Thought
Papers Please was the first game
where you play a small yet important part of a totalitarian regime, and the
gameplay revolves entirely around paperwork? Prepare yourself for a history
lesson.
Floor 13
is an English game released by Virgin Entertainment in 1992, a year before Doom came out. You
play as a hapless nobody who’s recently been appointed director general of The
Department of Agriculture and Fisheries. This is merely a cover – in actuality,
you’ve been made head of the (as far as we know) fictional English secret
police. You’re responsible for doing whatever is necessary to silence
government opposition, and that includes hiring men to follow suspects, search
their homes, infiltrate their groups, torture them, and even assassinate them.
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| "Shove George Osbourne's red breifcase up his deficit. Signed: Everyone in England" |
Whilst this is all deliciously dark, injected
into the game is some dry English wit. The PM him/herself is portrayed as an
irritable politician straight out of The
Thick Of It, and bribing journalists to publish fake tabloids defaming
suspects almost always leads to amusing headlines the next day. There are also
little touches, such as suspects having weird hobbies and if you ask a
department to assassinate/interrogate/stalk a person you’ve already disposed
of; you’ll get a little note saying: “Oh, looks like we already killed him.”
The
game is in many respects harder than Paper’s
Please. There are two ways you can lose: the first is failing to keep the
ruling party top in the polls. This simply results in you being fired by the
PM. The other – more likely way – is that if you keep carrying out orders that
look suspicious, you’ll get a visit from Mr Garcia, who treats you to a live
re-enactment of the opening to Watchmen.
What’s
annoying is that there’s no real indication of when you might get
defenestrated. If people are beginning to suspect that the government is
pulling strings, you’ll be verbally admonished by the PM – but it can sometimes
take several threats of “going for flying lessons” before Mr Garcia arrives.
You can clearly see if you’re losing the polls, but there is no way of telling
when you’ll be thrown from Canary Wharf.
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| "And when you come back, give me a present of £1 million and a toy prised from the hands of an orphan!" |
But
the most infuriating part of the game is the assassination department. At first
it’s a shock to click on ‘Removals’ and suddenly find yourself signing an
assassination order, but the assassins are awful.
Every single time I’ve asked them to assassinate someone, they botch it up –
and a failed assassination looks really
suspicious. It’s only on the second, third, or sometimes even forth attempt
when the idiots finally manage to do it, still hilariously trying to make it
look like an accident.
I
get what the game’s trying to do. If you could just assassinate everyone
without arousing suspicion then the whole thing would be over. But even when
you’re department‘s fully expanded and you give your assassin’s plenty of time
to plan the attempt – they still fail
every time. I’ve lost count of the amount of games I’ve lost because my
assassins have been unable to get rid of someone.
What
I do is just use the Interrogation department. The Interrogation department
might as well be the removals department, since once you’ve kidnapped and
tortured a suspect; you’re only option is to dispose of the body. I like to
think that there’s a large skip at the back of Number 10 full of
suspicious looking bin-bags.
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| "I didn't know we had a dentist in this building..." |
Yes,
this game has torture. And it’s all portrayed through emotionless transcripts
like something out of Brazil. In
fact, since the entire game is told through paperwork, it gives the whole thing
an emotionless, disturbing feel as you sign orders for termination like you
would sign a tax form. Papers Please
reduced people’s lives to paperwork, but Floor
13 reduces an entire country to clerical information.
The
part of the game I like the most is when you get your departments to follow and
monitor suspects. You can observe their movements, and add anyone they liaise
with to your suspects list. This is when you seriously begin to feel like a
seedy member of the inner party, as you sift through phone-call transcripts and
eventually undercover a scandal that’ll completely humiliate the Prime Minister
if the public find out. The downside is that if someone needs to be silenced
fast, the only option is those bloody
useless assassins.
At
first I liked to think that this game was set in the Thatcher era, and it’s
Margret who’s grilling you for cocking up a black-propaganda operation – but
these days I like to think this is what it’ll be like if UKIP ruled England.
Having to constantly silence idiots in your party, being part of a totalitarian
government that’s in full control of the media, and working for a Prime
Minister who’s a complete jerk.
It
actually is possible to win this
game. You can keep performing well in the polls and eventually you’ll be made
Prime Minister, but there is another ending. At several stages, the
game will be interrupted by this Illuminati-like cult, who ask you to either
protect one of their members or do something that’ll benefit their
organisation.
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| UKIP's 2015 Manifesto |
Because
the tasks set by the cult are usually the same ones the government wants you to
do, chances are you’re more likely to get this ending. In fact, the whole
cult-subplot is just one big missed opportunity, really. This could have paved
the way for some excellent conflict. For example: Maybe you have to protect a
cultist who the government wants silenced. Or maybe the cult begins causing
trouble and you have to choose if you want to cover for them or if you want to
attack the cult by infiltrating all the groups they secretly own.
Luckily,
a remake is in the works. In fact, a very early alpha is available to test. This
is what it looks like:
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| The remake promises to include terrorism and possibly child-abuse. Sadly, this rules out a WiiU release... |
Yeah.
It’s so early there’s no graphics. And you can only play one brief mission –
during which there’s no way to visit your various departments, and sadly no
Prime Minister. The mission itself concerns an Iraq War-like plot where the PM declares war, which makes him popular. Then, however, infomation comes to light that the government has falsified figures in order to justify going to war. Surprisingly, you're actually given good notice that a journalist intends to leak this info. In the original game, you would only find stuff like this out if you stalked a suspicious person or when it was too late. But this notice is welcome, as it actually gives you enough time to plan how you're going to silence this journalist
There is already some improvement. The assassins actually work, although all you get is a brief note saying “XX has been terminated” rather than a news article saying something like “XX accidentally brutally stabbed himself whilst shaving.” I also like how rather than the option to 'leave office,' there's instead 'have a tea-break.' It's functionally the same, but there's something so delightfully English in that addition. There’s not much to say about the whole thing, since this is such an early stage in development, and I imagine this will look completely different in a months’ time.
There is already some improvement. The assassins actually work, although all you get is a brief note saying “XX has been terminated” rather than a news article saying something like “XX accidentally brutally stabbed himself whilst shaving.” I also like how rather than the option to 'leave office,' there's instead 'have a tea-break.' It's functionally the same, but there's something so delightfully English in that addition. There’s not much to say about the whole thing, since this is such an early stage in development, and I imagine this will look completely different in a months’ time.
If
you want to track the progress of this remake, follow this Tumblr page. In the
meantime, you can legally download the original for free online. Thank
heaven for abandonware…
