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[dukope]

Really cool game, it was fun and addictive from what I played.  Using the huge stamp felt so cool, and I liked how you could stamp the passport as many times as you want just for fun.

Thanks. There's not enough stamping in games.

Speech Bub
A simple speech bubble for conversing with the victim applicant.


At the moment I'm working on the stuff that happens after you highlight a discrepancy. Each type of error will lead to a short dialog interaction and in some cases the option to search their body or send a telex.

It may also prompt the applicant to submit more documents. For instance, if they don't have an entry permit and you ask them about it, they could say something like "Whoops, here it is." and put it on the counter.

For this dialog system I'm going to try to categorize responses into different "personalities" which would enable applicants to be dickheads, sympathetic, indifferent etc.

Tracking Performance
One issue I haven't gotten to yet is how to show player performance. If the game is broken into days, there should be some stat thing that shows at the end of each day. I was recently thinking it might be cool to have this be a sort of flash-forward "Where are they now" summary for each traveler you dealt with.

As an example, if you let a smuggler through in error, it would give a small report like "[PICTURE] Anton Sarvoy: Arrested for smuggling. Detained and executed". Or hopefully it's something more positive. If you had mercy on someone with poor documentation: "[PICTURE] Alice Mitchells: Reunited with son. Gainfully employed." So these blurbs are from the far future, not just the next day. Might be kinda weird in that sense.

On the other hand
I think some of an immigration inspector's anxiety comes from not knowing what happens to the immigrants they process every day. In Papers Please there will be immediately visible consequences in some cases (terrorist bomber). But in other cases the person will just pass through and you won't know what happened until the stats screen at the end of each day. Not sure if I want to try to capture that sense of not-knowing and show only minimal stats or treat it more like a game with detailed information on each immigrant.

[Panurge]

Personally, I think those sort of omniscient reports about the immigrants' futures would 'break the spell' and take away the immediacy which is one of the current charms of the game.

Perhaps you could find some middle ground and have occasional repercussions from prior applications?

For example, you may receive a notice warning you that a particular immigrant you let through the previous day was later arrested trying to buy arms on the black market and discrepancies were noted in his documentation. Maybe after so many written warnings you would face a disciplinary hearing.

On the other hand, you might receive a thank-you letter and a jar of pickled turnip from the poor grandmother you let through to join her family.

Love the new build btw - it's worryingly satisfying...

[dukope]

...
For example, you may receive a notice warning you that a particular immigrant you let through the previous day was later arrested trying to buy arms on the black market and discrepancies were noted in his documentation. Maybe after so many written warnings you would face a disciplinary hearing.
On the other hand, you might receive a thank-you letter and a jar of pickled turnip from the poor grandmother you let through to join her family.

This is perfect; way better than a stats screen. Definitely gonna do this. Thank you for the great idea, Panurge!

Letters

Each morning there'll be a stack of letters on the counter. Before calling the first applicant of the day you'll be able to look through them using the same drag+drop interface. They might be updates from the Ministry, reprimands, thank you notes from approved applicants, hate mail from denied applicants or....

Bribes

I'm keen to have some form of bribery in the game. Maybe your "score" will actually be your money. Some less-than-honest applicants can offer you money up front, or the promise to mail cash to you later in exchange for a quick approval. This'll give you some non-altrusitic incentive to let the bad ones through.

Progression
The money system could also nicely tie in to the overall progression. Let's say you receive a daily salary from the Ministry based on performance. Each day you lose a little money due to living expenses. Your current income represents your wealth bracket, of which there are several. The story and game progresses as you move up the brackets.

[Eigen]

Bribes

I'm keen to have some form of bribery in the game. Maybe your "score" will actually be your money. Some less-than-honest applicants can offer you money up front, or the promise to mail cash to you later in exchange for a quick approval. This'll give you some non-altrusitic incentive to let the bad ones through.

I'm not sure. Since there's no use for the money in-game I wouldn't accept any bribes because basically that works like a "skip" button (or a cheat). Now, if the story in the beginning of the game stated that I'm a poor immigration officer hoping to make enough money to buy .. I dunno .. something important (for either me or my family), then I had the incentive to consider it.


Another idea I had which might help with the whole progress updates thing is that you have several levels or ranks of immigration officials. You start out as the low-importance clerk and you mostly get honest people along with some nifty characters. If you do good and catch them, you get promoted and get to work on more complex cases. About 5 ranks should be enough, depending on how long you want the game to be. If there's no save feature then it shouldn't be very long anyway. The replayability with unique faces and random set of documents should be more than enough to make up for that.

[epcc]

When doing bribes, you can implement sting operations to make accepting bribes more risky, but always add a subtle clue whether the immigrant is actually an undercover agent.

[dukope]

After a short holiday break, back on task.

Title screen:


Finally added the top screen with animated travelers:


This also has my solution for getting the docs on the table. I tried animating a hand dropping the papers but it looked worse than terrible. This way it's over fast and hopefully doesn't raise much thought.

[Belimoth]

Clean solution after clean solution, I am in awe of your game development talent

[DustyDrake]

Apparently you can stamp things through your magic rule book.

And a lady is missing her entry permit, but the game is telling me no correlation.
Hmph.
(Oh, her passport was expired too.)

Also you can inspect the corners of pages and bookmarks? And it seems I can't click the ISS field on the passport, even though it's incorrect.
(Oh you have to click on the list of cities and the value of the field. okay.)

[Quarry]

I believe that further in the development you should add document forgery errors (different typefaces, wrong paper etc.)

[Rusk]

This is a really cool game, already quite addictive.

How about marking discrepancies with a right click, that would get rid of the need for extra inspection mode.

Some thoughts on the rule book. The corner to flip pages could be bigger, as big as possible in my opinion. There is a ribbon on the top left, this seems to be a browser-like "go back" function. It feels a bit strange to have in a book. I think it would be nicer (and more like an actual bookmark) to always be able to quickly get to the contents.

[dukope]

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

And a lady is missing her entry permit, but the game is telling me no correlation. Hmph. (Oh, her passport was expired too.)

No correlation between which things? For a missing entry permit (for non-Arstotzkans only), you have to highlight the rule and the counter top. I'll fix the other stuff you mentioned. In the next build you'll be able to click the "Passport ISS field must be valid" to correlate with a wrong city.

I believe that further in the development you should add document forgery errors (different typefaces, wrong paper etc.)

I experimented with this but decided these sorts of changes are too subtle. Instead, documents will have official seals that may be forged incorrectly.

How about marking discrepancies with a right click, that would get rid of the need for extra inspection mode.

I can do the right-click shortcut for native builds, but not flash. Maybe I'll have the space key toggle inspection mode to make it a little faster.

Some thoughts on the rule book. The corner to flip pages could be bigger, as big as possible in my opinion. There is a ribbon on the top left, this seems to be a browser-like "go back" function. It feels a bit strange to have in a book. I think it would be nicer (and more like an actual bookmark) to always be able to quickly get to the contents.

You shouldn't have to flip pages too much but I agree the corner could be bigger. I made the bookmark more like a browser thinking it would be more convenient but I think you're right. I usually just end up clicking it a bunch to get back to the TOC anyways. I'll change it to just go to page one.

[Dariush]

Got a bug, no papers at all:


This game is awesome, BTW.

[DustyDrake]

That's actually not a bug.
Pull out the rule book and select the "must have a passport rule"

[Trystin]

Really original, never seen anything like it.
I look forward to seeing a bit more of this...

[Taber]

Loving the progress on this so far! Amazing that you can make a paper shuffling game so fun!

[Lynx]

That's a lot of people in line.  O_O

This looks like it is coming along really well!

[Quarry]

Where did you get the idea for this project?

[dukope]

Where did you get the idea for this project?

From the many times I've gone through immigration in the past few years. The anxiety as a foreigner and comfort as a native returning home got me thinking about the whole process and how there's probably enough there for a game. Also inspired by various spy movies where passing through immigration is often a critical moment.

Some mockups:

Verifying Identity



Planning a small (tiny) mini-game to highlight the finger tips.

Strip search



To keep the interface consistent, strip searching will be done via photo. The curtain closes, applicant strips, and the camera snaps two shots which you can inspect as any other document. The photo can be flipped to see the butt-shot. Haven't decided if the nude bits will be censored.

[Eigen]

Damn, that's one messed up country.

[Lynx]

The new-tech fingerprint kind of detracts from the 1950s 'Cold War' vibe I was getting off of this thing.  Maybe instead of having a fingerprint scanner, have the person use an inkpad and press thumb to a book, then you compare that to the one on file?