The Final Boss is a free, Papers, Please-style tale about the drudgery of running an evil empire

pcgamer.com:

What does the evil overlord do when they're not stomping adventurers into the last save? A whole lot of paperwork, according to free little pencil-pusher The Final Boss.

Inspired by Papers, Please and free to play in your browser over on Itch, The Final Boss is a fun little imagining of what, say, Elden Ring's Godrick might get up to in his 9-to-5. Every morning, you wake up to a pile of policy propositions—raising the minimum wage for your minions, building another lava castle, selling off the kidnapped princesses trinkets, that sort of thing. 

You can either sign them or leave them be before pushing them to your outbox, gaining or spending funds from the lair's coffers as you do. At the end of each day you'll get an update on how your evil empire is faring in defense, employment satisfaction, and financials. Let any of these fall too low, and your empire will crumble.

In one instance, I overworked and underpaid my minions, only to find they'd buggered off at the end of the day to go start their own empire. Mine subsequently collapsed, my evil lairs left completely unguarded.

The Final Boss is one of dozens of delightful little experiments on developer Cakestorm's Itch page, and the relatively small scale does show through in parts. There are only so many proposals to sign, with me getting four minimum wage requests in a row at one point. But it's a game that understands the tactile joy of shuffling papers in Papers, Please, and there's a fantastic framework for some satirical fantasy storytelling here should the developer choose to ever take it further.

Of course, there's been no shortage of interesting twists on Papers, Please, putting their own spin on that game's particul brand of authoritarian bureaucracy. Mind