So that’s the source of pressure egging you on to check documents quickly you never see your family but they’re effective enough as a crude barometer of how well you’re doing in the story. I don’t know what happens if you fluff two days in a row like this, but I can only assume it’s appropriately depressing. There is no time to be truly thorough Papers Please is a constant balancing act between “Is this guy actually legit?” and “Sod it, pass him anyway because there’s two hours left and I’ve only done six people today.” Excellently you can pass a level having earned less than the total amount of money you need to take care of your relatives, but the heat will get cut off and the end of day screen will tell you that they’re cold and hungry. You need to earn a minimum amount of money each day to rent and heat your apartment and feed your family, and this is pitched at just the right level to make you always aware of how much time you’re taking to check all the documents. The border checkpoint is open for twelve hours each day, from six in the morning to six in the evening, and your salary is (somewhat bizarrely) paid according to the number of people you manage to correctly pass or turn away from the border. It carries on and on in this vein, with each new document presenting more variables and fields that have to be checked for discrepancies, and what didn’t seem like a particularly easy job to begin with starts to feel like you’re juggling flaming torches, trying desperately not to make a mistake that will lead to a painful penalty,Įven checking all those different types of document would be easy if there wasn’t a time factor involved, of course. Then foreigners looking for work are required to present a third kind of document, the work permit. Then Artsotzkan nationals are required to present their ID cards along with their passports.
Papers please game like it full#
Then the entry slip isn’t enough, and they require full entry permits. Then foreigners are allowed in, but only if they have an appropriate entry slip. First you have a simple passport check, with only Arstotzkan nationals allowed entry. It’s actually quite impressive how Papers Please manages to keep introducing more and more types of document as the Story campaign goes on. Below that the screen is divided into two halves: one contains a the view out through the window of your booth, at which prospective entrants to the country present themselves for inspection, and the other is the top of your desk which will always be covered in a bewildering array of identity papers. Your field of view is restricted to a panorama of the border checkpoint running along the top of the screen, filled with monochrome animated silhouettes of guards and a winding, snakelike line of people waiting for entry into the grey concrete cinderblock dystopia of Arstotzka. Papers uses a muted palette whose occasional flashes of colour and animation style bring to mind a particularly good-looking Amiga game, and the pixelated nature of the documents you are presented with make them curiously easy to parse since your eye is drawn naturally to the parts which matter. It must have taken a lot of talent to make Papers Please look this retro without making me want to claw my own eyes out as Swords and Sworcery did. As a concept it’s basically one step removed from those sodding hidden object games that plague Steam like a bad case of athlete’s foot, but Papers Please excels so well in its setting and execution that it’s ended up being one of the most engrossing puzzle games I’ve played in the last couple of years.
Papers Please is a game where you play a border official in a small totalitarian country, checking passports and identity documents against a small handbook to try and spot any discrepancies or forgeries.
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