Then there are people who simply wants to be reunited with their family, even though they do not have the appropriate documentation. There are people who operates a prostitution ring, and also people who will keep bugging you until you let them in (hello, Jorji). Over the course of the game, you will find various types of people. Having just finished a 6-year war with its neighbour Kolechia, Arstotzka finally opens up its border to let people cross over.Īpparently you are lucky enough to have been selected by the lottery, and as a consequence you now have to work as the immigration officer. It is set in the border of the fictitious Eastern Bloc country of Arstotzka during the Cold War.
In Papers, Please, you play as an immigration officer, whose job is to check the required documents and passport to determine whether someone will be granted or denied entry to the country. At first glance, Papers, Please seems like your standard average and so-so game that doesn’t pack a punch, but I can tell you for sure, this game, though not great in graphics, will make you ponders about what makes you a human being. Report to the Grestin Border checkpoint at, pay your entry fee of roughly ten dollars, and give it a whirl.A couple of weeks ago, I read in one of the gaming blog about a game that piqued my interest, a game about being an immigration officer. When we take into account the nature of the game’s interface being perfectly in tune with how we play the game and interact with the world, the skilful take on a branching storyline with multiple endings, and the simple power of emotional storytelling, I’d call Papers, Please one of the games you need to look at, if you have any serious interest in games as a media format, or interactive storytelling, or any combination of those things. In some ways, Papers, Please is one of those games that’s almost more experiment than game, and I can hardly pretend it’s for everyone, or that it’s necessarily going to have much long term replayability/interest, but it’s fairly unique, and worth checking out for that reason alone. More branching than interactive, the branches are all meaningful - I’ve only encountered five or so, and between escaping from Arstotzka with my wife, son, and my niece (the daughter of an imprisoned sister), being locked up for showing the Ministry of Information the wrong thing I didn’t want to be given by rebel agents, and making it through all thirty-one days with my head fearfully kept down long enough to escape any suspicion, they’ve all had something deeply emotional to tell me. From the point we’re confronted with a near perfectly immersive interface - we interact with the world by moving documents around, as we step into the role of a passport inspector/border checkpoint desk agent - to the time we (if we’re careful) survive through thirty-one days of life in communist Arstotzka (Glory to Arstotzka!), Papers Please toys with what stories it’s possible to tell around very simple gameplay mechanics.Īnd, even better than that, the one-man-band behind the game, Lucas Pope, really does have a story to tell. Papers, Please is one of those games that, I feel, explores what storytelling in videogames is all about.
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