The PVKK, or Planetenverteidigungskanonenkommandant to put it in ambitious terms, looks appealing: a Papers Please-like creation from the Dome Keeper team, in which you take control of a giant planetary defense cannon that repels extraterrestrial invaders. PVKK seems to scratch my itch to fiddle with the vast number of analog buttons and blend into the faceless machinery of an authoritarian state as a cog in the violence machine. And finally, the developers got around to making a video game for me.

However, they are not making names for PC Gamer dot com. Trying to write a full title for the headline of this article, our CMS, um, gave up: after rendering about 32 words, I took my ball and went home. So, on to PVKK.

"It's Space Invaders, but the cannon that fires it is really complex," says director René Haberman in a chat with PCG. Defending your planet, which is not Earth, from invaders is a long and arduous task: there are buttons to press, knobs to adjust, dials to tune, all to find a way to fire that will hopefully blast the enemy out of the sky. [Haberman says the concept for the game was born out of a deep appreciation, or fetishism, for the satisfying thump-thump-thump of Cold War-era lumpy interfaces. He said, "The initial inspiration for this game came from the sound effects of button presses I found on the Internet.

Combine this with Haberman's personal fascination with "cockpits, technology, trains, and anything with a million little knobs and levers" and his feeling that "oh yeah, you just have to push a few switches," and you have the PVKK command module an impressive array of toggles and levers. But there is another half to the game.

"'Papers, Please' is probably the game I talked about most when I talked to the team," says Haberman.

"It's the dry gameplay that keeps it fun, and the context it gives to the outside world that makes this game so much better.

Think of a scene that, in between stamping your passport, tells you about the politics of your country and what's going on with your family, and PVKK aims to do the same thing. This is what I really focus on when I think about the pace and structure of PVKK play."

The second part of the game allows you to walk around the bunker a bit: fiddle with the tele-radio, read the news, etc. In this part, you can upgrade the cockpit and even have "escape room elements" like puzzles and clues.

That sounds rather sinister, but Haberman says, "Maybe I'm a little tired of the common narrative of a bad regime and good rebels."

PVKK aims for something a little harder to chew: "There aren't necessarily bad guys and good guys, but rather "someone faction that thinks it is acting for the good."

"It's fascinating as a player when you have to make a decision. Suddenly, it's not, 'Okay, do I choose the path of good here or the path of evil here,' but rather, 'Then [later] I'll play through the path of evil.'" Instead, Haberman prefers to be "forced to make a decision every time a choice appears." Perhaps that's why he says the game "has no message."

The authoritarian government and the giant Schwaller-Gustav-style cannon made one think that the PVKK was consciously taking a satirical, anti-war stance, but Haberman felt that "sometimes it's unpleasant to be forced to read the message the developers wanted to convey," and Instead, he said, "What I enjoy a great deal is putting the players in a situation and letting them have their own thoughts on it. ...... That's the funny thing that already happened in "The Dome Keeper": you land on this planet, shoot all the protozoa, exploit the planet, and then leave again. Yeah, like, "Am I a bad guy?" ...... That's something I really enjoy doing: ...... It's a playground for people to have their own ideas and interpretations."

My own thoughts may also work against an authoritarian regime with huge cannons, but I have been surprised before. What is certain is that I would love to have the PVKK's myriad of intensely tactile buttons. Will we find a button sound effect to enhance the whole game? According to Haberman, the sound effect is no longer in the game: "I listened to it again and thought, 'Okay, this isn't that good.'" Bippinbits' sound designers do a better job than free online sound banks, and PVKK's audio turned out to "have to sound great."

There is no definite release date yet, but Haberman says he is "looking forward to sharing" the thunks and clunks the sound designers have created in a few months. He said, "It may not sound as good as the trailer, but you will hear it in the future.

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