Chris Catt, GIZORAMA - "Papers, Please is insidious. A nominee for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at this year’s Independent Games Festival in March, it is tense, bleak, and grim. It is a game that forces you to make difficult moral choices that have no correct answers. You are under pressure and have no time to contemplate the consequences of your decisions until it’s too late to do anything about them. Papers, Please is fantastic!
In Papers, Please you play as a family man who has won the job lottery in the fictional country of Arstotzka. Your prize is a menial job pushing papers at an immigration checkpoint. It is your job to scrutinize every person attempting to cross the border into Arstotzka and either deny them entrance or allow them to through. It may sound simple, and it is, but the challenge ramps up quickly as the regulations that you are forced to follow change and become more complicated on a daily basis."
Stop (or profit off) your border's contraband!
BLG writes: "Dystopian games are more relevant than ever in a day and age when the world seems to be getting progressively bleaker with each passing year. But dystopian fiction, in general, isn’t trying to make us depressed by showing us how much worse things could get. Rather, the point is (usually) to serve as a cautionary tale, and there’s perhaps no tale more cautionary than George Orwell’s 1984."
A game that should absolutely be on this list is Disco Elysium. That game is wildly deep in the field of its take on social issues, politics, religion, morality, and the internal struggles of the human psyche.
Still haven't finished it but Disco Elysium is really great. I love the dark sense of humour.
I love dystopian settings in general. We happy few is an excellent game. It is basically a mash up of 1984 and the other dystopian classic Brave New World. The drug 'Joy' is essentially 'Soma' from Aldous Huxley's novel.
Orwell was surprisingly engrossing. I enjoyed it quite a bit more than I expected. I bought the sequel on Steam but haven't gotten around to playing it yet.
Don't need a game to experience Orwell. Real life follows it pretty well.
It is not only through paperwork and armed guards that Askrokia maintains its power, but from the way it controls the player’s limited and valuable time.
