When comparing The Journey Down vs Papers Please, the Slant community recommends Papers Please for most people. In the question“What are the best games on Steam with a rich story?” Papers Please is ranked 8th while The Journey Down is ranked 67th. The most important reason people chose Papers Please is:
Papers Please has a unique puzzle solving element. Instead of using mathematical logic, or quick matching thinking, the puzzles in Papers Please involve checking people's background information to make sure everything matches the immigration requirements and following clues to find anything amiss.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Unique Style
Self described as an "afro-caribbean" vibe. With character faces that resemble tribal masks as well as the main characters sporting Caribbean accents there is no doubt the game was designed with black culture in mind.
Pro Quality presentation
The characters are 3D rendered on top of beautiful hand painted backgrounds with it all blending nicely to a very neatly finished look.
Pro Satisfying puzzles
The Journey Down offers challenging puzzles that give the user quite a bit of satisfaction when solved. Not that they are too difficult but just not that the game hands the answers to the player on a platter either.
Pro Unique puzzle solving through clue based deduction
Papers Please has a unique puzzle solving element. Instead of using mathematical logic, or quick matching thinking, the puzzles in Papers Please involve checking people's background information to make sure everything matches the immigration requirements and following clues to find anything amiss.
Pro Will require making ridiculously hard decisions
There is a fine line to walk while playing, whether it is worth following the rules and ruining lives or bending the rules at the risk of getting caught in order to help destitute people. The moral choices in the game are often difficult and require hard decisions.
Pro Endless mode
Once the main story is beaten there is an optional endless mode for those that want to see how long they can play without losing.
Cons
Con Chapters are extremely short
Even though the game is broken up into separately purchasable chapters, each chapter is pretty short, even when considering all chapters combined the game in full will still be short.
Con Simplistic gameplay mechanic
The gameplay itself, once the player gets a grasp of it can get repetitive pretty quick due to there really being not much deviation from a singular gameplay mechanic.