Blue Sign Review

At some point, just about everyone has fantasised about being a pirate — or something close enough to one. Unless you’re a very particular kind of person, though, that probably doesn’t involve actual counting. Blue Sign does. Instead of sailing the high seas or commanding a crew of buccaneers, you’re the sod stuck doing the paperwork for everyone who does. Not a quartermaster. Not a logistics officer. An insurance adjuster. The twist is that all your clients are anime girls. And, surprisingly, the game isn’t half as bad as you’d think.

Strange Japanese influences aside, Blue Sign isn’t a hard game to describe. It’s Papers, Please without the moral intrigue. Or, more accurately, Thank You For Your Application with better gameplay and sans the all-too-relevant themes. If you’ve played a paperwork simulator before, you already know the deal. You start each day by reading the news. Then you spend 10ish minutes checking people’s documents for discrepancies. Screw up, and you go bankrupt. Don’t screw up, and you get to repeat the process again.

If Blue Sign had the seas to itself, it would actually be pretty great. The minute-to-minute gameplay is surprisingly enjoyable and has a lot of depth that its competitors lack. There are recurring characters, a cute overarching narrative, and a few unique mechanics. When you decide to approve or decline someone’s policy, it’s your money on the line. You can visually inspect ships to make your decision, interact with captains away from the counter, and even overhear tips that’ll tell you if someone’s planned voyage is doomed.

The game may not be fun in the traditional sense of the word, but it is satisfying. Looking over documents and cross-referencing them with the library of books you have at your disposal scratches the same itch as getting to the bottom of a minor mystery. It can be repetitive at times, and even frustrating. That’s part of the experience in the genre, though. And unlike with a couple of other entries in it, there’s nothing to distract you from the gameplay. The visuals are the standard, decent pixel-art affair. The soundtrack is acceptable. There aren’t any major technical problems to contend with. Blue Sign works well enough that it’s almost completely enjoyable.

However, the game has two problems. And they’re directly related. The first, and less serious, issue is that everyone who makes use of your services looks like they were ripped straight out of an anime. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but it does mean the entire experience lacks emotional gravity. You aren’t deciding which starving peasant to allow into a dystopia, or who gets a job they need to survive. You’re allowing adorable, and questionably attractive, characters to keep doing the jobs they already have. And, when you think about it, that’s really strange.

That’s Blue Sign’s other flaw. There are no moral stakes here, or anything to contemplate after the credits roll. The genre works because its central mechanic is also its message. Almost nobody likes doing makework for the sake of it, but when you’re working to topple an authoritarian regime or defying the whims of your corporate overlords, scanning documents becomes exponentially more tolerable. There’s something to think about while you’re doing it. 

Without that, you’re just another cog in the machine. Blue Sign makes the mechanic work surprisingly well, but without a message, it becomes something you’ll play when you’re bored rather than something you’ll remember. And there’s nothing actually wrong with that, because Blue Sign is free to play. There are no microtransactions or hidden fees. The only thing the game costs is your time.

This isn’t the next Papers, Please. It’s not Not for Broadcast. It’s a hell of a lot better than Not Tonight 2, and a noticeable improvement over Thank You For Your Application. You won’t be coming back to it year after year, or even day after day, though. Like an insurance bill you’ve already paid, you’ll probably forget all about it by tomorrow.