How do I make enough money to live and keep a roof over my head?
I've been playing Papers Please, doing my best to go along with the more idealistic elements of the regime, without bowing to the more horrific totalitarian number-pushing and individuality quashing aspects, only to find myself destitute and at the mercy of the totalitarian forces I just mentioned.
However, despite my sympathy for the cause and all that, I keep getting letters saying they're taking the house and everything I own... And even when I'm not getting the government turning up at my doorstep with their best kept prole-quashing boots on, I find I can barely afford to feed myself, let alone pay for unexpected bills like doctors and dentists or look after family (I think there was a dentist bill last time I played...) -- despite occasionally picking up a little bit of off-the-books work or a cypher-puzzle here and there.
So: if anyone has any good, basic tips as to how to make enough money to survive, preferably while avoiding getting carted off to prison for my highly subversive activities checking over documents and asking people questions, it would be appreciated.
I've been looking for guidance online, but I'm still very much struggling to provide for my basic needs.
Best Answer
You can also alternate between not feeding your family and not paying for heat. Your family will always be either hungry or cold this way, but it seems they they don't really bother, as long as either status lasts at most a day. (Maybe pay for both if someone is sick)
Also note that you won't lose any money for the first two tickets you receive. So there is no need to be too pedantic (especially with hard to check stuff like issuing city if you don't know it by heart) until you got your second warning.
There are some more regularities that can help: there is always at most one thing wrong with the paper given to you, so if you have to ask for one of the documents and then receive it, everything else will be fine; the first character (sometimes the first two) usually introduces the new rules of the day, so you can usually skip all checks that you already had to do the day before; if you get a card for a brothel, all paperwork seems to check out (as far as I have played); and probably some more patterns I have not yet noticed.
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