{"id":1425495,"date":"2025-12-13T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/QQCvvAKfCJ8zQ2vMkVSACY"},"modified":"2025-12-13T14:00:00","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T14:00:00","slug":"gate-guard-simulator-is-papers-please-with-fewer-terrorists-more-geese-and-the-chance-to-throw-people-into-a-moat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/gate-guard-simulator-is-papers-please-with-fewer-terrorists-more-geese-and-the-chance-to-throw-people-into-a-moat\/","title":{"rendered":"Gate Guard Simulator is Papers, Please with fewer terrorists, more geese, and the chance to throw people into a moat"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As a kid I grew up on the Isle of Man, and near where I lived was a town called Castletown. In Castletown there was, predictably, a castle, and in the castle gatehouse was a model of an archer, standing with his bow drawn as if to aim through an arrowslit. Whenever someone passed through the gatehouse, the fake archer would yell “Who goes there?” in a big, booming voice.<\/p>\n

It’s a phrase that has always stuck with me for some reason, one of those weird bits of mental detritus that rolls around at the back of the old braincase. Anyway, it got jostled right to the front when I first encountered Gate Guard Simulator, which is basically an entire game about asking the question “Who Goes There?”<\/p>\n

A Papers, Please<\/a> variant wearing Kingdom Come: Deliverance<\/a>‘s codpiece, Gate Guard simulator puts you in the plate mail of the latest recruit to the castle guard, charged with vetting entry into your lord’s domain. Each in-game day, you must stand at the threshold between civilisation and the wilderness, checking the paperwork of everyone from monks to minstrels.<\/p>\n

At a basic level, this involves assessing documentation to ensure that a citizen’s family crests are authentic and not forged. But as you can probably guess, matters will quickly become complicated. According to the game’s Steam page<\/a> “no two citizens are alike, and you’ll need to choose the right set of tools to verify their story.”<\/p>\n

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