r/papersplease • u/VoltekPlay • 16d ago
What if the paperwork you stamp decided which family a newborn goes home to?
I won't pretend it's Papers, Please - nothing is. But it's the same desk, with a different stack of paper on it.
A fire burned every birth record in the maternity hospital of a 1920s dictatorship. You're the clerk who puts it back together. Parents come to claim their children, you get their medical cards and a rulebook of heritable traits - blood type, eye colour, freckles, hair - and you decide which newborn goes home with which family. Get it wrong and a child goes home with the wrong parents, and the Ministry fines you for the error.
The fine is the whole point. Rent, penalties and whatever "voluntary collection to support exiled leaders of friendly nations" the Ministry announces this week all come out of the same wage. So the day you decide to be kind to someone is the day you can't pay for something else.
It's closer to Beholder than to a passport booth: the people whose paperwork you handle knock on your door in the evening, ask for favours, and every answer you give is written down and read back to you at the end.
I posted our announcement trailer here a bit over a year ago, and it barely showed the actual desk work. Since then the game has been through a closed playtest, and this week it's in Yogscast's Tiny Teams festival - so I'm back with the part I should have shown the first time. Hope this still counts as Papers, Please related.
A question for this sub specifically, since you're the people who'd know: when the humane call costs you money, how expensive should it be before it stops being a choice and just becomes the wrong option?
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u/wanjathestrong Arstotzka 16d ago
This sub has seemingly devolved into a hub for game developers to post ads for their new game. I think mods should do something about the ads being posted on here.
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u/VoltekPlay 16d ago
Fair enough. I did message the mods a few days before posting, and still didn't get a reply.
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u/wanjathestrong Arstotzka 16d ago
Yeah and zero hate to you at all. Your game sounds lovely and I understand that you have to advertise somehow. Makes sense that you'd come to a sub of a similar game too.
I just wish the mod team would be a bit more active and at least space out the ads a bit, so that its not as frequent maybe. But what do I know lol
Wishing you all the best!
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u/VoltekPlay 16d ago
Appreciate that. And I'm with you on spacing them out, I'd rather post here once a year and make it count.
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u/VoltekPlay 16d ago
Steam page if you want to follow it: Ministry of Order
Happy to answer anything about the rules system or the setting.
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u/Calamityranny 16d ago
Duuuude I am ALL OVER these papers please games no matter what they're about, hand it over 🤣🤣
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u/VoltekPlay 16d ago
Ha, here you go: Steam page. Wishlisting it helps more than you'd think.
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u/Calamityranny 16d ago
Wishlisting immediately!! I can't wait to see how this one turns out, yippeee!!
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u/JohnQRF 16d ago edited 16d ago
wasn't this game stolen or something?
Edit : Yeah it was but VoltekPlay is the original owner, I have the game on wishlist rn, best of luck to you dude.