izigame.me

A lovely game that mashes up the premise of Papers, Please with a cutesy fantasy world that injects just enough unpredictably dark humor to keep you on your toes.

Unlike Papers, Please, this plays more like a point and click adventure game rather than a "job simulator". There's no element of time management, and no NPC interactions are randomly generated. Plus, after every shift, you transition to point and click segments to wind down the day.
For each NPC you assess, you can perform up to three of these actions before having to make your choice: Talk to them, (they will produce different dialogue all three times, and you can chat in either a positive, joking, or questioning manner) call one of three different advisors with their own agendas/biases, or use one of five tools such as your x-ray or truth serum, which are riskier as using them requires finite charges that play into the ingame economy.
Unlike Papers Please, this game objectively ranks how well you do with each NPC on a 1-4 star rating, the fourth star requiring you to do everything right. It's not just about making the right final decision, it's about investigating the NPC well and having good grounds for your choice. I do believe there are still "choice" NPCs you can handle with a high/full star rating in different ways, so the system does a good job feeling like an optional bonus, not a slap on the wrist for being naughty- Though I admit, something is lost in just not knowing if you made the right call, and instead being told you for sure did a good job.
If you make wrong/inoptimal choices, you can also rewind time during your shift. You can rewind to the beginning of a shift infinite times, or back to specific NPCs a limited number of times (usually, enough to retry every NPC once). It manages to balance empowering you to try goofy antics without making it feel like the job's free of tension.

I don't think the guardpost gameplay is as ideal as it could've been, though. The truth serum, as might be expected, is overpowered and solves far more problems than most of the other tools, the game seems to be lacking a transcript feature to let me reread what people have said, and IMO the game should've been designed around at least some interrogation actions being "free actions", like how Hold It works in Ace Attorney. I just think that works better to make an investigation experience feel natural.

Also, every line of dialogue in this game is fully voice acted, which really surprised me given how many possible NPC interactions exist. I'm not complaining, it hardly detracts from the game, I just hope the dev team and their budget are okay lmao.
I think the overall content offering here is worthwhile for the price. This game doesn't seem to have a timeline branching system like Papers Please, which makes searching out all the different choices less convenient, but said choices, alternate dialogue, etc do certainly exist for solid replay value.

While this game isn't as mechanically sound as Papers Please or as funny as Monkey Island, it does an excellent job of mashing the strengths of the two together into a unique package. Anyone interested in the border crossing hotseat or adventure game funnies should really give this a look.