It’s called Unsolicited. And if you’ve played or watched anything about Papers, Please, you’ll instantly know it’s a Lucas Pope game.
Everyone’s been keeping their eye on Lucas Pope ever since he recreated the life of an immigration officer in Arstotzka. He’s been working on a 1-bit game called Return of the Obra Dinn, which has still got some way to go.
In the interim, however, he’s released his latest work: Unsolicited, Pope’s entry into the Ludum Dare 33 game jam competition. It was built in 48 hours around the theme “you are the monster” and you can play it for free in your browser, which seems a perfectly acceptable activity for a Friday.
The idea is pretty simple: make your form letter company be the best form letter service on the planet. Forms come in, you sort them and fill out everything to perfection within the time limit.
Rather than focusing on the soullessness of communism, Unsolicited takes a crack at the society we know and love — capitalism. You start by filing charity donations and timeshares, but your success results in you filing out debt collection notices, buoyed with the kind of encouragement that will sting anyone who has witnessed a human resources department at their worst.
As an added benefit, Pope has posted up a time-lapse video of development over the course of the two days. It’s intriguing how the game originally revolved around the mailing of war notices, but it just seems wholly more appropriate — and more Pope-esque — to try and coax money out of strangers instead.
Comments
3 responses to “Papers, Please Creator’s Latest Game Is About Opening Junk Mail”
Lucas Pope is so clever and great, in such a quiet and reserved way.
which seems a perfectly acceptable activity for a Friday
Try convincing my boss that.
yeah this is actually kinda fun lol 🙂