Developer: Lucas Pope Released: August 2013

Played on: Mac (also available on PC, Linux)

This is a game about checking documents.

You are an Arstotzkan immigration officer checking passports, work permits and vaccination certificates of potential visitors, emigrants, skilled workers, drug dealers and terrorists all seeking entry to your glorious state. You let a man through, his documents check out, but just as he leaves your booth he says “You must let my wife through, she is next.” Sure enough, the wife follows, explaining that if she returns to her country she will be killed. Her documents don’t check out. You pause. You’ve stuffed up a few times already today, and you are bound to be fined if you let her through. At the last minute you relent, approving the woman’s entry. Moments later the abrasive sound of the citation printer kicks into gear, and you’re fined for your third infraction of the day. You return home to find your mother-in-law has moved in, you can’t afford to pay for heating or food, and that last fine was the exact amount you needed to buy medicine for your critically ill son. You vow to process efficiently and accurately tomorrow, and to show no further compassion.

This is a game about checking documents.

That a game with a document checking mechanic can deliver genuinely suspenseful gameplay and place us in a position of moral turmoil is testament to the outstanding game design of Lucas Pope. From the opening strains of Papers, Please’s theme music evoking totalitarian control as the title screen graphic marches slowly in time up the screen, the tone is set for a world of strict rules, prevailing poverty and a touch of dark humour. The fictional country of Arstotzka based in an early 80’s Eastern Bloc is a fully realised dystopia despite the fact you only view it from your booth on the country’s border. A picture is painted by newspaper headlines, visits from scary government officials, and the myriad of colourful people you meet seeking to enter Arstotzka.

The entire game is set inside your booth on the Arstotzkan border, and begins with some simple rules for processing applicants seeking entry – do they have a valid passport and does their picture match their actual face. As each day progresses and the political relations between Arstotzka and its neighbours begin to ebb and flow, your rule book becomes more complicated and the number of documents and rules you need to cross-check and correlate become overwhelming. Your observational arsenal is supplemented with x-ray machines and a fingerprinting kit, all of which take up precious time. The trick is that you’ve got a family at home to support, and your performance at work seriously affects your income. The more people you correctly process, the more money you make. The more errors you make, the more you are fined. You can try taking bribes from applicants, but that can have negative results. Or you can just send a few extra failed applicants to the military to be detained and get a little kick-back from them.

Remember to pay for your heating and medicine, or you’ll have a disastrous first playthrough like I did!

The need to earn money to keep your family alive provides one of the stronger impetuses in the game. The days are short, so you try to process as quickly as you can, but stupid mistakes result in the printing out of citations, the sound of which is one of the most devastating in videogame history. The pause between an applicant being processed and the citation being issued is perfect, resulting in annoyed frustration every time.

The drama of the game setup and the surprises that each day brings through its new challenges from government edicts or curious border crossing applicants keep the game fresh despite having an extremely repetitive gameplay loop. While the dragging and dropping of documents can get aggravating, especially when they’re piling on top of one another, efficient processing and the tangible stamping of documents can be a surprisingly satisfying and addictive act. Having said this, Papers, Please suffers after prolonged play sessions. It definitely suits shorter gaming sessions rather than extended sessions which can become quickly frustrating when combining basic mistakes with the repetition of the gameplay. I found it ideal to play one or two days per session, each going for 10-15 minutes.

STAMP!

There is also a surprising amount of replay value to Papers, Please. The game features a variety of different endings based on what decisions you made during your 30 days on the border. The “load” menu has an interface that makes it easy to go back and replay any particular day and continue your game from there – I often found myself replaying days in an attempt to achieve a better outcome.

Impressively, Papers, Please is a game that left me considering my decisions long after I’d turned the game off. The regular moral quandaries faced on the border and balancing the importance of providing for your own family and helping out people in need provide a palpable tension in your own imagination, but leaves you ultimately in the same position you always have been, a slave to your nation and your job.

Verdict: Papers, Please feels like it accomplishes something entirely unique – a confronting narrative which emerges from a mundane simulation that turns out to be a lot of fun. This game might not be for everyone, but the curious will be rewarded.

Should Bradley play this: Yep, well worth checking out! Probably one of the most focussed and well designed indie games of last year.