Glory to Arstotzka my fellow gamers! I was once in fear that our glorious nation was ruled by fear and forced labour, but I have had my faith restored thanks to our glorious leaders kindly offering me a position at immigration, a position which will allow me to care for my family with its generous pay and its complimentary accommodation. I must get back to my position now, if another terrorist gets through I fear I wont see my family again. Glory to Arstotzka.
Papers, Please is one of the most innovative and unique titles on the market to date due to the fact that there is absolutely nothing like it. Like many I heard the hype and was eager to play the indie game that was considered as a serious contender for many big game of the year awards.
You play as an unnamed immigration officer one one of the borders of fictitious city Arstotzka, you go to work to earn money to feed your family, keep them warm, keep them well and ultimately keep a roof over your heads.
Each new day brings changes to Arstotzka's political standing against countries meaning having to memorize the rulebook whilst on the job. You also meet characters that contribute the the ever moving story of Papers, Please; including forgers who return on daily basis with different credentials to before, wanted criminals, families, terrorists and a resistance group whose goal is to bring down the Arstotzkan government. It is up to you who to help, who to side with in every single circumstance and each choice will ultimate push you towards one of the games 20 possible endings.
Fail to keep your family alive or get caught doing something you shouldn't and you'll game over faster than you would think. Papers, Please is unrelentingly difficult, but it never feels unfair or frustrating.
Gameplay wouldn't feel out of place on a touch controlled device, which makes it a shame that there is no handheld version of this game as it would definitely feel more at home than on a PC. The majority of the game takes place in your booth. You have two areas of your booth, one where information is stored and one where it is examined. As people walk up to the booth they will pass you information such as Passports, Identity Cards and Work Permits in an attempt to enter the country. You must cross reference every piece of evidence you are given with each other, the information displayed on the left hand side of the screen and the days specific rules outlined in the handbook. All whilst working against the clock to try and process as many people as you can before the time runs out.
Papers, Please is extremely frantic and requires good coordination, organisation and a speedy eye. The faster you can correctly process someone, the faster you can do another, the more people you can correctly process the more money you earn to support your family. But then your morals come into play.
What if a man and his wife want to pass through but one of them do not have the correct information, do you let them both through, potentially allowing a terrorist into the country and also taking a hit to the pay-check. Or do you deny the one with incorrect information, allowing yourself to look after your family but tearing apart someone else's at the same time.
At the end of the day you are given a breakdown of how much you earned and where the money will go, you are then given the choice of where to spend money to keep your family alive such as food, heating or medicine.
The game never makes you stop thinking, it never lets up even for a second. Its mentally taxing, unforgiving and will make you think twice before complaining about customs the next time you're going abroad.
The games aesthetic is unique to say the least. Presented in an almost dot-matrix style, colours trend around the more earth coloured spectrum with dull greens, maroons, browns and greys are commonplace. Luckily this means its accessible for the majority of systems on the market today, you would be hard pressed to not be able to run the game.
The games soundtrack immediately places you into the dictatorial eastern European setting with its slow and monotonous tone with quite frankly more than a hint of Soviet inspiration to it. It really sets the atmosphere and compliments the game perfectly, but after a while you begin wanting more than the one song.
Papers, Please is the definition of its genre...mainly because it is the only game in its genre. If there was a Border Control Simulator, after playing Papers, Please I would definitely give it a go. But no matter how good the game is, I still feel as it it could have done more. Do what? Well that I cant say, I cant think of a way it could improve but I fell as if it could be a lot better than it is. Especially for Game of the Year contender.
If a mobile or handheld port was made then I feel the game would be much more at home, perhaps maybe that's what its missing.
Despite that, the game is excellent something everyone should experience regardless of genre preference. Its something that you really cant understand how good it is until you have had first hand experience of it and it manages to strike the right balance of difficult but not frustrating...Glory to Arstotzka!
Papers, Please – 9/10
+Unique
+A Boring Concept, Brilliant in Practice
+Frantic Yet Organised at the Same Time
-Lack of Music Variety
-Would Feel More at Home on Handheld Devices
