Nightmarish job simulator CorpoNation arrives February 22

Brush up your resume, as Playtonic friends and Canteen have announced that the absolutely normal job simulator, CorpoNation: The Sorting Process, will be released on February 22, 2024. Alongside this announcement is a new trailer.

CorpoNation is a job simulator not too far off from the seminal Papers, Please. However, instead of sorting paperwork at the border in a bleak dystopia, CorpoNation has you sorting genetic samples in a bleak Corporate dystopia. It’s probably the same corporate dystopia that we’ll be living in about three years from now. Might as well start practicing!

CorpoNation differentiates itself from Papers, Please by also having you experience life outside of the workplace, which I assume is just a dorm for employees. There’s a virtual desktop with games you can play and instant messages you can read. It almost feels like actual human contact. However, there are still shades of its inspiration through narrative concepts like an underground resistance trying to recruit you to undermine your employer.

I’m kind of looking forward to CorpoNation, but at times it feels too real. Hopefully, it’s more than a depressingly exaggerated extrapolation of “drive this car to work, work to pay for the car.” I’m hoping that there’s some fun in undermining your employer instead of the constant, clawing stress and anxiety that came with Papers, Please. I’m not sure my mind can take that sort of trauma again.

CorpoNation is coming out on PC on February 22, 2024. There’s a demo available for it now if you’re interested in taking it for a test drive.