Not Tonight

My Playtime: 27.5h (100% achievement, finished the game)
Grindy Achievement(s): No.
Optional Achievement(s): Yes (~10 achievements).
Difficult Achievement(s): No.
Intro
Not Tonight is a game where you play as a bouncer working on several jobs, checking people's ID and other documents that need to be checked during the job to determine whether they are worthy to enter the place you are guarding. It spans four chapters, played in three in-game months.
Pros:
- Different jobs with different rules
- The game can be challenging on some levels, but it never got to the point where it's too hard to finish flawlessly
- Multiple endings
Cons:
- Save slots are too few, and you can't continue in the same save slots
Specs
Intel Core i5-9300H 2.40GHz, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650
Should you buy this game?
If you want to play something like Paper's Please (my review), this one will fit just right. If you don't know that game, buy this game if checking a lot of documents quickly sounds fun to you.
In-Depth Review
Visuals
Not Tonight is portrayed in pixelated visuals. The screen will be split into two; the top one will show the bigger picture while the bottom one will show your left and right sides at a closer angle, along with the paperwork and other tools that you need in the middle.
Story
The story is done in small doses. You can see how the world is progressing through the news app on your phone or listen to those who visit your home from time to time. The resistance will also come to your place, giving you a mission that you can do or ignore. The end result of your actions will be shown through a newspaper headline at the end of the chapter. The game does a good job with the background story, but the ending is shallow and tends to be concluded in a few paragraphs due to this presentation choice.
The Game
Gameplay
You'll work as a bouncer, working on several jobs. There are different places you can work in: pubs, concert venues, balls, and others. Some places will be open for jobs on certain days, and you'll be able to decide where to work. The choices are usually between two establishments at most, and you need to ensure that you work in all places at least four times to get the maximum reward. This will be one of the core aspects of the game—you need to plan out the days to make sure that you can get all rewards. Starting from chapter two, you'll also have to manage your health, meaning that you need to skip work at least once a week to keep your sanity while still keeping all of what you did before. Failure to do so will result in game over.
Different establishments have different rules. Some rules, like being above 18 years old, will always apply to all jobs, although there will be other rules that are exclusive to certain places. The rules will be simpler at first and get more complicated as you play, forcing you to spend more time checking their documents. However, one rule can be confusing to some people. There is a rule that states that you mustn't let any Europeans in, which can be made as simple as not letting any non-UK residents in. The game might have a help book with simpler instructions that you can consult, but in the case of the Europeans, it only shows the European flag and not the list of country flags that is shown in the IDs.
The game doesn't stop there to make the game more chaotic. It will also introduce 2 other lines that you have to manage at the same time. One will be the default, regular line. The other will be the guest line, where only guests with the name on the list can enter, provided that their documents are correct. The last one will be the VIP line, where only guests with the correct passwords can go in. The latter one is easier because you don't need to check their documents, but their patience level is lower than the other two lines, and it can be catastrophic if you have these VIP guests that are waiting while you are talking to other people in a long cutscene. The other two lines, though, can be chaotic when done at the same time. You need to spend not too long on one line to keep the customers satisfied, and the guest line can take a longer time to check because the names aren't sorted; most it can do is sort it by the last name, which tends not to be helpful.
Not Tonight also has some story elements in it. Some characters will appear from time to time, whether in your home or while queuing in line. Each will have different things to talk about and will end in a fetch quest where you need to give them items, most of them being the reward that you get from working in the same spot four times. You have a choice whether you do it or not, and doing so will affect the ending.
The resource management element comes as a surprise. It only started from chapter 2 without any hint of the mechanic. However, you can make it easier by purchasing some things at the store, provided that you have enough money. I already used up all of my money to buy cosmetic items in the first chapter, and it was almost impossible to get all the rewards from the jobs if you didn't have the full upgrade at the beginning. I ended up having to reload my first chapter save to ensure I had enough money.
Length and Difficulty
I finished the game in 27.5h with no mistakes in most areas (except the one where it's needed) and S rank. You can finish it way faster than that if you don't mind the mistakes, although you'll end up with less money. Still, you basically can buy everything the game has to offer and still end up with 20k+ more if you perfect everything, so it's probably not needed.
The game difficulty doesn't seem to be linear. It's easy in the first and third chapters, and getting harder in the second chapter. I had to verify documents very quickly and could hardly make it the cut for the S rank, while I could still laze around for the other two chapters. That being said, I like how the game balances things out—even though there will be a lot of customers that don't pass the requirement, the minimum number of people that you let in, which will affect your income and rank, will be adjusted by how many people are violating the rules on that day.
If you have played Paper's Please (my review), I found that the difficulty to be easier than that game. It always feels like it's doable to S rank the whole levels, unlike Papers, Please, which feels harder. However, this requires a lot of restarts, and the game has a weird saving mechanic where it'll create a new save slot whenever you load a game. Moreover, there are only three save slots, which is clearly not enough if you are reloading the game a lot.
Conclusion
Not Tonight manages to capture the feel of Papers, Please well without making it feel too impossible to perfect. It's also a game with a resource management element where you need to maintain your health while juggling multiple jobs at once. That being said, the game can also be played casually, although some planning is still needed to beat it. If you are someone who likes to organize things and check a lot of documents, this game is perfect for you.

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.

I decided to try Not Today because I'm being a big fan of Lucas Pope's game "Papers Please".The game turned out to be a pleasant surprise. At first glance, it’s familiar territory: checking documents, matching faces, spotting inconsistencies. But the mechanics are so engaging that it’s genuinely hard to stop — every new day on the checkpoint feels like a mini-puzzle. The game keeps things fresh by constantly introducing new twists: updated forms, shady characters with fake visas, you name it.
The soundtrack is quite catchy and atmospheric and perfectly matches for the visual tone.Speaking of visuals... this game oozes style. That retro bureaucratic dystopia vibe is absolutely nailed, with just the right amount of bleak charm.
Oh, and the xenophobia! Where else can you take border security so seriously that you start questioning your own reflection? Thankfully, it’s all served with a hefty dose of irony — and it works brilliantly. The game pokes fun at paranoia and bureaucratic absurdity in the best way possible.
If you enjoy games inspired by Papers Please,clever satire, and the raw power of deciding who gets in and who gets rejected - this game is for you.

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 papers-please kind of game with an easier learning curve and a story based on Brexit. If you like Papers Please but the mechanics of the game stress you, give this a try.

Self-aware Papers Please-alike. Does a reasonable job of expanding on the genre rather than just cash grabbing a stale game mechanic. A really big chunk of the enjoyment from this game comes from the way its soundtrack is implemented and the general sound design is outstanding.