Despite the huge amount of creative talent employed by the games industry, new games generally fall into one of several recognizable categories – you have your puzzle games, your action platformers, your shooters, your RPGS, your turn-based and real-time strategy games. Proven formulae tend to get used again and again.
Even independents often fall into these ruts. But every so often, you happen across a real innovation like Papers, Please – a game billing itself as a “dystopian document thriller” in which you play a harried customs inspector on the border of a fictional Eastern bloc state in late 1982.
Your job, as the game’s title rather frankly suggests, is to examine immigration documents and identification of people attempting to enter the dubiously great nation of Arstotzska, which has just opened its borders following a six-year war with a neighboring state. A long line of hopefuls has gathered outside your checkpoint, and you examine their passports, visitors’ passes, and work permits, eventually deciding whether to give them an approval or denial stamp.
That’s the game’s core action. Stamping passports. No, seriously.
Does that sound dull? Well, that’s because it kind of is – but Papers, Please manages to weave the boredom caused by a soul-killing job into its remarkable and simple presentation. Through the simple mechanics – morning headlines, constantly-changing security procedures, and the border-crossers themselves – something starts to develop. If not a story, it’s certainly a slice-of-life look at what it might be like living under an oppressive autocracy. After each day ends, you’re shown a breakdown of your earnings and expenses, which include the rent, food, and heat you need to care for your humble family.
Papers, Please is presented in a deliberately retro graphical style – reinforcing the notion that Arstotzska is an anachronism among nations. Simultaneously, though, the art and color palette are used to amazing effect. As travelers move up to your checkpoint, their silhouettes move believably and fluidly. Outside, the dark, pixelated queue shambles morosely forward as you process each one. Some hand you flyers for brothels, ominously suggesting an ongoing sex trafficking ring somewhere within Arstotzska. Others beg to be let through to join their spouse or children. Terrorists periodically strike the border, leading to new mandatory checkpoint procedures. And each morning, you’re given a new set of border control rules to follow in order to make enough to support your family, undoubtedly shivering in a government-provided apartment.
Without having to spell it out to you explicitly, Papers, Please creates rising tension by pitting your need to process as many entrants as possible through your checkpoint each day against increasingly detailed requirements – You must verify information on passports and work visas against each other and against the entrant herself, looking for discrepancies that signal falsified documents and forgeries. And while the work itself seems like a drudgery, there’s an increasing level of fear quietly being cultivated. Papers, Please is a simple game that manages to communicate something important about authoritarianism without having to beat us about the head with its message.
Given the impressive design and thematic unity of the game, it’s hard to believe it was all created by one guy – Lucas Pope, who also made the Independent Games Festival award-winning Helsing’s Fire for iOS devices. He said he’s been working on Papers, Please since last November, and he’s posted the details of the game’s development here.
The brief beta version of Papers, Please is available to download for free from his website, but he’s also hoping to get the game approved by Steam’s Greenlight service. You can vote for it here.
Glory to Arstotzska.
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