Papers, Please, one of the most simple and powerful indie games of all time, seemed to have had an impact on one upcoming medical sim.
Papers, Please is one of the most interesting and inventive indie games of the early 2010s. Created by Lucas Pope, who would go on to develop Return of the Obra Din and, more recently, the Playdate-exclusive Mars After Midnight, Papers, Please is emblematic of what the auteur would go on to create, and was no doubt an inspiration for a number of story-driven, visually striking management games from the indie scene – such as the upcoming Steam title Prescribe and Pray.
Steam is certainly crawling with these sorts of mundane-but-intense management simulators, with notable examples being Death and Taxes, No Umbrellas Allowed, and the Orwell games, all of which seem to take clear cues from Pope’s seminal puzzle-simulation game. It makes sense: Papers, Please is all about telling a dramatic story through the perspective of banality and bureaucracy, so its premise can be easily applied to themes like mortality, far-future inequality, and surveillance. As it turns out, it might be a good fit for an even more outlandish and inexplicable subject: the healthcare system.
Prescribe and Pray Is Like Papers, Please, but With Cutthroat Medical Treatment
As an American, I have the red-blooded privilege of a lifetime of experience with an especially inefficient medical system. But even if you don’t suffer from price-gouging and insurance shenanigans, chances are you or someone you’ve known has some kind of medical horror story on the books. Whether it’s a misdiagnosis, eccentric physician, or headache-inducing, bureaucratic rigamarole, patients around the world have had funny, scary, or just downright odd medical experiences, and Prescribe and Pray aims to capitalize on that through its Papers, Please gameplay.
