Spud Customs

Was so excited for game the art is cool, papers please style is awesome but the game is unplayable. Especially if you want to read the story. Starting the game starts the game in the back you can here if you click while a breakout is happening while you click through reading the story. Beat the first level and tried twice to get through the story parts to arrive at a potato already at the station but no papers to click on. A lot of things are off center. It could have used a little more before release and promotion. I hope and update can fix it. I'd really like to see what the story is like.

Comparisons with Papers, Please will be unavoidable, but unfortunately, there's no reason to play Spud Customs instead of Papers, Please. The gameplay/mechanics in Spud Customs is less developed, the story less interesting, and it contains more bugs and questionable design choices. Like in Papers, Please, you are essentially acting as a border patrol agent, inspecting travel documents and deciding whether to let someone across the border or not. In Papers, Please, as you progress through the game, the rules you need to enforce gradually become more complex, and more documents are introduced, requiring you to cross-reference all the data presented to you. Occasionally, you may need to question the person attempting to cross the border, only to receive a satisfactory answer for some oddity in their documents. Not so in Spud Customs: You're only ever given one document, their passport. There is no cross-referencing across multiple documents. The rules you need to enforce are randomized, but do not become increasingly complex as the game goes on. The gameplay you experience on day 1 is identical to that you experience on the last day. The game does a poor job of communicating what you're supposed to do. A rule like "Sprouted Potatoes must be denied" is straighforward enough. If the word "sprouted" appears anywhere on their passport (and in practice, it will only ever appear in the "Conditions" field), you deny them entry. But what about a rule like "Chip Hill exports are currently restricted"? Restricted in what way? Is there a list of authorized Chip Hill exporters? Do they need to present a special license to be able to export? Is everyone allowed to export to Chip Hill, but only up to a maximum weight? The game never says. (In fact, what the game seems to intend for you to do is to [spoiler]deny entry to anyone who has the words "Chip Hill" appear on their passport[/spoiler].) There was actually a couple of rules that I never figured out during my playthrough. "Sweet Potatoes need special paperwork." First of all, how do you determine whether someone is a sweet potato? They potatoes only present a single document, their passport, and the passport does not state what type of potato they are. Their appearances also do not seem to correlate with their potato type (e.g. it's not the case that only reddish-orangish potatoes are sweet potatoes). But let's say you somehow figure out a way to determine whether someone is a sweet potato or not. How do you request special documents? There does not seem to be any mechanic that allows you to do that. Clicking on the potato does nothing. You can't talk to the potato in any way. In my playthrough, I just randomly got strikes on my record every now and then because I had no way to identify who the sweet potatoes were. Like Papers, Please, in between these "gameplay" sections, you get some visual-novel style cutscene narrative, where different characters speak to you and to each other, and you occasionally get to make a choice. The art direction during this part is rather poor. There's no consistency in the dialogue convention: Sometimes the text that appears in the dialog represents things being said, e.g. "I can't believe you were the spy all along!". Other times, it represents the actions the person is taking, e.g. "He eyes you suspiciously before unlocking the door." Sometimes they differentiate between the two by use of quotation marks, but sometimes they don't. They also choose to emphasize some words using colors or flashing effects and things like that, but the color choices made the text difficult to read (e.g. dark purple on a black background). Also the art in the dialog portrait does not match the art in the main scene. In the same scene, Sasha is simultaneously portrayed as (in the main scene) being somewhat humanoid (with arms), having blonde hair and in a red dress with a plunging neckline revealing some cleavage and (in the dialog portrait) as being an oblate sphereoid (no arms), with brown hair, a blue top that follows her neckline with a red bowtie. The "choices" in the story also don't seem to be tracked correctly. In my playthrough, I made a choice that led to one character dying, only for them to reappear a few days later, and everybody acting like everything was fine and normal. The narrative sections also allude to increasing complexity in the rules being enforced, but this is not reflected in the gameplay. For example, during the narrative sequence, your commanding officer might tell you that due to increased security, you must now have ever traveller pass through the identity scanner. Or your fellow spies might tell you that certain travellers will have a special mark and that you should let them through even if they have invalid documents. None of this ever comes up in the gameplay: There is no scanner, there is no mechanic to have anyone go through a special scanner, and no one ever has a special mark. This is a far cry from the intrigue and gameplay mechanic that Papers, Please provides: In Papers, Please, you will be occasionally be given items other than travel documents -- for example, you might be given a man's business card or a single earring. You may occasionally need to hang onto these items for quite a while before you figure out what to do with them to unlock missable side stories. It was always a delight when you did figure it out, and it showed the level of attention to detail and world-building that the Papers, Please developers went through. None of that is present in Spud Customs. The story sometimes ends up in non-sequiturs because, as I mentioned earlier, the game doesn't actually seem to keep careful track of what choices you made, or which characters are still alive or dead. That said, even if you gloss over those problems, the core plot arc just isn't very interesting. In Papers, Please, the game keeps track of how much money you have, and (one possible route through the story) has you trying to save up enough cash to buy passports for your whole family so that you can escape the oppressive regime together. There is a true moral dilemma in how much you aid the resistance in order to overthrow the fascist government which would lead to reduce income for yourself, which means delaying the escape of your loved ones. Spud Customs does not keep track of your money. There is no tradeoff, really. The "evil" of the government is cartoonish, and the stakes never feel high. There is no pressure not to simply always take the high road. There is no dilemma. Finally, even if you just want to play for achievement hunting, the achievements themselves are buggy. I've beaten the game and got the "Down with the Tatriarchy" achievement, but I did not get the "Complete your first shift" achievement nor the "Complete the main game with any ending". I can't think of any reason to recommend playing this game instead of playing Papers, Please.

[h1] Potato, please [/h1] Spud Customs is an indie game reminiscent of the famous Papers, Please. In the game, we take on the role of a customs officer, and our main task is to inspect the documents of incoming potatoes. We must carefully examine passports for expired visas and check whether the laws allow a particular type of potato to cross the border. Some spuds will attempt to sneak through without permission, and when that happens, we’ll have to take them down... with a missile. The game has a Story Mode, which is relatively short, and an Endless Mode for players looking to test their skills in a continuous challenge. Follow my Curator : [url=store.steampowered.com/curator/44793303-The-games-that-I%2527ve-played/] The games that i`ve played [/url]⠀

In Spud Customs, every potato is either a hero, a liar, or a future side of mashed potatoes. You're not just a border officer — you're a quiet revolutionary. Behind the desk, you inspect documents and stamp visas, but beneath the surface, you're working to expose a corrupt regime that tears potato families apart. Each shift becomes a moral tightrope: do you follow the oppressive laws, or risk everything to help innocent spuds reunite with their loved ones? Gameplay is fast and addictive, and the game runs smoothly , i would love to see more future content.

This game is so fun! I played it and really got attached. I saw CaseOh playing Contraband Police once on stream and loved it, so when I came across this game and saw it was cheap, I decided to test it out. It ended up being the perfect decision totally recommend gamers try it. It’s a chill game to spend time with, super fun, and it actually takes focus, lol. 10/10!

A fun and tense game with a great art style and exciting missile system. It has tough choices, but some issues like point farming and static scenes could use improvement.

The game was okay but was also really short. When i thought there was more there was nothing. Still thought it was funny though. 7/10 (Should have gone with Tatertotzka instead of Spud)

great little time killer nothing funnier then deciding the fate of potato kind at the border, if you played papers please then you will love this game enjoy and game on

Has come a long way since launch, still has a way to go. I would recommend this if you like pixel art explosions, soylent green, OCD stamping documents and READING.

Had a fun time stamping documents and blowing up potatoes that tried to get around me. I didn't pay much attention to the story, but the key parts I saw were wild lmao.