There is a very strange power dynamic at work in this game. All interaction with other characters is indirect the player is coaxed into being as emotionally and physically detached from his family as he is from the immigrants and citizens who pass through your office window. The only other option given to you on this screen is “SLEEP”. In the game’s current build, you cannot interact with them directly, either (I would keep it that way) you may only adjust whether you will pay for heat or food for that night. The status of your family is displayed on the right, though your family is never actually seen. The cost of rent, food, and heat is deducted from your savings and earnings for the day. I found the pressure exhilarating and incredibly stressful (in a good way, if that makes sense).Īt the end of each day you return to your apartment and your score for the day is tallied. At the later stages, it becomes very difficult to view all the paperwork at once. The space provided to you (the actual player) is as small as the game makes it out to be. At this point I should warn you: if you are claustrophobic, you may not want to play this game. The bottom half of the screen displays the inside of said office. In the center of it all is a tall concrete wall and your tiny office. To call it unwelcoming would be a staggering understatement. To the right is a long stretch of paved concrete and an armed guard. To the left is a queue huddled, featureless masses of immigrants seeking passage into Arstotzka. The top half of the screen displays an overview the border checkpoint. This makes for a very dark and isolated atmosphere. Papers, Please uses retro graphics and a color palette composed of dark, cold colors (gray, blue, brown, and red – colors common to soviet propaganda art). Disturbingly, I reported to work at 6 AM sharp the next day.Įxposition for Papers, Please is provided by… I learned the importance of balancing speed and efficiency the hard way when my son and wife became ill and passed away only one week into my first play-through. Additionally, you are responsible for paying for food, rent, and heat, all of which are necessary for your family’s health and well-being at the end of each game day (in that regard, it’s like a more contemporary Oregon Trail, if Oregon Trail had gulags). You must micromanage the influx documents that come through your workstation as the meager pay you receive at the end of the work day is docked for poor performance. Seems simple enough, right? As the game progresses, it becomes necessary to become increasingly discerning as border security adopts stringent measures for admission into your fair motherland. Your job, at first, is fairly straightforward only admit into Arstotzka those who meet the requirements outlined by your handy MOA guidebook. Headlines also provide you with hints towards your objective for that day. The story telling elements of the game are very minimal, most of what you could consider the game’s “plot” is revealed to you at the beginning of each day through newspaper headlines. Your family is also to be relocated to a “Class-8 dwelling”, which I can only assume is a euphemism for a ghetto.
You, the player, are the lucky winner of the Arstotzkan October labor lottery and to begin working for the Ministry of Admission (MOA) as an immigration inspector at the newly opened border checkpoint. A large chunk of the game takes place inside an immigration checkpoint in Grestin, a fictional border town split into East and West by the recent conflict between the neighboring communist states of Kolechia and Arstotzka. Papers, Please is set in what appears to be a dramatization of the former Eastern bloc. I recently found myself addicted to an independently developed video game called Papers, Please.
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