Insane quality I know right

Hey

Some of you might remember our demo from a while back - a bunch of you played it and left feedback that genuinely shaped the final game, so I wanted to come back and tell you it's out.

It's called What Awaits, Aleksey?. You're a junior cryptologist in a fictional 1970s communist republic. Every morning a new bag of evidence hits your desk - and you decrypt, cross-reference, and match names to faces to uncover a hidden network. Then you decide what to do with what you find. Somewhere in there, you might recognize someone you weren't supposed to.

I won't pretend it's Papers, Please - nothing is. But that game is the reason this one exists. The whole „bureaucratic dread meets small human choices" thing lived rent-free in my head for years until we finally built our own version of it. It's more of a deduction/decryption puzzle than a document-checker, so think Papers, Please crossed with Return of the Obra Dinn.

We're a tiny team from Poland, no publisher. Not going to hard-sell - if it's your kind of thing, the link's in the comments.

I have a silly little vid idea for those who have a papers please cosplay/feel like joining in, what if we get those metal lunch boxes and record ourselves like eating whilst sitting by a staircase, true arstotzkan style

Like at some point they require you to get a ridiculous number of people, it's been a long time since I played this game but it's definitely hard and I usually would get 10 in a day.

Long time gamer here. Lucas Pope has had a genuinely massive impact on the industry and on me personally, Papers Please obviously, but especially Return of the Obra Dinn. Sadly a demake of Obra Dinn just isn't realistic on hardware this weak, so I went with Papers, Please instead. Honestly I'd been wanting to do a project like this for years, because I find it cool, like nerd cool.

I decompiled my own copy, also used some github repo (https://github.com/devrelu/ModsPlease) pulled the assets and the music out, and rebuilt everything from scratch trying to cram it into the DS's painfully small memory. Turns out the dual screen gimmick actually fits this kind of game surprisingly well.

This is still a very early prototype. The only piece that's actually finished is the passport itself with all its fields, which I had to rebuild by hand (fun fact, the four countries' passports don't even share the same layout and it was boring to set up text and pic at the right place four time). Beyond that it's just one loop of Day 1 gameplay right now. Also used the DS's native display font for the text, felt right for the vibe.

My main worry going forward is what happens once the paperwork starts piling up later in the game. That's where it's gonna get messy, and I'll probably need some kind of compromise closer to how the mobile version handles it (that's actually where the pull chain for the stamp came from). Gonna need to compartmentalize each document properly too so it doesn't turn into chaos and choke the DS's graphics memory.

To be clear: fully non commercial, purely a love letter to the game. Not sharing the ROM or source code right now, want to try reaching out to Lucas Pope first and get his blessing before I even think about making anything public.

Happy to nerd out about the technical side in the comments.

TL;DR: ported the Day 1 loop of Papers Please to real Nintendo DS hardware, still early, not sharing files yet, trying to reach Lucas Pope first.

I played it on a friend's phone a while ago and now I've decided to buy it. I'll play through the other routes to unlock the other endings.

i saw what i thought was a Papers, Please sticker from far away and got ridiculously excited, but it was actually a sticker making a political statement. i pointed out to my bf that the sticker was for a game i loved, so i looked incredibly stupid when it was actually an anti ICE sticker. i genuinely need to touch grass. I hope the person who made this sticker knows about Papers, Please. However, i don’t think they’d like the game…

RIP Jorji, you would have hated ICE.

Sorry for my bad English. I was playing Pepars Please, but I got caught on that big control day. I did everything Ezic wanted (I think), besides accepting bribes from passengers, letting those with legitimate reasons pass, and killing the attackers I could in every armed attack, knocking out the rest. I want Ezic to succeed and overthrow the Government. Could you tell me, with as few spoilers as possible, what I did wrong and what I should do?

I failed the bomb defusal on the first try so I’m gonna go rethink my life now.

I was playing a game called "There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension" and as someone who recently finished Papers, Please, I was geeking out over the references they have made.

For context, whenever that guy at the bottom left finds a loot box, "Please, Paper!" appears as one of the ads, in which a hand will pop out from the bathroom door to ask for a toilet paper.

In the earlier chapters of the game, there was also a Russian voice saying "Show me papers", and another character responds with "Only if you say please".

Not a promotion, but I highly recommend this if you want a funny puzzle game that lets you think outside of the box.

i made it yesterday, so it took a while to get the things for the layout lol… i tried giving the miis a cuter touch, though i’m not skillful enough to capture Jorji’s beauty😔 I’m making all the holdable game items, such as documents, vonel’s badge and notes given by entrants. The game haves space for up to 70 miis, so if you have any OCs or anything when i’m done with all the set-appearance characters, send them in, i might add them! 😳

Hi everyone,

I’m currently thinking about a game where you play an employee that is spying other people of the company. It’s mainly a narrative game and I produced a short prototype.

However I would like to go away from PP gameplay loop and trying to find ideas. So far I’m thinking about being able to watch employees working, or be able to go in there office (meaning be able to go always from your own computer).

I really loved to have feedback from you, both on possible loops and also more general feedback. What do you think?

Glory to Arstotzka!

Link of my proto : https://affroriffo.itch.io/the-proofreader

Had a wonderful time taking these photos at the museum yesterday hehe :3

A silly little edit of me in my cosplay before my photoshoot at the museum LMAO