CorpoNation: The Sorting Process

good if you like grinding a bit. it is basically doing the same thing over and over again but it gets a little harder every time. i had fun tho

一款试图仿“请出示证件”但做的差强人意的工作游戏。 这游戏有一点做得很真实，那就是上班的时候是真的无聊，除了头几天精神饱满后开始逐渐积累班味。 唯有下班后回到家中，喝喝茶，听听音乐，摆摆家具，玩上几局扑克，打几把丐版街霸，这才是生活。 虽然有反抗组织这一突破点，但你猜怎么着，反抗还是要通过上班进行，像不像跳槽到别家公司。 真的平淡得像白开水，只有赚到钱的那一刻是开心的。 总评：B-

Most of the game is a lot of fun, the sorting advances and gets more challenging. I enjoyed the monotony with a mix of rebellion. While the majority of the game works well, part of it (without revealing spoilers of course!) is incredibly frustrating. The mechanics just were NOT working and it seems like many in the online community ultimately just gave up on an ending because of it. The creators of the game seem fairly responsive but even with updates and forums, I ultimately only got to the end on chance that all the mechanics worked. If you have the patience to do it, it is a very fun game for those of you who like sorting tasks and alternative realities. Pursue at your own risk!

I'm a sucker for corporate-dystopia games with repetitive tasks. It's like Severance the video game.

This is literally like papers please on steroids. I love the story, the vibes are very dystopian and capitalism heavy, with an air of mystery about the outside world, which is right up my alley. The gameplay, however, is a whole other story. It is so so fun, but my god is it hard. I don't think I've ever struggled this much with a game of this genre, and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing in this case. It's a refreshing challenge, if you're up for it. I definitely recommend it.

Jogo bom pra quem curte um mistério corporativo.

I like dystopian games about "quick" processing that focus on the storyline. That’s what made me want to play CorpoNation. [h2]Main plot :[/h2] In the future, humans have conquered space and a new structure came to life: the CorpoNation. Like the name implies, it's a corporation that evolved into a "nation-wide" structure. You are a fellow citizen-worker of the CorpoNation, Ringo. You were assigned a job as a laboratorian. It consists of sorting genome samples into four categories - Alpha, Beta, Delta, Zetta - based on what your manager asks you. The CorpoNation has prepared everything for you, even your social interactions by selecting the best candidates for you to speak with. It also provides you "State-approved" games to enjoy after a hard work day. That’s your daily life. You wake up, you work, you receive money and you reinject this money into the Ringo economy by purchasing goods for your pod or for gaming. Remember to "Work Hard" and that "Work is diligence". But you are quickly contacted by a dissident group, Synthesis. These people try to corrupt your fellow citizen-workers—and you—to make you feel that Ringo is "evil" and that there is an "outside" better than this. For me, that’s a typical "Papers, Please" scenario/gaming experience, with an "after job" part that "Papers, Please" doesn’t bring. [h2]Gameplay :[/h2] Well, there is not a lot to explain. You wake up, you go to work, you read the specifics of the day and you process the sorting. Your performance for the day is calculated and you receive money. After work, you can go on your computer before going to sleep. There you have to "pay your bills", you can read the news or talk with your fellow citizen-workers, purchase goods to decorate your pod or play games. Then you go to sleep and repeat. At the end of the week (5 days), your main performances are calculated and you might receive a promotion. Quickly, you are contacted by Synthesis and it brings you your main choice: follow Ringo or bring more chaos. [h2]First impression (after ~2h) : [/h2] At first, I liked the plot. A dystopian world in the future might bring elements like "Welcome to Gattaca", I was thinking—but I didn’t feel that. Rather, I felt the same experience I have with other dystopian worlds: yeah, it’s a dystopian world. Yeah, there is an activist group. Yeah, there is "a police" and people that are "reassigned". It was fine, but it didn’t make me want to know the end of the story. The gameplay is fine—not too hard but not too easy if you want to earn quite a lot of money. The possibility to do other things than your job is a good choice. The games are fine to play and there is some addictive aspect with quests and winning streaks. It was a 6/10 game: fun to play but didn’t give me the urge to finish. [h2]End impression :[/h2] /!\ This section spoils element of the story lightly [spoiler]I finished the game following Ringo’s orders and "finishing" the inside games for achievements. Overall, the game doesn’t change a lot. If you follow Ringo, you have to do things one way; if you follow Synthesis, you have to do them another way. I can’t talk about the Nexus since I focused on the Ringo side but, knowing the end of the story, I’m not sure it makes a lot of difference. I was pleased by the ending though. I didn’t think it was the final intent of the story and it was nice to have my first impression proven wrong. I should have focused more on the story rather than trying to get achievements, because it was frustrating to repeat the same things in the mini-games.[/spoiler] [h2]👍👎 Strengths & Weaknesses[/h2] [h3]👍 Strengths[/h3] [list] [*]Gameplay is simple to learn / hard to perform [*]The "after job" part is refreshing and gives more context to the story [*]The color scheme of Blue-Ringo and Red-Synthesis is a good choice [*]The Ringo mascot is a raccoon 🦝❤️ [*]I liked the *small* references to "1984" [/list] [h3]👌 Middles[/h3] [list] [*]Story is "meh" but has a good ending [*]Inside games are good but repetitive [/list] [h3]👎 Weaknesses[/h3] [list] [*]Achievement grinding makes the game very repetitive [/list] [h2]Conclusion[/h2] CorpoNation was a good gaming experience for me. The gameplay is fine—not too easy and not too hard—making it accessible for a lot of people. The story is a good entry point for those who don’t know much about dystopian themes but falls quite short for those who love those stories. It might be repetitive, but the completion time for the main game (~6h) is low enough that you don’t really feel it. It’s more annoying for those who want to 100% the game since you need to play the mini-games a lot.

Honestly, it might get exciting later but the core gameplay loop is just dull. I get that's kind of the point but it's pointless for a game that's meant to entertain you.