Games Like Pending Review

NOTICE OF ASSIGNMENT

Your application has been processed. You have been placed at a desk. The desk is not yours. The chair is not yours. The stamp is issued to the position, not to you, and will be recovered when the position is reassigned. Report at eight. Do not be late.

THE WORK

They arrive as files. A name, an identity number, a sector, a stated income, an amount requested, and a photograph. That is all you will ever have of them. You will not meet them, you will not hear them explain, and you will not find out what happened after you decided. Somewhere in that paperwork is the truth, and somewhere in it, usually, is not. You are not asked whether they deserve it. You are asked whether the paperwork holds. Check the name against the record. Check the number, digit by digit. Check what they earn against what they are asking for. Check the deed, if there is a deed. Then drag the stamp down. The next file is already on the desk.

THE RULES CHANGE

There is a new notice every morning. New checks to run. Sectors that were approvable last week and are not approvable today. A watchlist that appears one morning and is longer the next. Nobody explains why, because nobody explains anything, and the notice does not care whether you read it. What was competence yesterday is negligence today. The Department does not send a correction. It sends a deduction. Two bad decisions and the day is written off. Meet quota or do not. Either way it is counted, and either way you are back at eight tomorrow.

TWO WAYS TO WORK

Story Mode. A fixed assignment. It is told through the files that reach your desk, the memos that arrive with them, and the work itself. Nobody sits you down and explains the plot. You will assemble it out of the paperwork, the way you assemble everything else here, and you will understand what it means somewhere around the point where it stops being deniable. Endless Mode. The days keep coming and they keep getting worse. More checks, less time, applications whose lie is a single character in the wrong place. Your salary is your score, the leaderboard is public, and the record is held by somebody who is better at this than you. Applications are reviewed in the order received. Your file is also open.