Browzings: The Republia Times

If you enjoyed the growing sense of unease and tough moral choices offered by Papers, Please, try The Republia Times, a browser game set in a similarly oppressive dictatorship by the same designer, Lucas Pope.

The game sees you taking the role of an editor at the state-controlled newspaper, The Republia Times. At the start of the game, you're informed that your family has been taken to live "under the protection of the government", which, at the start of the game, does not have the support of the people. It's your job to ensure that the newspaper captures the loyalty of the nation.

The gameplay is deceptively simple: choose articles based on your intended outcome and place them onto the grid to position them on the front page. In order to increase loyalty, negative stories should be downplayed or omitted, while positive stories about celebrities will gain readership but not affect the loyalty of the people, and positive stories about the party will increase loyalty, but will generally be found boring and decrease the readership of the paper. Just like in real life.

At the end of each day you receive a progress report. The final sentence is what drew me in: the veiled threat to your family kept me playing for the same reason it did in Papers, Please. Suffice to say, you might find yourself having to make some difficult decisions here as well.

As the kind of person who always tries to play games the "right" way, I find the dilemmas posed by both of these games really engaging. If you enjoyed Papers, Please for its atmosphere, or if you're a fan of totalitarian settings in general, I'd definitely recommend giving this a go. And if you haven't played Papers, Please, The Republia Times, although nowhere near as complex as the former, has the considerable advantage of being totally free.

Play The Republia Times here.
Papers, Please is available on Steam here.