Editor’s Hell – Newspaper Story

Genre: Misc.

Players: 1

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Review:

Editor’s Hell, released on PC in 2023 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2024, is a game that’s reminiscent of the beloved PC game Papers, Please, and similarly aims to make the player make difficult ethical choices in an authoritarian dictatorship. However, where Papers, Please put players in the role of a border crossing guard checking paperwork, Editor’s Hell puts them in charge of a newspaper, deciding which stories to write and which staffers to give the stories to, all while keeping track of income and being mindful of both the current polls regarding the upcoming election and the government’s dissatisfaction with your choices.

Much like Papers, Please, Editor’s Hell uses simple 2D pixel art visuals where most of what you’ll be looking at is various documents, mostly text, and often poorly-localized text at that (right from the start, when you’re offered the job as editor, “you just had to took it”). There is music here as well, but mostly in end-of-day breakdowns, and it’s mostly pushed to the side to focus on the gameplay itself.

Unfortunately, for all the ways this game seeks to copy Papers, Please, the one area it absolutely fails is giving players a straightforward task with a clear indication of the consequences of their actions. When assigning articles, you can choose which staffer will write them, and each staffer has different ratings for how much they side with the government and how much they trust the newspaper. However, even if you assign a story to seemingly the most appropriate writer, they will still often complain about the assignment, and the game doesn’t indicate why that is. Some stories or excerpts you can include or reject are clearly pro-government or anti-government, but others aren’t as clear-cut, and the poor localization doesn’t help here.

Furthermore, when given the option to choose where to sell your paper, it’s not made clear what your goal here is. Are you trying to sway opinion? Are you trying to make more money? And whichever goal you have, the game isn’t clear about what is the best way to go about doing that. No matter where I published stories, I didn’t seem to make a dent in public perceptions, and my cash always continued to fall.

Even little things are missing here. If it really makes a difference which writer works on which story, why can’t I see their finished work? When the government complains about a story I’ve had printed, why am I not told what, specifically, earned their ire? What’s the benefit to hiring more staff when I can’t fire old staff? Do I make more money if there are more published stories in the paper I print?

Even beyond these issues, Editor’s Hell suffers from a number of other problems as well. The cursor speed is agonizingly slow and there’s no way to change it. Touchscreen controls would help remedy that issue, but this game doesn’t support touchscreen. Often the item I highlight in a menu with the cursor is not the item that ends up getting selected. Overall, this game just does not seem very polished.

I really wish this game had gotten that polish that it so clearly desperately needs, because the premise here is solid. I also wish it had clear mechanics and goals. Sadly, Editor’s Hell is just too much of a mess to be worth playing, with gameplay that will leave you scratching your head trying to figure out what you’re supposed to be doing. I would suggest that your best course of action is simply not playing this game to begin with.

tl;dr – Editor’s Hell is a game that follows in the tradition of Papers, Please, with players taking the role of a newspaper editor in an authoritarian dictatorship, trying to balance journalistic integrity, carefully avoiding the wrath of the government, and trying to keep from going bankrupt. Or at least, that’s what it is in theory. In practice, this game isn’t clear about the consequences of any of your actions, leaving you feeling lost and unsure what to do. In the end, you’re better off pulping this one.

Grade: D

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