Released in the early 2010s, Papers, Please is a uniquely creative indie game. Its creator, Lucas Pope—also known for Return of the Obra Din and the Playdate game Mars After Midnight—established a distinct style with this title. Papers, Please helped pave the way for many story-focused, visually appealing management games in the indie world, including the upcoming Steam release, Prescribe and Pray.
Steam is full of detailed, yet realistic, management simulators. Games like Death and Taxes, No Umbrellas Allowed, and the Orwell series clearly borrow ideas from Papers, Please. This makes sense, as Papers, Please excels at telling compelling stories through everyday tasks and bureaucratic processes – a formula that works well with themes like death, social inequality, and constant monitoring. It seems this approach could even work for a surprisingly complex and confusing topic: the healthcare system.
Prescribe and Pray currently has a free demo available on Steam.
Prescribe and Pray Is Like Papers, Please, but With Cutthroat Medical Treatment
Figure out what’s wrong with unusual patients, analyze their bizarre symptoms, and then decide on treatments. Be careful – your choices could either save their lives or have tragic results. Every decision matters.
As someone living in the US, I’ve personally dealt with a frustratingly complicated healthcare system. But even if you’ve been lucky enough to avoid high costs and insurance problems, you likely know someone who’s had a scary or strange experience with medical care. From incorrect diagnoses to unusual doctors and endless paperwork, odd medical situations happen all over the world. The game Prescribe and Pray taps into this shared experience, using gameplay inspired by the game Papers, Please.
In the game Prescribe and Pray, you play as a struggling doctor at the Last Breath Clinic with a questionable task: preventing certain people from getting medical care. You’ll need to examine patients, run tests, verify their insurance, and then decide how to proceed. Similar to the game Papers, Please, Prescribe and Pray forces you to make tough decisions, carefully considering patient details, paperwork, and other factors to achieve the best result – whether that’s for the patient or the hospital remains to be seen.
The novel Prescribe and Pray takes place in France, and its portrayal of healthcare may reflect the country’s system where most medical care is covered by insurance for all citizens.
What Is Prescribe and Pray’s Gameplay Like?
From the very beginning, it’s obvious that Prescribe and Pray takes its inspiration from Papers, Please. You play the game sitting at a desk, and there’s no walking around or other environments. People will come to your desk and give you documents, which you need to check to see if they qualify for treatment. For example, if a woman has stomach pain but her insurance card is out of date, you’ll have to turn her away. Other issues you might encounter include fake names and mismatched signatures.
If the patient is approved for treatment, the next step is diagnosis. The game’s Steam page details the tools players will have access to, including:
- “a rechargeable battery-powered flashlight”
- “a thermometer that goes beep-beep”
- “an intra-auricular blood pressure monitor”
- “a suspicious-odor sniffer”
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What Is Prescribe and Pray’s Message?
From what I’ve seen of the game, it seems like Prescribe and Pray is making fun of the strange and often illogical things that happen in healthcare. The tools in the game are described using simple, almost childish language, which might be a way of pointing out that some healthcare workers aren’t as prepared as they should be. This fits with the game’s depiction of the main character as someone with no training or qualifications. And it’s hard to miss the person stuck under the desk – a situation that definitely doesn’t align with medical ethics.
Similar to the game Papers, Please, Prescribe and Pray uses dark humor and focuses on everyday routines to highlight the problems in the world. Flawed organizations exist everywhere, and they rely on ordinary people – not just villains – to operate. Even if you believe a system is fundamentally good, it’s valuable to consider what could go wrong. Papers, Please does this effectively, and Prescribe and Pray aims to do the same by exaggerating potential issues to show how things can break down.
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2026-02-07 16:04