How far will you go when it’s not just your life on the line?
Code provided for review from GameChanger Studio
1998: The Toll Keeper Story is from GameChanger Studio and is based on actual events that took place in 1998 in Indonesia. The game tells the story of Dewi, her husband Heru, and their close friends through a period of unrest and uncertainty in the fictional country of Janapa.
(Content warning from Steam: This game includes mature themes such as civil unrest and emotional distress. It depicts the struggles of a pregnant woman surviving during political and economic collapse. While there’s no explicit sexual or graphic content, players will face morally difficult decisions.)
I was eleven during the events of the 1998 tragedy, and I’ll admit that meant I didn’t know a lot about what happened until I got much older. (If you’re reading this and are thinking, ‘what’s she talking about,’ here are a couple of links that go into more detail. Both will open in a new tab. Article from The Diplomat / May 1998 Indonesia Riots on Wikipedia)
As the game begins, you meet Dewi, who is nearing the birth of her first child with her husband, Heru. Dewi works as a toll keeper in Janapa, while Heru is a taxi driver. The couple is struggling to make ends meet in the volatile economic climate, and struggling to stay safe and keep their friends safe in a rapidly deteriorating political climate where riots are knocking at the door.
At Dewi’s work, there’s a new directive nearly every day. The gameplay is very reminiscent of Papers, Please; you’ll do everything from checking for counterfeit money, making sure only certain vehicles get through on certain days, using metal detectors to check for contraband, and more.
(The game puts a lot of information at your fingertips via windows with reminders of things. This was great to have, though I wish they had been resizeable so I could have more than one up at a time.)
Failure to comply with the rules leads to fines or even unemployment. Nearly everyone who came through your checkpoint had a story, whether they were being targeted by the government and needed to escape, a journalist covering the events, students part of the movement, or even a police officer questioning their role in the events.
Depending on the decisions you would make or the rules you’d bend, it could change the headlines in the newspaper that would begin each day. 1998: The Toll Keeper Story is an emotional one, where you’re faced with difficult choices every shift that could result in either surviving another day or facing a dreaded game-over screen.
Outside of the booth, you feel the unrest at home, as you try to save enough money for rent, doctors’ appointments, and to keep you and your family safe and healthy. You and Heru feel the weight of what’s happening to your home in different ways; I spent the game focusing on actions that would help my baby stay healthy, whereas Heru chose a more… direct approach to keeping his family safe.
Just remember, not all endings are happy ones.
1988: The Toll Keeper Story is out on October 28th on Steam and the Google Play Store.