To celebrate the tenth anniversary of Papers, Please, developers Lucas and Keiko Pope have created a demake/spin-off that lets you control the border of glorious Arstotzka from a simple LCD screen. Well, alright, a simulated LCD screen displayed on your high-end monitor – but just look at that simulation for a moment.
I’m lucky enough to have owned some LCD games, and the accuracy of LCD, Please is uncanny. It’s there in the bassy, bleepy sound effects, in the subtle screen glare and light screen scratches, and it understands how sprites were drawn on LCD devices. That is, everything from HUD elements to characters would permanently reserve sections of the tiny screens, even when they were not being shown.
That last one is a massive limitation, but it’s not the…