Games Like Dead Man's Pass

They reach the gate after dark. You decide who reaches the village. You are the keeper of a mountain checkpoint said to stand on the road to the dead. Most travellers are human. Some are yokai concealed in human form. Read the pass. Then read the person. Every traveller brings a pass: name, age, home, destination, trade, issue date, and seal. Compare it with the face in front of you. A forged seal or an impossible village may send a human back down the road. Painted-black eyes, a hidden fang, a seam at the throat, or a sixth finger point to something else. You may challenge two entries on each traveller's pass. Pick the fields that do not add up, listen to the answers, and decide what the discrepancy means before the incense burns out. Pass. Turn away. Cut down. A wrong judgment does not end at the gate. Cut down too many humans and you will be executed. Let too many yokai through and the village below is lost. At dawn, the cost of your judgments follows you home. Your wife writes, your son needs medicine, and food may cost more than you have. Seven nights, and no rule stays simple. New edicts arrive as the week wears on. The papers grow less trustworthy, and familiar travellers may return. A limited-use Demon Mirror can reveal what your eyes cannot, but it cannot make the judgment for you.