In journalism, constantly comparing one thing to another is usually considered bad practice. You're supposed to review the game in front of you, not spend half the article talking about something else. Unfortunately for Thank You For Your Application, that's almost impossible.
The game is essentially Papers, Please set in the future. Its gameplay, presentation and themes are so similar that avoiding the comparison would be dishonest. The problem is that it never reaches the heights of Lucas Pope's classic. Its message is important, but little else leaves much of an impression.
If you haven’t played Papers, Please… well, first, you really should, given various recent world events. And secondly, it isn’t a terribly difficult title to describe. Lucas Pope’s arguably best creation puts you in control of a no-name bureaucrat at a border station in a fictional Eastern European country during the Cold War. Your job is to check people’s papers while saying please, and ultimately decide if they’re allowed into Arstotzka. It’s intentionally boring, but your minute actions have serious consequences with real-life parallels.
All of that is true for Thank You For Your Application to some extent or another. The setting here is the distant future instead of the recent past, and you have to accept or reject people’s applications instead of their passports. That doesn’t affect the title’s gameplay, though, because it’s functionally identical to Papers, Please’s. You begin each virtual day by reading the news, then spend 10 (real world) minutes poring over resumes and degrees while making sure there aren’t any typos or discrepancies. If an applicant’s documents check out, and they meet whatever arbitrary standard the corp sets each day, they get a job. If they don’t, they don’t. If you fail to notice something, your pay gets docked. If you fall into debt, it’s game over.
Thank You For Your Application isn't fun in the traditional sense, and that's entirely intentional. Sure, there are occasional mini-games for you to toy around with and crap to buy for your virtual apartment. Eyeballing CVs and charts is mind-numbing, though, and that’s by design. The game’s mechanics are designed to make you feel like a mindless drone, and they succeed.
The catch is that you’re expected to eventually stop making decisions based on what your overseers tell you, though. It’s not hard to make ends meet in Thank You For Your Application. So, in theory, you’ll start ignoring the whims of the corp. You can accept or reject someone for whatever reason you want if you’re willing to face a fine. That’s where the game is supposed to get its intrigue from, and its actual gameplay. The problem is that the game never gives you a reason to care enough to rebel.
See, Papers, Please got away with its mundane mechanics because you were supposed to experiment with them. You could allow someone to cross the border if they offered you a bribe, or even just made a memorable joke. Most of the people you processed were forgettable. Some stood out enough for you to defy your orders, though. And seeing how they tied in with the overarching narrative is what made Papers, Please so interesting.
However, Thank You For Your Application’s NPCs are entirely forgettable. There are only a handful of character models, an equally limited pool of dialogue, and very little to distinguish one applicant from the next. So you’ll be seeing the same faces over and over again, none of whom have anything interesting to say. The game has a narrative, replete with warring factions and competing interests. But it’s so bland that there’s no reason to interact with it beyond the bare minimum.
Given how repetitive the core gameplay is, the narrative should be doing the heavy lifting. Unfortunately, it's too bland to carry the experience. Really, the only interesting thing on display is its message. And even that’s not unique. What the devs have to say about the job market and capitalism are important in the same way Papers, Please’s anti-war themes were. However, they’re predictable and one-note in this case. You don’t have to play the game to understand the various facets of capitalism that it discusses.
So, ultimately, there aren't many reasons to play Thank You For Your Application. Its gameplay is intentionally repetitive, but lacks the narrative hooks needed to make that repetition meaningful. Its characters are forgettable, its world is underdeveloped, and its political commentary rarely says anything players won't have heard before.What made Papers, Please memorable wasn't the paperwork. It was the way it constantly tempted you to bend or break the rules. Thank You For Your Application never creates that same tension. You want to challenge the system in the former; the latter unintentionally encourages compliance.The game isn't bad. It just spends so much time reminding you of a classic that it's impossible not to notice how much better that classic was.
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Somebody once told me the world was going to roll me, and they were right. I love games that let me take good-looking screenshots and ones that make me depressed, so long as the game doesn't overstay its welcome.
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