Not Tonight

This game is ok. It definitely has taken inspiration from papers please, and tried to place it in a more contemporary setting. The design of the graphics, sound and music is very good. The design of the game and it's UI is less good. Many parts of it are a bit difficult to figure out, which is maybe kind of the point, but it still feels awkward. And some parts are just plain nonsensical, like the save slot management system.

A cool little Papers, Please!-em up. It has plenty of shortcomings, but makes up for it in style, music and decent gameplay. It goes without saying that if you haven't played Papers, Please! first, you should do that instead, as that is the game this is trying to imitate, and Not Tonight doesn't quite hit the mark of that one (but comes pretty close).
For a game that makes you focus and find the small errors, the game itself has some errors that seemingly never got addressed. Such as the bosses telling you one thing, but the actuality of the stage checks being the polar opposite. For example, at one point, a boss told me that he doesn't care about income checks and I shouldn't bother with them, but my handbook of rules for the current day specifically says that I should, and the handbook is correct. Similar issues cropped up 2 or 3 times during the playthrough.. The game always refers to the people you inspect as 'clubbers', even when that is not appropriate. The game tells you that you can do a thing, but you actually cannot - when you first get drugs, it says you can flush them in the toilet, but there is no such functionality. There is a bunch of erroneous triggers for determining the 'good ending' that specifically say you did a thing during your playthrough when you most certainly didn't. The starting barks from the boss for the day will mention stuff like "Check tickets!" even if the venue in question doesn't have tickets. The rejection barks from the queuers can be complete nonsense, not matching the situation that happens at all.
It could have so many more things to check on the documents, but it just doesn't. The list of things to check stays fairly trivial till the end, and the only document cross-check you have to do is the photos, while it could have been more - names, ids, supplemental info. The additional documents also could have expiry dates, but they don't. The holograms/stamps for the documents could have fake versions, but they don't. The form/paper the documents are printed on could have fake versions, but they don't. There's many more potential details like these, but they were not implemented, I believe, to make the queue move faster, as it is a timed game, much more so than Papers, Please!. At later levels you have to keep breakneck pace to reach bonus objectives, and on some I never achieved bonus 2 due to running out of time, but that's not a big deal. The names of the queuers could have mattered more than just for the guestlist, there could have been a ban on polish-sounding names, there could have been a manhunt for some specific person to look out for, there could have been errors in name spellings in supplemental documents, but there's none of that.
It could have leaned further into racism. Now sure, the game touches on a similar theme heavily, but the point of the game is to make you uncomfortable, and it never quite goes "black people not allowed", and I think it should have by the end to show how fucked up things have become.
It could have leaned further into geography. It tickles it slightly with the flags, but it could have gone for cities, too. Ensuring that Milan is in Italy could have been an interesting mechanic with an additional bonus of teaching people some basic geography facts.
The game also just kinda... gives up by the very end, removing basically all difficulty from the strategic layer, and the ending of the game is very abrupt and underwhelming. I ended the game having bought all upgrades, paid for everything and with around 16k quid in my account with nothing to spend it on, having never sold a single thing or taken a bribe.
I should also mention that including a requirement to match the headwear and a hairstyle to the same types on the document photo is certainly a choice. Wore a different hat today? You're not allowed on the premises. I get that since the humans don't have facial features due to the artstyle, that's sort of your go-to, but it could have been explained in-game, like a mention of the wacky document photo ID laws or somesuch.
I kept waiting the whole game when will it force me to point out the errors to the queuers, but it never does, despite actually having that functionality. You can always just instantly reject if you spot something wrong without explaining, which is a missed opportunity in terms of additional difficulty. The game overall lacks the kind of bureaucracy that was charming in Papers, Please! and just kinda speeds it all along without realising that it is that sort of annoying attention to detail that was fun to explore in this kind of game.
Regardless of all that, it is still a quite fun game to play and I enjoyed playing it, I just wanted to vent my frustrations with it. I would recommend it to anybody who enjoyed playing Papers, Please! and wants more, but in a slightly different form-factor.

There's nothing that special about this game other than it's a Paper's Please knockoff, which is why most reviews will just say that. If you want more of that gameplay (which I did coming into this), then I would recommend this game. Otherwise, in every other area, this game is a step down from Paper's Please. The mechanics don't really inform the story in the brilliant way Paper's Please does, the story itself is quite boring, and the politics are immature.

The game has the vague stance that Brexit and strict immigration policies are bad. These are things I agree with, but the execution within the game is just so surface level that I wish they hadn't included it in the first place. This game commits the cardinal sin: asking the question "What if white people were oppressed?" without any insight. In a game that explicitly references real political happenstances, it makes the cowardly decision to refuse to confront racism against non-white people by switching the target to other European countries. Although I don't entire align myself with Paper's Please's politics, it does make the observation that immigration checkpoints are incredibly unfair and dehumanizing. It question's one's purpose, appearance, origin, gender, and job, and subjects them to invasive searches from armed individuals. This is softened up in Not Tonight by either removing these aspects (no invasive search, no gender questioning) or by playing them up as jokey strawmen (haha no writers, reporters, or journalists allowed. isn't that fucked up?).

It's weaksauce. It's plain white toast. But if you like checking items off a list and peering through digital documents (as I do), then go ahead. It's mind numbing enough.

Great game. The winning formula. Start small and simple and get more and more complex. I laughed at several points. Art style is great.
The politics message can be a little on the nose at times and some levels where absolutely crazy frustrating, but I kept coming back for more punishment.

This is a good game, the story is cool, but I was a bit disappointed with the final chapter for being short and a little off, after investing some hours in it. The side jobs and the different dialogues and characters make the game less repetitive.

Good narrative over seemingly mundane but enticing game play that leaves the characters room to breathe. English papers please sums it up well.

i liked this game. it does get a little repetitive after some time but i didn't care. what bothered me the most was not having any way to know what (and when) was i supposed to give to the other characters (mainly mylarna). the ending wasn't satisfying as i thought it would be and i think it should have gone deeper in the customization part (i wanted a cuter room). that said, i still think it's worth the time if you miss papers please.