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[fleur]

Ever since I discovered this I've been absolutely enthralled by the concept. It's a fantastic idea, fantastically implemented. I showed this to my aunt who grew up under communism and she agrees that it does a very good job of goading you into the mood and attitude prevalent in that era. It got especially poignant when she started half-assing the job out of a concern for her family (stamping nowhere near the stamp area.) It really hit close to home.

Looking through this thread, I am wondering why the player must get a rifle, necessarily? It is a minor quibble, but I feel it would damage my suspension of disbelief. Like others have said, giving a sniper rifle to a civil servant of all people is a bit far fetched, especially considering how there's plenty of military personnel around and how cramped that booth is.

Why not have a pair of pistols? It would make sense as something issued for self-defense, and add to the panic with the idea that this is a last-ditch attempt at avoiding an incident rather than a daily part of the job. More verisimilitude is always a good thing in my book.

Best of luck with the Greenlight! You certainly have my vote.

[zede05]

You know dukope, I never expected a game based on one setting nowadays to be able to convey so much. You've really captured a bit of the nostalgic magic from the late 80s/early 90s PC games for me. Awesome job! And I wish you great success on Greenlight!

Are you going to release this on mobile as well?

[ink.inc]

feedback: it wasn't clear to me till about day 5 that i had to/was able to feed my family; i just assumed that their starvation was inevitable and some sort of political commentary

great game tho

[Comrade Beric]

@Comrade Beric
Thank you for the suggestion but I'm probably not going to add a special button or technique just for returning papers. At least, not right now. I'll think about it for a bit. Although it sounds kinda cool at first, I want to avoid adding a right-click-drag function for this one feature.

Fair enough.  After thinking about it some more, the idea might be alright, but adding another button to the game might be cumbersome.  Besides, if you ever plan on making the game an iOS or Android title, right-clicking would be impossible, so you'd have to remove it for their versions.  I'll just have to cope with giving back a person's paperwork one piece at a time.

(damn bureaucracy never making my job any easier...  they promised to get a second booth to help me with this line, too... *grumble grumble grumble*)

feedback: it wasn't clear to me till about day 5 that i had to/was able to feed my family; i just assumed that their starvation was inevitable and some sort of political commentary

This happened to myself as well, by the way.  It wasn't until the second playthrough of the demo that I realized that my work has a direct effect on my finances.  Point of fact, I'm still unsure of exactly how I get paid.  Is it by number of people processed period minus penalties, or is it only the number of people I correctly accept/deny?  Because if it is the former, that makes Mr. Safadi's bribe more tempting, because if allowing him to come in counts towards my pay, then I'm getting 10 instead of 5 for processing him, as long as I don't mess up two more times today.  If my pay only counts those I am correct about, then I'm getting $5 either way, I may as well just do my job and avoid getting closer to a penalty.  The game doesn't make it very clear which way that works.

[Stereotomy]

Few more small bugs:

-Safadi still gave me his bribe when I skipped searching him altogether.

-Strangely I seemed to get warned for turning away the guy who handed me the EZIC card, even though he leaves automatically. The previous person I had just detained after he gave me a pass with no seal. First time that bug has occurred for me.

-You may already be aware but the penalty notices don't seem to correctly tell you how much the penalty actually is. First one says 10 when it's actually 5.

[Blademasterbobo]

this game is awesome. i tried it out on a touchscreen device, and it works really well with touch. (unsurprisingly.) there was a bug where the cursor wouldn't line up in fullscreen (maximized it in windowed mode instead), but that's probably the tablet's fault. you should consider throwin' it on ipod / the msoft appstore / android / etc, if you haven't already.

edit: it seems like when it's windowed, it uses the absolute mouse position, and when it's fullscreen, it uses relative positions, which doesn't work for the touch screen

[Mirka]

I'm still a bit iffy on the idea of sniping because it just feels like that doesn't quite go with the job description BUT you have implemented it in a really clever way so I'm sure it'll start to feel natural over time.

Agreed. Though as he said, the way you implement it seems cool. Still, do the guy have a training with rifles?

´
EDIT: Also, to add to the conversation earlier, for me, by far, the hardest part about learning how to play was realizing that you could highlight entries in the rulebook to check for discrepancies. Due to the way the bulletins read, I started highlighting every discrepancy pretty much from the beginning, despite not being "required" to, as they mentioned earlier and that had taught me that it reveals things that you can't catch just by looking at it. But I'm pretty sure I didn't figure out the rulebook functionality on my own and that I had thought it was just a reference.

I echo this. I had the same problem and I got stuck in that guy with no passport in day 3 until I realized I had to ask for his passport by linking the rule in the rulebook to him.

the way I saw this was that he was in charge of a ring of people forcing women into prostitution and that if you deny him the ring keeps working (and he can run it from outside the country) but if you detain him he can be interrogated and the ring can be shut down

I detained him and the newspaper gave me he the ringleader was arrested but the girls still died. I thought the blame was on me.

Few more small bugs:

-Safadi still gave me his bribe when I skipped searching him altogether.

I also had this bug.

[ogto]

Suggestion, instead of having 5 citations end the game, how about a 3 citation system, in which the 3rd citation is a CASH penalty and the fourth one the day is over. Cause that's the biggest penalty, right? Getting sent home with not enough money to look after your family.

This game is friggin awesome, I'd pay for it. How long do you think the final campaign will be?

[MegaScience]

So the Twitter account associated with the developers of The Stanley Parable was praising the game: https://twitter.com/HelloCakebread/status/325625980918067200

[Bishop]

Finally got around playing it.
It's neat, and very interesting, but on a day 3 I got a man who said "Here we go" on a "Papers, please" request but gave me no paprest. So we just stared at each other for some time. Then I have closed the shutter. Then opened it. Then I have tried to stamp night club ad and give it to him. Then I said that entry is not guaranteed on a megafon. Then work day was over, but me and the man stayed there. I have tried exitind to main menu and trying again, but the same man did the same thing, so I'm not sure if this is a bug, or was I'm supposed to do something else?

Ok, you gotta help me out here. When you closed the shutter, it gives you a citation with instructions. Did you read these? Did you follow them? How much did you understand and how far did you follow this lead?

I added this extra hint (along with a post-it note on the bulletin) for beta 0.5.7 in the hopes to solve the roadblock here. But it still doesn't work. I'd like to know which part is still failing because I've got to fix it for final.

Don't feel bad, my design is still failing here and lots of people still miss this.

I got stuck here too. First time he was talking too much for my liking and quickly snapped the shuttered down. The bulletin came in saying I was confused, to read the rule book and work harder. I still don't understand the solution. Day just ended eventually and he still didn't leave.

Edit: never mind, I didn't properly read the memo! lol. Got the end, great game!

[Quarry]

[gimymblert]

wow awesome video  Glory to ARSTOTZKA

[Quarry]

This game reveals the buried patriotism hidden inside people

[Svetlana]

this game is amazingly well made and very challenging
i have submitted name for glorious arstotzkan leaders

xoxoxo call me,
-Svetlana

[Hempuli‽]

I think this quote from the RPS comments describes the mentality of Arstotzka fantastically:

"They key to a good family life is understanding that your beloved only need heat and food every other day."

[crazysam]

Hey, I'm currently using HaxeFlixel for my game development needs, and I'm super impressed by the stability of your project (at least the windows build). Can you share how you handled full screen / windowed switching and most importantly, window resizing?

Thanks a bunch!
Great work by the way, I supported you on Steam Greenlight

[kc1991]

I have 2 bugs:

1. In windowed mode i have error - "Error in music Couldn't open" (win7 x64)
2. When you want to play 9 day it crash all application (yes I know that is only 8 days now).

But, this game is great and i'm waiting for next updates.

[Arhemont]

Pimp Arrest
You need to arrest the pimp to save the girls (talking about the dev builds). Otherwise he calls up his homies and they kill everyone. Denying will also penalize since his papers are in order.

I find the bug where even when I arrested him, the newspaper still wrote that the girls got killed, one of the best things in the game. It got me thinking what could I have done:

1. "APPROVED"
- Girl and her sister become prostitutes
- Prostitution chain is alive
+ More money for my family

2. "DENIED"
+ Girl and her sister manage to escape their fate of becoming prostitutes
- Prostitution chain is alive
- Less money for my family
 
3. "INTERROGATION/DETENTION"
- Girls get killed as a revenge from his buddies since my transcript is the key evidence
+ Prostitution chain is broken
+ More money for my family


So basically all the actions are wrong. Whatever you do there will never be a happy end and someone will always get hurt. I find this to perfectly fit the ambient of Arstotzka. I would love to see this principle implemented in all of the stories.


In future versions I would like for the newspapers to be expanded. Nothing big, headline + lead paragraph + pictures characters involved. That way the story about the pimp case could be more elaborated. But you could also be aware of others consequences of your decisions. For example for the guy who was hiding pills there can be a story about a xy from country x who had died after having a seizure while being in detention.   

Another thing I would like to see, and that I think fits the ambient, is the bribe option. But don't do it in a form of a "bride" button. Instead, make some button that shuts down the transcript machine, and then you character would say something like "I would really like to help you but...", the emigrant would then:

1. Neutral immigrant: do nothing.
2. Somebody who is obliviously in a life threatening situation: offer bribe
3. Somebody who is obliviously every evil: offer bribe



Some ideas for the ending in regards of strategies.

You get adjectives and one depending on the summary of your actions. After every immigrant is dealt with, you get different types of positive or negative points.

>Depending on do you fallow or disregard the procedure and rules. A sign of are you a loyal subject of Arstotzka (this isn't really about do you make much mistakes or not since this is already penalized with money you earn but it deals with cases when you can do something illegal consciously: accepting bribe, approving entry to people after you have confronted them with why their papers aren't good, not detaining people...)
LOYAL
DISLOYAL


>Depending what consequences do you create for people at your counter (Again, all this is make only after confronting somebody about something that is wrong. For example, the guy with the pills: letting him into the country +4, letting him into the country and asking him for bribe 4-2=+2, detaining him -4, asking him from bribe and detaining him -4-2=-6. 
KINDHEARTED
COLDBLOODED
EVIL

>Depending on your final bank account
RICH
POOR

>Depending on how did your family members count
FAMILY MAN
LONELY MAN


Specials:
PERVERT: unnecessary forcing people to take body screens and asking young girls for sex in order to let them in.
RACIST: unnecessary denying entrance to non-Caucasians
TERRORIST: letting bombers in after you confronted them with brining bombs in
...

[Lt_Commander]

I really enjoyed the beta, I can't wait to see it get the greenlight.

Anyway, I was told that I should post these here.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21161113/passport-please.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21161113/passport-please-cobrastan.jpg

I'd have more, but making state seals is a pain, even with dodgy linework.

[gimymblert]

Oké, here what i have to say, and it's controversial:
Make it a facebook game with the ability to denied/pass friend inside the country i'm serious, i want to see this game everywhere, and especially on facebook. It totally counter all the zynga crap there...