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 currently has a free demo available on Steam.
Prescribe and Pray Is Like Papers, Please, but With Cutthroat Medical Treatment
Diagnose strange patients, examine their absurd symptoms… and prescribe treatments that could change their lives… or cut them short. Your actions will have consequences.
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.
Per the Prescribe and Pray Steam page, players assume the role of an incompetent doctor working at the fictional Last Breath Clinic, burdened with a noble mission to "keep undesirables from accessing healthcare." To accomplish this goal, the player must analyze symptoms, conduct tests, check for insurance eligibility, and decide on the correct, ultimate plan of action. Just like in Papers, Please, Prescribe and Pray will present difficult choices, prompting the player to analyze patient intent, various in-game documents, and other ever-changing variables to ensure the optimal outcome for the people (or, more likely, the hospital itself).
Prescribe and Pray is set in France, so its depiction of healthcare will perhaps be informed by the country's real-world medical insurance system, which offers largely, but not entirely, subsidized healthcare to all French citizens.
What Is Prescribe and Pray's Gameplay Like?
From the outset, Prescribe and Pray's Papers, Please inspiration is clear: gameplay takes place at a desk, with no movement mechanics or other environments to speak of. Prospective patients will approach the desk and provide you with various documents, which you must inspect to determine their eligibility for care. For instance, if a woman comes in complaining of stomach pain, but her insurance card has expired, then she will have to hit the curb. Other potential problems include false names and incorrect signatures.
Assuming that the subject is deemed eligible for treatment, you will have to move into the diagnostic phase. According to the game's Steam page, player's toolset will include the following:
- "a rechargeable battery-powered flashlight"
- "a thermometer that goes beep-beep"
- "an intra-auricular blood pressure monitor"
- "a suspicious-odor sniffer"
Fit the 9 games into the grid.
What Is Prescribe and Pray's Message?
Based on my limited experience with the game, I think there's a fair case to be made that Prescribe and Pray is riffing on the various perceived absurdities of the healthcare industry. It doesn't take a medical expert to notice that the aforementioned tools are described in less-than-professional, arguably even childlike, language, which is perhaps meant to criticize some practioners' inexperience in the real world. This would align with the game's description of the protagonist as being "Without qualifications, without a degree, and without the slightest credibility." And of course, it's hard to ignore the poor soul trapped beneath the desk, which I can't imagine satisfies the Hippocratic oath.
This is to say that, like Papers, Please, Prescribe and Pray is using dark humor and mundanity to draw attention to the ills of the world around us. Problematic institutions exist across the globe, and they usually aren't composed solely of antisocial maniacs: it takes the "little guy" to make any system, good or bad, functional. Even if you think that the systems being critiqued are, in reality, beyond reproach, it can still be helpful to explore hypothetical realities, wherein the potential problems of any institution are cranked up to eleven. That's precisely what Papers, Please accomplishes; perhaps Prescribe and Pray will do the same.