Gifts, Please

Gifts, Please is a lovely Christmas-themed bureaucracy sim, a document-checkpoint game clearly inspired by Papers, Please, but reimagined as a lighter, shorter, and more comedic take on the formula.

You play as one of Santa’s elves, tasked with determining whether children are naughty or nice based on a few criteria. Their letters to Santa must be valid (signed with their real names), they must be under 14 years old, have performed good deeds over the past year, and present a properly stamped identity document. Once they pass this initial screening, you’re then responsible for verifying that the gifts assigned to them match their requests and are fitting for their gender and age.

The game is very short, spanning just two in-game days. On the second day, unexpected events interrupt your workflow, introducing a few additional minigames. Between stages, the elf receives letters from the government—aka the Head Elf Department—which are hilariously written and add a lot of flavor and humor to the experience.

Overall, Gifts, Please is a fun, bite-sized experience that takes about an hour to complete. Two additional modes are planned for the future: a minigames-only mode and an endless mode that will presumably let players repeat the core loop indefinitely, potentially with randomized names and characters.