#ResistJam played through a chunk of Papers, S'Il Vous Plait (https://praxisgames.itch.io/paperssvp). It's essentially a Canadian Papers Please in a hypothetical future where Kellie Leitch's Canadian "Values" test becomes a reality. I like it in concept, and it's topical, but I found it too long for the mechanics. You have to click 'Pass' or 'Fail' radio buttons a lot and they're quite small. It was kind of interesting to look for patterns in people's answers (not sure if there actually was).
@RobotParking I unleashed a virus onto into the CIC database and got fired the next morning. I was left to wonder what happened.
I didn't play a lot of Papers Please, but one thing I noticed was even if you let people in illegally, it's still implied by the demerits that the government found them and got rid of them (at least, that's what it felt like). I felt the same way from the tracking of your success in this game. Did you consider allowing for more covert resistance?
@RobotParking Or would that just make every player inclined to say fuck the system there are no consequences to my actions.
@brwarner But yeah, as far as Papers Please went, that wrinkle always rubbed me the wrong way. Ultimately the type of test you're evaluating could (and likely would) be handled by an algorithm, so there's a bit of creative license taken there. I think in both cases, it was to underscore the point that there needs to be mechanical consequences as far as the game is concerned. I think if the team were to build it into a larger thing, that would need to be addressed.
@brwarner One thing that prompted a lot of debate among the devs (I'm just 1/3 of the team) was how do we draw a line of resistance that acknowledges the existence of hacker communities, but acknowledges the reactionary currents within those communities and their sometimes inconsistent results. I was pushing hard for the union to play a greater role in the game, which comes out in certain spots. That said, it's been a while, so I don't remember all the victory/fail states.
@brwarner I worried about the radio buttons too. During dev, I used a lot of keyboard navigation (tab and arrow keys) and wondered if we should've opted for instructions that encouraged that. Thanks for checking it out!