Papers, Please

When Lucas Pope released Papers, Please in 2013, it quickly received critical acclaim and landed on lists of the best games of that year. Though I had an awareness of the game at the time, including a hilarious Mega64 sketch, I didn’t get around to actually playing the Steam version until faced with a global pandemic and, even then, only after watching a few videos on YouTube of people playing the first few in-game days. As I watched these videos, however, I felt that they had, unintentionally or not, made the game look more difficult than it really was. After finally playing it myself, I can conclude that while it didn’t feel as difficult as it looked, it really deserved all the praise it got.

The premise of Papers, Please is rather simple. The country of Arstotzka has completed its October Labor Lottery and your name was selected. You are assigned to migration checkpoint to work as border officer to ensure that only those with the proper paperwork may enter.

How unfortunate.

Depending on your loyalty and performance across thirty-one days, you may see any of twenty possible endings, most of which involve death or imprisonment. During this time, Papers, Please delivers its story by effectively weaving it into the gameplay itself. Potential border crossers may try to bribe you and a certain terrorist group may try recruiting you to their cause. You will also receive visits from certain higher-ups or form relationships with memorable NPCs, all of which have an effect on gameplay or can influence the decisions you make. As the story reveals its many twists and turns and the weight of the job sinks in, the player can easily find their morality tested and learn how willing they are to bend the rules in spite of constant pressure from a dystopian Eastern Bloc-like regime. This level of player agency is one that, even now, more games should strive for. Add to that that even without proper voice acting, players can still easily empathize with various NPCs.

As for how the player goes about their role as a border officer, the core mechanics are simple, but gradually reveal their depth through a steady and well-executed difficulty curve. Each day on the job is an abridged twelve-hour shift from 6AM to 6PM. During each shift, you’ll review the required documentation based on an ever-changing set of rules influenced by external factors like terrorist attacks or a polio outbreak. You have a number of tools at your disposal that help the process, mainly through checking and settling any discrepancies that may pop up, including an Inspect Mode, a body scanner and a fingerprint sheet. Should you find any discrepancies, you can Interrogate the immigrant or returning citizen to clear it up. If you can’t clear any discrepancies, then you can deny them entry or detain them.

The number of documents can eventually look unwieldy.

Sometimes discrepancies show up when comparing photographs, which is where the pixel art style really shines as a feature. When the differences seem too small, like a hairstyle change, you might investigate it because you don’t know if that will count against you. Similarly, criminal photos can look low-res, which can result in confusion on whether or not the passport photo you’re looking at matches up without the Inspect tool.

Since you get a salary of five Credits for each person who goes through the booth, shifts can quickly involve balancing efficiency with carefully checking for even the smallest error while navigating through both randomly generated and scripted events. Achieving this balance early on really helps during later stages, especially if you can effectively avoid mistakes and, subsequently, violations. You generally get two free warnings per shift, but each one beyond that point incurs a rising payment penalty. If you can achieve this, you can more easily participate in side quests for unique rewards, though some of these may require burning through your free warnings. Either way, the possibility of seeing a violation slowly print onto the screen can fill you with dread, especially if you’ve already burned through your free warnings.

Look for any discrepancies to help avoid violations.

At the end of each day, you receive a record of your earnings and can choose how to budget your Credits between feeding your family, heating your apartment, getting medication or upgrading your booth/apartment. Unless you’re going for a specific achievement, however, apartment upgrades aren’t necessary to complete the game and alternating between food and heat proved effective at saving money for later days. Barely scraping by between paychecks adds to the setting, since it can influence a player’s decisions in accepting bribes or going along with certain schemes for an underhanded way of bringing in more money.

If you reach Ending 20, which the game considers one of the more desirable endings, you’ll unlock a code that grants access to Endless Mode, an additional mode where players can challenge themselves through various settings. There are three main challenges: Timed, where players process as many travelers as possible in ten minutes; Perfection, where a single penalty ends the game; and Endurance, where you play until you have a negative balance. From there, you can choose how many documents each traveler can carry. This mode provides great replay value and can even help you practice for the main game’s own unique challenges. Notably, the code that unlocks Endless Mode doesn’t change between copies of the game, so you could easily look it up online if you’re impatient.

Endless Mode provides a great amount of replay value.

Underneath the game lies a minimal but memorable score. There are only three songs, but they perfectly match the tone of the moment and the main theme in particular will easily stick with you long after playing.

Even years later, Papers, Please does an incredible job at testing the player’s empathy and morality, as well as combining gameplay and story. If you have any interest in playing it, I’d highly recommend giving it a try. For a smoother experience, you can also try playing it with a drawing tablet.