Papers, Please Review

By – Armaan Khan

Papers, Please is a game I will never play again.  I don’t say that because it’s bad.  On the contrary, it’s a great game with a greater plot.  The problem is the game carries out its intentions much too effectively.  It tries to put you into the shoes of a person with no power, who has to struggle to survive, and is slave to forces beyond his control.  The sense of despair that the game evokes, the bleakness and desperation of it all, became too much for me.  I had to force myself to keep playing, and now that it’s over, I’ll uninstall and never think about it again.

Let me emphasize, though: Papers, Please is fantastic.  It casts you as a citizen of an oppressive, authoritarian nation called Arstotzka.  You are assigned to work at a border checkpoint, controlling entry into the country according to very specific rules.  At first, things are simple: allow only Arstotzkan citizens entry and keep everyone else out.  But that quickly loosens and anyone can enter so long as they have the proper documentation.  This is when the game truly begins.

Poring over entry documents is the heart and soul of this game.  Every person who enters the checkpoint must present their papers, and you have to make sure all the details are in order.  If a required document is missing, expired, or fraudulent, you must deny entry.  If a gender is listed incorrectly, you’ll have perform a search, which provides photographs of the entrant’s naked body for your perusal (nudity can be disabled if you’re not interested in such).  If a name is misspelled, you need to cross-check fingerprints with known aliases.  Even the weight and height of all individuals must be confirmed before entry is given, and you must turn away or detain anyone who doesn’t 100% meet all the rules.

As the days pass, entry requirements will change according to the political climate, and most of the time, these changes make your life harder by giving you more things to do.  Accuracy is important because you are paid according to the number of error-free entries/denials you process in a day, and every mistake is penalized with increasing fines.  This creates a dynamic tension, in which you need to work quickly in order to maximize earnings, but the faster you work, the more likely you are to make a mistake.

It’s important that you earn as much money as possible because, at the end of each day, you’ll need to pay living expenses.  I found myself very quickly having to make tough choices.  Do I feed my family tonight, or do I let them freeze?  Making the wrong choice means the people who depend on you will grow hungry, become sick, or even die.  And if too many of them perish, your game will be over, because the nation of Arstotzka demands that its workers support large families.

In addition to this personal struggle, you’ll also be pulled into a bigger story.  I won’t spoil the details, but you can imagine the kinds of temptations an overworked, underpaid bureaucrat might face.  You can also imagine the kind of turmoil an authoritarian government might have to contend with. Corruption and political intrigue collide in some very interesting ways during your time as a border agent.  Your character gets caught up in the middle of affairs greater than himself, not as an active participant, but as a pawn whose willingness to obey nonetheless shapes the potential future of the nation.

The choices you have to make with regard to this story are hard, because the things you are asked to do might be morally wrong, but pay well.  Or they might be morally right, but require you to break the rules of entry and thereby incur a fine.  Everything demands a sacrifice, whether it be of integrity or finance, and some actions have consequences that will come back to haunt you when you least expect.  You might find yourself arrested, killed, or worse, and there’s no way of predicting what the future will hold.  As a result, the level of stress one experiences while playing is high, and that’s why I ultimately found myself having a hard time playing.

This stress can be avoided by playing the story-free Endless Mode, however, which allowed me to bask in the more fun parts of the game.  There are three game types in this mode—Timed, Perfection, and Endurance—and you can select from four sets of regulations to abide by.  As such, Endless Mode allows you to experience the challenge and satisfaction of controlling the border without having to deal with the bleakly depressing storyline.  Unfortunately, it is locked behind a numeric code that can only be found by playing the Story mode and attaining one very specific ending… or you can look it up on the Internet, which is the option I chose to pursue.

Conclusion—Is It Worth The Money?

Despite the fact that I’ll never play the game again, I must still say that Papers, Please is worth the $10 it costs.  The basic gameplay is challenging and rewarding, and Endless mode is a lot of fun, once you have it unlocked. While I didn’t much care for the Story mode, it is nonetheless very well executed and you might enjoy it, especially since you know what to expect, emotionally from it.  If you enjoy unique, independently produced offerings, you should definitely consider picking up Papers, Please.