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A big problem for me was making a game that followed the theme “Love, Death, & Robots”. I already knew that I didn’t want to use just parts of the theme like “Love + Robots” or take inspiration from the show. Therefore, I decided to focus on the sub-theme, “The Price of Freedom” which made me think of Papers Please.

Freedom and financial issues are a huge part of the game’s story. I decided I wanted to make a game like Papers Please, where you have data (NPC passports) and from there have to make a decision (accept/reject) based on the criteria given. I wanted to take this simple idea and capture the spirit of Papers Please while putting my own spin on it, so I came up with a game where you play as an unnamed RoboCorp employee who has to decide whether "robots" become "love" bots or "death" bots using their ID numbers. Your charecter is also in a lot of debt, which is why he works for RoboCorp; in order to make enough money to pay off your debts ("The Price of Freedom").

Blue- Portrait

Yellow- Data

Red- Option One

Green- Option Two

When I tested the game, I found it boring and tedious, as the whole game was solving little kids’ math problems, so I added two new criteria, the shape and color of the robots. The game randomly picks from the three criteria at the start of each day, which stops gameplay from getting too repetitive.

I knew that a lot of people’s Easter Eggs would be really clever and hard to miss, so I made a point of putting mine right at the beginning of the game. During the exposition dump, the narrator will mention Arstotzka, the fictional country Papers Please takes place in.

I had a lot of problems with time management during this jam. I did a lot of work the first two days, then abandoned the project until the very last day, where I pulled an all-nighter to finish the game, which wasn’t very pleasant. To avoid this again, on Day 1 of future jams, I’ll make day-by-day plans to hold myself accountable.