Papers, Please – documents, stamps, and intrigue

Have you ever dreamed of the day when you could be a checkpoint inspector for a communist country? Okay, probably not your dream job and I’m guessing not your first choice for a game simulation either. So as weird as this sounds, Papers, Please was a pretty fun and appealing little game. It has a surprising amount of story and intrigue wrapped up into simulating the most undesirable and thankless job you could probably imagine. However, this game is likely to frustrate the goulash out of anyone that isn’t relatively detail oriented. Imagine one of those spot the difference puzzles from a childrens book only with no known number of differences and only abstract knowledge as your basis. It’s a very mentally demanding exercise, but also pretty rewarding when you can get through a day without screwing anything up.

Papers, please

Reject him all you want, Jorji will be back.

The basic story is that after a 6 year war between Arstotzka (glory to Arstotzka!) and Kolechia, the two factions have ceased trying to murder each other openly and the city of Grestin is the prize that gets split down the middle. See Berlin during the cold war era if you need a real life illustration. It is November of 1982 and you, being a lucky sort, have won the labor lottery and have been posted to the border checkpoint as an inspector. You move to East Grestin with your family and are provided with an apartment. That’s it for the basics. You will report to work each day and spend your workday checking passports and approving or denying entry to Arstotzka. The campaign continues for one full month or until something unfortunate happens and you lose your job. Papers, Please has 20 different endings so the likelihood of something going awry before the end is pretty high.

A dystopian document thriller

I kinda cocked my head at the description of Papers, Please at first and then, after mulling over in my head a bit, decided that it was awesome sounding and I had to own it. The thing about Papers, Please is that it takes the most soul crushing and mundane job imaginable and turns it into a frantic game full of sub-plots and interesting one-off personal stories. First, of course, is the soul crushing part where you stare impassionately at the people attempting to come through your checkpoint, scrutinize their credentials as quickly as possible and let them through or turn them away. Oh joy… a bureaucracy simulator. Then you have the individuals that try to plead their cases. You can choose to let unqualified individuals pass if you wish, but you will be written up for your failure. Write ups turn to monetary penalties and you may have to decide if you family will go hungry, cold, or both for the night due to your actions. Finally, there’s the plot of the group working to undermine your communist government and they’re seeking your aid to do so. Do you help them? Do you dare cross them? How do you hide your involvement from your superiors long enough to get away with it? Again, not all 20 endings are going to be happy.

Mind meltingly complex

Just an example from day 4 of 30.

Papers, Please starts out easy enough by providing one basic rule: admit Arstotzkan citizens only. Day two increases the curve by saying that anyone with a valid passport and entry ticket are allowed in. So you have to check the photo on the passport, the gender, the issuing city (each of the 6 countries has several valid cities), and the expiration to make sure everything is on the up and up. If not, interrogate the poor bastard that dared pass off bad documents. The game just escalates from there and starts including work slips, supplemental ID cards, and vaccination records, among other things. On top of that, you have to keep an eye out for people on the wanted criminals list, help or hinder the anti-government group, tranquilize or kill terrorists that attack, and try to keep your boss happy before you get thrown in prison. It requires a sharp eye and a darn good memory to do well in this game.

Don’t think you can just walk away

If all of that is far too easy for you, once you complete an ending where you keep your job for the whole month, you will receive the code to unlock Endless Mode. There are several variations available to keep you playing for as long as you can stand it. Perfection mode, for example, ends the game as soon as you make a single mistake. There is a timed mode that has you process as many people as you can in 10 minutes. There is also another mode where you keep playing until you run out of money. So while a single playthrough of Story Mode from beginning to end (presuming you last the whole month) will take about 4 hours, there’s plenty of replayability. If you happen to be playing on Steam, the Endless Mode options use the Steam leaderboards to compare your results to others.

Overall, this is probably one of the more inventive and surprising games of the year. The simple, even drab, graphics and monotony of stamping passport after passport seem like they should be a recipe for disaster. Instead, what you end up with is a thriller with so many ways to navigate that it should entertain anyone for quite a long time. That said, if you’re not detail oriented and get frustrated by a somewhat steep learning curve, this may not be a game for you. Glory to Arstotzka!