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(+2)

A really well made game! Obviously it takes quite a hefty inspiration from Papers please, which isn't really a bad thing.

However the game is a bit  overwhelming. In Papers Please, the first few days are VERY lax. literally press yes or no level of ease. Here, being thrown into the middle of everything with pages to read and figuring out things is a bit much. However now that I get the game, it seems like a weird thing to mention. Like, the game isn't that complex and shouldn't be overwhelming at first, but if the player doesn't know anything about the game, it is. For example, the freight screen took me a bit to find, even though it is literally written "press TAB" in the little book and the top .. thing having a little arrow (+ the description), it still took me a while.

The text on some of the packages is also really small. Not too bad but not only the tiny pixels strike against the bigger pixels, it is a bit of an eyestrain on a smaller screen.

But playing around a bit with the game was fun. The removal of the time limit which was in Papers please definitely lends itself more of an "Unpacking" kinda just lay back and relax vibe rather than a "My grandma will fucking die if I dont hurry up" deal. Which isn't bad, but it does render difficulty kinda obsolete, as you can take as long as you like with each package. Or maybe theres a time limit that I missed after Day 1, I do not know.

Thats about it. My only real problem was the learning curve. The first few days could be like first its only letters (weight being the same) and you need to focus on the map and the distances, then all the packages go the same city / village / thing but all packages are different weight, and even then, you have like 2 stamps because all packages above 150g are just denied immediately or something. The game already borrows a lot from Papers please, down to the aesthetic as well, so borrowing the pacing of Papers please wouldn't go badly imo.

Other than that, I personally really like the concept and the game as well!

(+1)

Thanks for the feedback! You bring up a lot of good points, especially the difficulty scaling/introducing concepts one-by-one. The tiny-text is a by-product of us being stupid and deciding it was a fantastic idea to make our own font. Looking back, I wouldn't recommend. We're hoping to address a bunch of these issues, add some additional mechanics that got chopped, and post a more cleaned-up version outside of the LD submission.

There's no in-game time limit,  but rather the constraint was intended to come from having limited shipping space and having to figure out which packages to reject. Definitely needs a better scaling system though, rather than solely relying on rng.

It was super fun to put together, probably because we absolutely love Papers Please. Glory to Arstotzka!

Glad you enjoyed playing, and thanks again for the post