Not Tonight

Sort of fun, but full of bugs. I did not accept a single bribe, nor buy the rhino head, and game thinks I did, bye several hours trying to get the purity ending. Never playing again.

*Bought this on another account, so I am catching up on my reviews* While the art and atmosphere were promising, the game-play forced me to rush through decisions just to meet quotas. I couldn’t slow down and properly read or process the documents I was supposedly policing. As someone who loves systems and logic, this felt like busywork dressed up as satire. Maybe that was the point, but it's just not my cuppa tea. If it's yours, then its a great game all around.

Its just worse paper please. The game-play is fine, but gets boring pretty quickly. At least for me, I never needed to worry about money unlike in papers please where i was desperately trying to survive, and that means that all the moral choices in the game, if you can even call it that, didnt really matter. The writing is bad in my opinion, the world building doesnt make sense to me, and the story is ultimately uninteresting, The game literally ends with a slider measuring how good of a person you were based on how many people you helped. Literally just counting the good against the bad. Worst ending ive seen in a while.

Not Tonight is a painfully mediocre attempt to recreate the magic of Papers Please. The gameplay of verifying documents lacks any form of complexity, yet the time constraints are extremely punishing, if you are aiming for a perfect score. The story is dumb and generic. "Xenophobia bad" is the main political message, and it's not a bad message, but it's not very interesting either. Papers Please manages to explore the absurdity of fascism through its gameplay progression, constantly adding new rules that the player must follow, much like how fascistic states use strict social norms and legal boundaries to control the population. Not Tonight doesn't go much deeper than "Xenophobia bad." It sucks. I didn't finish the game because the gameplay became increasingly tedious, so maybe the story gets better later on, but I doubt it.

finished this one out of spite. it's papers please with the same joke (shannon/jorji) but less interesting, same premise, less interesting writing, less interesting art, lacks any connection between the player and the characters, the setting's not interesting, the character's are dull, the jokes are bad, the gameplay is tedious. part of what incentivises you to give a shit in papers, please is your family that get sick, cold, etc. comparatively in this game it is incredibly difficult to fail at anything-- the game is substantially easier than papers please-- so it's just a tedious process of doing jobs over and over. it also has elements of valhalla (however you spell that game's name) with the phone interface and news, but again the quality of writing is just poor. it's fundamentally uninteresting. bad!

The game has some redeeming qualities, but overall, I wouldn't recommend it. It's often compared to Papers, Please, but I found that Papers, Please did a better job with its narrative and gameplay mechanics. While the pixel art style is nice, something about the execution in Not Today just didn’t resonate with me. Even though the game mechanics were quite similar, they didn't bother me in Papers, Please, but I can't say the same about Not Today. The pacing in Not Today felt off at times, which made the experience less enjoyable. The story felt lackluster and didn’t engage me as much as I expected. Bought this one with the part 2 as well, not even going to try the 2nd one after this one.

i dont know if this is meant to be part of the game to make the goals impossible to hit. i am playing on the steamdeck, i started the game where you start out as a bouncer checking id's at the door but the type font is faint & very small, i can zoom in but it takes too long. there just isnt enough time to check enough custoimers to pass the level. that & trying to control the track pad which is janky when you are trying to hurry. sometimes the customers dont go away when you refuse them entry which takes up more time & so you can't pass the level. i hope this is all part of the game but i get the feeling it is just bad game design. i would reccomend you only play this game if you have got 20 20 vision & can read tiny text. there is no way to replay the level & the difficulty only gets worse. cant say i'm enjoying it even though i would like to & probably would if the timer wasn't so short & if the text was a bit bigger. i will continue playing a bit longer to see of anythihng improves or changes but right now the game is just annoying. it is low quality pixel type people & the game actyually expects you to spot if the photo is wrong...like how? it is taking the p*ss . i bought it when it was on sale , it is not worth the full price absolutely no way. i hope the janky impossible difficulty is just part of the game & if so i will come back & rewrite this review but for now after 2 hours of playing it i can't say it is a good game. the idea is good but it is ruined by the timer & the graphics...the graphics overall are nice but not good enough for matching photo id with the person. i dont know why they didnt make the id card go larger when you drag it to look at it like papers please. this is not really like papers please although technically you are looking for anomolies , it is almost unplayable on the steam deck. another thing is the customers will try & bribe you if you refuse them entry for a bad id card...there is literally no point in this because yoru boss knows & tells you straight away if you let someone in that you shouldnt have so why bother having that as a thing, i was rushing because well you have to & to pass the level i had to let 20 people in so i thought i have nothing to lose by just letting them all in & opefully none of them will stop & talk to me because there is no way you can get enough people in when they start talking to you holding you up, anyway due to the rushing i got 3 wrong & didnt pass anyway . i really dont like these mechanics , they just make me angry & frustrated...why would anyone design a game where you have to hit this high target that is pretty impossible & then have people who do not go away when you refuse them entry so you cant even check anyone else for half the night...i find this ridiculous & stupid

There's a good amount of play time with this game. Even though you'd expect the game to lose it's novelty after a while, it keeps getting better.

great game to pass the time with a lot of dark humour. would recommend

Great music, fun game.

In retrospect this game is a bit silly isn't it

i'm scared of making bad choices!

pretty good

obsessed

If you like Papers Please, give this a go.