Contraband Police and the Puzzle Simulation Genre

My most recent game completion was Contraband Police, a puzzle, simulation game from Crazy Rocks Studios. It further solidified my love for the subgenre of sim games, a love that began with Papers, Please. It’s sparked a question in my mind: what is it about specifically puzzle, simulation games that captivates me?

Before I get too deep into that question, though, I do want to cover Contraband Police. It takes a lot of queues from Papers, Please, including the scenario of being a border guard responsible for who enters a country, the political nature of the narrative, the progressively more intense attention to detail in order to successfully do your job, and the motivation of earning money for an adequate day’s work. However, Contraband Police ventures into the open-world theme, allowing the player quite a bit of freedom to explore and indulge in side quests.

The meat of Contraband Police, where I spent hours pouring over documents, was fun. I want more of it with fewer interruptions. I imagine the “endless” mode probably delivers on that, but seeing as the campaign is likely expected to be played through before getting into endless mode, it’s a bit of a moot point. It’s impressive the multitude of inspections that the player is expected to undertake. It goes far beyond that of Papers, Please. Just like Papers, Please lives up to its name by focusing specifically on the documentation and little else, as does Contraband Police by forcing the player to be diligent when faced with potential criminals. The search for illegal items and examinations of the travelers’ vehicles justify the first-person perspective and 3D movement beautifully.

The freedom to travel the small border town has led to the introduction of mechanics like driving and fire fights that yield additional complexity, further attempting to justify the player perspective. However, the actual moments of gameplay when indulging in these extra ventures lead to these things feeling like chores. Papers, Please stays in its lane; you are a border guard, it’s a puzzle-sim game, and that’s it. There is no game outside of the border, and that serves to the advantage of Papers, Please. Contraband Police, on the other hand, brings too much into the fold, creating a list of chores that break up the parts that are actually enjoyable.

The reality is that I purchase and play a puzzle-sim game for the puzzle-simming. Things like chasing down escaping criminals, engaging in shootouts with hordes of enemies, and playing detective to a murder investigation are great things in a game, but not this game. Contraband Police demonstrates a lack of understanding of its primary audience. If I picked up an action, first-person shooter, any meticulous and drawn-out evaluation of an NPC’s documents would feel boring and out of place. The same goes for a game about scrutinizing documents down to the last detail that suddenly has you mowing down enemies with an assault rifle. Developers need to trust their players to decide what kind of game they want to play instead of trying to attract everyone.

So why do players pick puzzle-sim games anyway? More specifically, why do I?

Building on the desire for certain genres, I believe it essentially comes down to my mood. In the same way some people enjoy cleaning, doing dishes, folding laundry, etc. because of their relaxing, monotonous natures, I find a lot of calm in the fine details of a game like Contraband Police. The gratification of taking on a simple task and getting it done right goes far beyond games or chores; it’s the ancestor of a common technique for accomplishing large tasks.

We often find comfort and fulfillment in completing something, and when something feels too large or daunting to complete, it can be extremely demotivating. This is why games are broken up into questlines, and why questlines are broken up into individual quests, and individual quests are divvied up into tasks. It makes games like Persona 5, The Witcher 3, or Red Dead Redemption 2 palatable despite easily containing over 100 hours of content. It’s also how we manage to not die of anxiety every time we remember the tens of thousands of dollars (sometimes more) of student loans and/or credit card debt we have; we break it up into relatively smaller payments over a long period. Puzzle-sim games use a similar principle. It’s satisfying to take one thing at a time, evaluate it against set rules, make a determination, and move onto the next one. Each set of items is grouped together as well to make it feel less like a hopeless line of tasks with no end; in the case of Papers, Please and Contraband Police, the items are people, and the groupings are days.

For me, in particular, I love rules. If you know me or have perused my website, you’d know I’m a programmer. As a programmer, it’s literally my job to create rules. Every line of code is a rule that is followed by the computer or the user of the application I’m programming. You’d also know that I’m a high school football official. Part of why I love officiating so much is the application of the rules. My ability to organize, remember, and apply the long list of rules in my head for every football game is exciting.

This is why puzzle-sim games speak to me. I have had hundreds, or possibly thousands of hours of fun with games like Overcooked, Papers, Please, Not Tonight, Return of the Obra Dinn, Police Simulator: Patrol Officers, and now Contraband Police because I love learning and applying rules in an exciting context. I definitely wouldn’t consider all of these puzzle-sim games, but they all share that similar focus on rules or regulations.

I highly recommend all of these games to anyone like me who just find relaxing fun when it comes to following the rules.