Spud Customs

co-authored: @broheartttv
Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.70
Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.63
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★2.47
Theme★★★★★★★★★★2.81
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.77
Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.55
Humor★★★★★★★★★★3.87
Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.63

Welcome to Spud Customs!

As a customs officer for this fine country of Spudorado, your job is to enforce the Spudocracy's immigration policies.

Your Mission

Allow permitted potatoes into Spudorado

Reject potatoes deemed a threat by the Spudocracy

Achieve the highest score by making correct decisions

Game Rules

Current immigration rules appear in the lower left corner

You have five strikes before the game ends

Allowing a banned potato or rejecting a permitted one costs you a strike

Once you complete your daily processing goal you can move on to the next day and reset your strikes

Gameplay
Calling Potatoes

Use the megaphone to beckon the next potato into your office

Document Inspection

Drag the potato's documents into the drawer on the left to open them

Carefully examine the documents against the current rules

Making Your Decision

Stamp the entry visa with either approval or rejection

Return the documents to the potato to finalize your decision

Scoring

Correctly allowing or rejecting potatoes increases your score

The game ends after five incorrect decisions

Remember, the Spudocracy is watching. Make your potato motherland proud!

Comments43

Munchie Games7 Oct 2024, 23:33
your game is spud-tacular! You've mashed up something truly a-peel-ing!
mrs.wheelsx
mrs.wheelsx8 Oct 2024, 00:15
I played this game waaaay too long :P I love the graphics and watching what the rejects did lol
BroHeartTTV8 Oct 2024, 00:22
I wish we had time to do more with rejects, I have a miniNuke.gd object left in the source code from experimenting with a reflex component where you drop bombs on the rejects if they try to run through the DMZ.
mrs.wheelsx
mrs.wheelsx8 Oct 2024, 01:03
I WAS wondering if you had something planned for "border defence" I thought maybe machine guns, but nukes would have been a blast ;P
mrs.wheelsx
mrs.wheelsx8 Oct 2024, 01:04
... or a vat of hot oil lol
osh.studio
osh.studio8 Oct 2024, 02:03
Amazing! Obviously taking inspiration from Papers Please! but making it super funny. As soon as I realized what y'all had done I was so impressed, awesome entry guys!
BroHeartTTV8 Oct 2024, 03:32
@osh-studio thank you! Neither of us had played Papers please before this but we had seen some screenshots and we had the first iteration out before either of us had actually tried the inspiration. Papers Please is a little heavy so this felt like a fun way to add some levity.
rachjn8 Oct 2024, 05:26
Super impressive work! The look and feel of the game is super cohesive. Ambience is also nicely set with the music. Potato graphics also top tier
enderswype8 Oct 2024, 07:33
mmmmmmmh it reminds me of a game it's seen, somewhere, sometime, haha
Impressive work, sound design really good and multiple interactions and rules to follow, i really liked it!
Mars
Mars8 Oct 2024, 08:27
Great entry, very funny concept!

Well executed, I can't really find anything to fault with neither the graphics, sound design, writing or gameplay. Feels polished and finished, and it seems to do successfully accomplish what it's set out to do.
Braulio_JG
Braulio_JG8 Oct 2024, 10:24
It's amazing! The inspiration is clear here, but it cannot detract from what you have achieved. Well done!
andymetoo
andymetoo8 Oct 2024, 16:09
Great! A great recipe for fun thematically reimagined. Something is always so satisfying about using those stamps. Pretty impressive you got this together for such a relatively short jam. I enjoyed it and keep up the good work.
Jeffez
Jeffez8 Oct 2024, 16:20
Nice little game, with an obvious inspiration from Papers Please!
The game is really well done, and it look like the final iteration of a soon to be release game.

Good job !
pierallard8 Oct 2024, 16:20
Nice entry ! Funny to say but I enjoyed accepting and rejecting potatoes !
I miss a little music in the background.
The design is very simple but finished. I liked the sound of the speaker.
Very chill game, I share it :)
ccollider
ccollider8 Oct 2024, 16:40
More like "Taters, Please" amirite?!? Great work and has big like, The Looker energy where it's an irreverent take on a classic.
BroHeartTTV8 Oct 2024, 17:38
@ccollider Only with Lucas Pope's blessing! Taters, Please would be hilarious.
Kirass8 Oct 2024, 17:43
I really liked this game! It's awesome!
BitLuderRb7804Fr
BitLuderRb7804Fr8 Oct 2024, 18:15
What am I doing wrong? I can't get the stamps to do anything. I can get the passport, I can move it around, I can move the stamps... I guess I have to right click to use the stamp...but nothing. What am I doing wrong?

Oh, I found out!
BroHeartTTV8 Oct 2024, 18:55
@bitluderrb7804fr That's good feedback Bit, thank you. DO you think left-clicking to pick up the stamp and it holds it for you, then left-clicking to use the stamp, and right-clicking to drop the stamp, would be more intuitive?
BitLuderRb7804Fr
BitLuderRb7804Fr8 Oct 2024, 19:06
@broheartttv I was picking it up and moving it with left mouse button, then I would let go of it, and right click--expecting it to stamp. I think right click should work no matter if the stamps is being held with left click or not. :) But what you suggest might work too.
BroHeartTTV8 Oct 2024, 19:13
Ohh, I like that. Thank you for explaining more!
LDJam user 1842649 Oct 2024, 04:57
I think its clear that the work here wasn't inventing a whole new game, just putting a comedic spin on every last detail. Overall a solid amount of content for the time constraints, and a good attention to detail. I even like that you mirrored the layout of the whole game for your parody. Not a lot of replayability even with what looks like randomly generated rules, but a fun couple of minutes seeing your spin on the game and basking in all of the different potato puns.

Only technical feedback is that the crunched potato photos feel out of place with the otherwise clean art style, and I had the same confusion with the stamp controls that @bitluderrb7804fr did. I think its just that clicking both mouse buttons at once is rare enough that I assumed you set down the stamp, then stamp it. This is also probably made worse by Papers Please having you pull out the stamp rack, then interact with the stamp. I think a touch of tutorialization there and it would be fine. Overall a good time.
BitLuderRb7804Fr
BitLuderRb7804Fr9 Oct 2024, 06:59
I also had another small issue. The rules have to be taken litteral, than a human expects. All the falsely rejected potatoes I had were due to a rule -- reject if expires in less than 6 months. It took me a while to figure out, that this means to let already expired potatoes through. I mean, it makes sense, but it seams wrong.
Prolich9 Oct 2024, 13:46
It's funny that we've also initially made a game, inspired by Papers Please, but couldn't really fit it into the theme. You found a fun and a clever way to do so, congrats!
imberny
imberny9 Oct 2024, 14:02
Really competent remake! This game really makes Yu conGlobe into a potatoïdal shape.
BroHeartTTV9 Oct 2024, 15:11
Ah shit, months_until_expiry() is probably messed up @bitluderrb7804fr I'll add into our bug list, thank you!

@prolich I'm looking at Tiny Suspects now! I'll try it out today it reminds me of Guess Who as well.

@darkwolf Thank you for the feedback! For replayability I'm thinking we add a few stages of cutscenes as a story mode to push more of the humor and a few hours of progression.

Maybe more mini-games aside from stamping like frying potatoes that jump over the border, and inspecting potatoes for conditions instead of them just being a text representation.

I looked at the original dev logs for Papers Please from over a decade ago and it really made me appreciate the tools we have today. Both art and programming side looked like a nightmare compared to working in Godot and Paint.net throughout.

What do you think would improve the art style? We mimicked the layout but everything is made in paint.net at the moment, with the potatoes being real pictures of potatoes with an oil painting effect from paint.net applied.
Yufan Lu9 Oct 2024, 23:48
What a gem of a game. Overall I had a great time! Just some nitpicks. I feel like there is no incentives to work fast since there is not time constraint. Also it would be nice if there is sound effect when laws are changed. But, and I cannot stress this enough, I think it's a great game you made and it made me laugh C:
PhilStrahl
PhilStrahl11 Oct 2024, 03:32
Impressive how much of Papers. Please you managed to implement during the jam, wow! I managed quit after day 2 as it I felt like I had seen everything but overall it's a very solid entry. Sadly you ran out of time as it's apparent that you had planned for much more. Sadly, the music stopped after a minute or so and the day had just started...
Joshua_Reumann11 Oct 2024, 19:45
Maybe a timelimit could motivate the player to work faster. Nice game
LDJam user 012 Oct 2024, 08:51
Papers, please like games are so interesting, keep going!
Pimping12 Oct 2024, 08:52
Papers, please like games are so interesting, keep going!
Pimping12 Oct 2024, 08:52
The comment up there was by me sorry for anonymous!
Pachino5512 Oct 2024, 21:50
I love games like Paper’s Please! So cool!
Nazariglez12 Oct 2024, 21:58
I loved the humor and concept! The potato theme is hilarious, and the art and sound fit perfectly. A bit more clarity on the mechanics would help, but it's a super fun and creative entry overall!
Skvader_41813 Oct 2024, 00:07
The UI and sound design is really well done. And the gameplay is REALLY addicting. This one was very fun however I do have a question. Is this a ludum dare submission or a game for a different jam? On the itch page it says that it was made for "jam weekend 4"?
BroHeartTTV13 Oct 2024, 00:36
@skvader-418 Thank you, I'm glad you're digging the gameplay! This was developed for two jams that have overlapping timeframes, October 4th-6th, and October 4th-7th.

We started out on evening of the 4th working for Jam Weekend #4 with the theme "Two Buttons", and then towards the end saw it overlapped with Ludum Dare 56 which was like 250x more entrants.

Jam Weekend #4 was our first jam and we were encouraged to try and polish in time for this larger jam and signed up when there were just ~12 hours left since it also fit the theme of tiny creatures. Then we spent the last 11 hours or so focusing on the worst bits from playtesting.
Urfoex14 Oct 2024, 07:21
Solid entry.
Took me a little while to figure out, how to stamp. Just pushing right click, as instructed, didn't work.
The constant changing laws were a bit much. Would be nicer to have them stay same for a day or so.
It would also be nice to see, what was wrong, because I was confused a few times, thought I did it right.
BroHeartTTV14 Oct 2024, 20:21
@urfoex Good feedback, we'll amend the controls to be simpler in the future and include more guidance to the user initially. Also the feedback on laws has been consistent there, we will change those to only be generated at the start of the day and to be included in a rule book or rule bulletin memo given to the player separately. Thank you for playing!
barryrichter24 Oct 2024, 05:06
Super awesome game that is very reminiscent of papers please
Sasa_201025 Oct 2024, 13:31
Wow! The game is so wonderfull! I can play this 10 hours straihgt! This probably was so hard to make this! Keep making games!
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