Beholder: Conductor is Papers, Please on a train in this new surveillance thriller

• Beholder: Conductor brings the popular series onto a new line
• Manage your train, keep the passengers safe, and ruthlessly dob in troublebreakers
• Explore a vast, lushly decorated passenger train and customise it as you unlock new areas

Twenty years ago, if you told people that one of the most acclaimed video games of all time would be an Eastern Bloc bureaucracy sim, they'd look at you like you were mad. But if Beholder: Conductor showcases anything, it's that the Papers, Please format is one which isn't just contained to a draughty customs booth.

Beholder: Conductor is a new management sim coming to iOS and Android courtesy of publisher Plug In Digital. In it, you play the titular Conductor under an authoritarian regime, given the task of managing one of the most important passenger trains in the country. It's a tough, demanding, dangerous and often soul-destroying job, but someone (you) has to do it.

Of course, if you're familiar with Papers, Please, then you can probably guess where the comparisons come from. You'll be tasked with monitoring your passengers, ensuring that they all behave and that no fare-dodgers get aboard, all while spying on your fellow employees and dobbing them in for various infractions in true jobsworth fashion.

Leaves on the track

Visually speaking, Beholder: Conductor is certainly more of a feast for the eyes than its spiritual predecessor. As the stylish silhouettes of the various characters stand out against the lushly pixelated backgrounds of the train.

Being a spinoff of the Beholder series, if you're already a fan of those surveillance thriller sim-type-things, you'll undoubtedly gel well with Beholder: Conductor. And for others, the slightly more stylish setting (instead of the state-owned apartment of the original Beholder) is sure to pique their interest.

With Beholder: Conductor set to make its way to iOS and Android in late April, according to the App Store listing, you'll have plenty of time to decide just how far you'll go to ride the rails to success.

In the meantime, if you want to keep up with other top launches that you can actually play right now, why not dig into our list of the best mobile games in soft launch to check out some of our selections?