Gate Guard Simulator is Papers, Please with fewer terrorists, more geese, and the chance to throw people into a moat

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.

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?"

A Papers, Please variant wearing Kingdom Come: Deliverance'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.

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 "no two citizens are alike, and you'll need to choose the right set of tools to verify their story."

For example, you'll need to watch out for criminals as depicted on wanted posters, and check citizens for signs of disease, lest you inadvertently set a plague upon your lord's house. Citizens who are denied entry may be turned away or, as is suggested by the game's trailer and screenshots, subjected to more creative punishments like being pilloried or tossed into the moat.

You'll also need to keep a watchful eye out for smugglers, checking haycarts and carriages for potential contraband like, er, rabbits. Geese seem to feature prominently in Gate Guard Simulator too, though their legal status is currently unclear. Like Papers, Please, there's an ethical undercurrent at play, with your watchman able to choose to uphold the law or enrich themselves by accepting bribes. Coin earned from wages or otherwise can be used to buy better weapons and gear for yourself.

Gate Guard Simulator is expected to arrive on duty sometime next year. I'm always up for a bit of document-based deduction, and this game looks like a fun take on it. Developer Redox Interactive has no visible prior history on Steam, but the Austrian outfit has previously developed games such as the turn-based tactical RPG Dromenon. Publisher Forklift Interactive is more familiar, having handled publishing duties for this year's minor hit Cash Cleaner Simulator.