers, Please, albeit with a classic aesthetic. The new “hard mode” includes VIP travellers and wanted and banned posters for particular characters.
Pope, who had previously worked on games like Uncharted, published Papers, Please through his own production company in 2013. Said to be an empathy game, the game puts the player in the shoes of an immigration inspector at a border checkpoint of a fictional country of Arstotzka.
Over a 31-day in-game timeline, the inspector will process a number of procedurally generated travellers who wish to enter Arstotzka. The player will encounter characters who will challenge the regulations that they must adhere to in order to secure a salary for their family to live off.
For example, a young woman from the neighbouring country appears to reunite with her Arstotzka lover, but she doesn’t have all of her required documents. The inspector might be tempted by bribes to allow anti-state actors through or they might illegally confiscate passports in order to use these to escape the rising political threat in their home country.
Though Pope had said that he was “kind of sick to death” of Papers, Please, a mobile version of the game was released in August of last year with its original “story” and “endless” modes.
In other gaming news, the Brazilian Portuguese translators on Baldur’s Gate 3 were omitted from the game’s credits, and some have criticised Larian Studios for not noticing until it was too late.
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Imogen Donovan
NME
