PAGER Review (PC)

PAGER’s nauseatingly ominous 1-bit blemishes of charcoal gray and chalky white are keeping me dialed into a job that I’m not entirely sure I want to do. As if to illustrate a metaphor, the sixty floors before me reflect the corporate ladder—a spiraling cortex of relentless power and biased judgment—and the feats one would naturally travel to exceed their potential and ascend to the apex of the hierarchy. But I’m of a different mindset; I can’t tell whether or not I should actively listen to the demands on the clip-on pager, or shun its attempts at coercing me into doing its bidding for all the wrong reasons. With that, I have a choice: pursue this career path and gradually tiptoe up through the footholds, or take the alternate route—the stairwell that leads…somewhere else, I think.

If you’re getting hints of The Stanley Parable here, well, that’s essentially because PAGER is, to some basic extent, a love letter to the cult classic choice-based staple. Similar to what ol’ Stanley enveloped in his endless quest to unravel the inner secrets of an infinitely vast corporate empire, PAGER’s protagonist has a job to do: to pay firm attention to the messages that appear on a pager, and to complete brief requests in the hopes that, after a set period of time, another leg up on the ladder will culminate in an even greater reward. In short, there are sixty floors, a demanding pager, and, of course, an ambivalent colleague who has the power to navigate the tide in their own right. Hopefully you can put two and two together from there.

“Snap to It”

PAGER isn’t conceptually superior to other Stanley Parable lookalikes, nor is it frothing at the mouth with extraordinary visuals or bottomless twists and turns, character development segments or convoluted dialogue sequences. It isn’t even massively complex, nor is it the most memorable cel-shaded 1-bit humor-horror hybrid on the market. But PAGER is, in spite of all its blatant shortcomings and lack of second-hand prowess, a surprisingly strong opening act for the genre, and not to mention one that lumbers around a lot or pleasantly surprising introductory material.

The idea is as straightforward as one might imagine: follow the instructions provided by the pager, and complete short tasks in an office environment whilst working towards the next job, and eventually, the next floor in the building. Given its fixation on the horror aspect, the higher you travel, the more unusual things are likely to become, thus making the journey from the bottom layer to the apex a rabbit hole of rather peculiar happenings. And it’s your job, in short, to suck it up and venture through the hoops, even if it means having to occasionally get your hands dirty and pet the office dog. That’s also a thing here, apparently.

While PAGER isn’t a naturally “scary” game, it does manage to blur the lines between social norms and abstract concepts incredibly well via its 1-bit design and questionable office aesthetics. It won’t terrify you, much less give you something to quake in your boots about. But it will make you think twice about the levels as you pass through them, as well as give you a false sense of security when you whittle down the jobs, regardless of their size or simplicity.

The Higher You Go

Speaking of jobs, PAGER contains a fairly generic set of steps for you to follow (I say that with a pinch of salt), with each of said steps featuring a somewhat specific set of instructions, i.e. delivering a box to a room in the building, or pursuing a silhouette into a different area of the office duplex. Naturally, the jobs escalate in weirdness the higher you go and the more you bend over backwards to fit your pager’s ever-growing hunger for control. But I won’t indulge in spoilers here, because that wouldn’t achieve much other than dampen the mood and remove you from the tenterhooks that you may or may not be hanging on. It’s a surreal experience, we’ll leave it at that.

PAGER doesn’t stick around long enough to shed any major technical or graphical (at least, nothing that’s overtly unintentional) issues. I say that as if to paint a double-edged sword, mind you. On the one hand, it’s a pretty short game that doesn’t offer much more outside of the vanilla campaign. Moreover, it doesn’t overstay its welcome by lingering around long after the final steps have been ascended to fill your head with unnecessary jargon or elusive endings. But on the other hand, it uses its 1-bit visual interface to obscure whatever game-breaking problems that sneak their way into the mainframe. It does it all pretty well though, I’ll admit — so I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and leave it at that. Well played, team.

Verdict

PAGER might not live up to the expectations of its torch-bearing adversaries, but it does make for a rather fitting tribute to the unruly realm of Stanley Parable emulations, with its unique 1-bit graphics and unpredictable gameplay supplementing an otherwise drab experience that’s worryingly reminiscent of its kin’s respective designs. It’s thanks to the visuals, though, that I’m willing to give it extra credit. Sure, it’s simple, and it lacks the depth of an intricate puzzle with oh-so-many moving pieces. Yet, even without a cascading waterfall of booming colors and set pieces to call its own, there’s something oddly intriguing about it all.

To cut a long story short, if you’re hunting for a deeply personal psychological horror with numerous strands of hard-hitting jump scares and wall-to-wall run-ins with tainted monsters, then you’d probably be a lot better off pursuing an alternate career path. If, however, you’re open to exploring other opportunities—jobs that don’t steer away from illogical ideas or unusual behaviors, then you might find what you’re looking for in PAGER. Granted, it won’t make you fall head over heels in love with corporate culture, but it’ll definitely fool you into believing that silver linings exist beyond the thick veil of manipulative strategy.