Now Playing: Papers, Please

I picked up Papers, Please in the recent Steam sale for a couple of quid. It’s one of those games I’d heard a lot of positive things about, without really knowing much about what it was exactly. It’s described as a ‘Dystopian Document Thriller’. You assume the role of an immigration officer at a border checkpoint. Your job is to check the travel papers of those wishing to enter the glorious country of Arstotzka.

Wait, what? A game about inspecting passports and travel permits? That doesn’t exactly sound very compelling and yet, within only a few minutes of play, I was already hooked. It’s best to think of it as a puzzle game, and every arrival at your checkpoint booth is another puzzle to solve. You have to inspect and verify every document they require for entry into the country before deciding to admit or deny their passage. It sounds simple enough, but as you progress through the game’s story based campaign, the amount of documents you have to cross-check and inspect continues to expand.

For example, someone wishing to work within the country requires a passport, a work permit and a travel permit, all of which have to be carefully cross-checked in terms of information such as Name and Passport Number. You also have to check the information against what the person tells you, such as duration of stay. Later in the campaign you may also have to check additional documents, such as vaccination certificates. And of course, there’s all the standard information to inspect, such as the Passport Expiration Date and Issuing City.

But wait, there’s more! It’s also important to cross-check personal information, such as photos, fingerprints, gender, height and weight. Oh, and some documents may be forgeries, so you have to look out for that, too.

As you can imagine, it’s easy to slip up and miss something if you’re not paying close enough attention. It can be rather frustrating checking several documents and admitting a person, only to receive a citation because you missed a single, minor thing. And of course, not all the same rules apply to the same people. Depending on the circumstances, you may need to deny entry, confiscate passports or perform body searches depending on the arrival’s country of origin.

All this, in itself, is pretty good as a puzzle game, because it continually adds new dimensions and elements to the core mechanics which keeps you firmly on your toes. Of course, if you had all the time you wanted to check each document it would be far too easy, so the game puts you on a clock. As a lowly worker of Arstotzka, you get paid a small amount for each valid person you process, whether you admit or deny that person entry. The money you earn is important as you need to pay for rent, heating, food and, depending on certain conditions, things like medicine or a birthday present for your son.

So the game becomes a testing and compelling race to inspect as many arrivals as possible in the time allotted. The faster and more efficiently you work, the more money you can make. But if you work too fast, you may begin to make mistakes. A couple will only receive a warning, but any more and you’ll be fined. This can be a punishing game at first. In my first couple of games I ran up debts and was imprisoned, and then the rest of my family died due to sickness because I couldn’t afford the medicine they required. Life kind of sucks in glorious Arstotzka.

But even when you get the hang of things, you’re still struggling to stay above water, and even a single mistake can really throw off your concentration. Fines build up, and before you know it you have to turn your heating off to try to save some money. And it’s these story based elements that really elevates Papers, Please way beyond its simple, but effective puzzle mechanics. Because as good as they are, it’s the framework surrounding them that really makes it a compelling and addictive experience, one you can become quite emotionally invested in.

The story based campaign plays out over about 30 days (if you reach the end, that is). And unlike so many big budget titles, Papers, Please is one of those games that really does present the player with interesting and meaningful choices, choices with real, serious consequences. For example, after helping an anti-government organisation get some of its people across the border, I received a hefty payment. But, getting a little carried away with my wealth, I upgraded our apartment and a suspicious neighbour took notice. The next day I found myself hauled away and imprisoned. This was only one of 20 possible end states. They may mostly be small variations, but all come as a direct result of choices you make.

There are also a lot of smaller stories wrapped within the overall narrative dealing with different people who pass through your checkpoint, and these may have positive or negative consequences as time goes on. Sometimes you’ll willingly let people through who may not have the correct documents, perhaps because they bribed you more than the inevitable fine, or perhaps because you genuinely feel sorry for them.

Because many of them have a sob story to tell, but whether any of them are true is up to you to decide. And as much as you may want to help someone, you have your own family to consider. Letting that person through without valid documents to reunite with their family might be the ‘right’ thing to do, but not if it means you can’t afford to feed your family due to the fine you’ll receive.

The game puts the player in a difficult moral situation. It forces you to make choices that have real consequences further down the line, many of them negative in terms of the outcome for you or your family. In addition to the Story Mode, which I completed in about 8 hours (including a couple of restarts) there’s a customisable ‘Endless’ mode to really test your bureaucratic skills.

But this is a game where the narrative really is an integral part of the experience, interwoven with the gameplay in a clever and compelling way. Overall, Papers, Please was a refreshing, unique and extremely enjoyable experience. What it does, it does pretty much perfectly, hitting every mark and achieving exactly what it sets out to do. Highly recommended.

9/10