Papers, Please

Who'd have thought that playing as a bureaucratic border control officer working in a pseudo-Soviet state circa 1982 would be such an intriguing endeavor. Papers, Please put players behind the desk of a booth situated on the border of Arstotzka, a fictitious state with what looks like a questionable approach to human rights, and the aim of the game is sift through people's papers as they make (or attempt to make) their way into your country, weeding out those who don't have the right credentials to cross the border.

The description of the game is perhaps the most underwhelming part of Papers, Please, and its execution is far more compelling than the previous paragraph would have you believe. It's painstaking, methodical work, but underneath the obvious level of grind (that almost felt akin to Cart Life, winner of the Best Independent Game award at this year's IGF) there's a web of intrigue woven into the game that reveals itself as you progress through the long days spent shuffling papers in your little hut.

In essence, it's a puzzle game. Players walk to work every morning, arrange their workstation for maximum efficiency, read up on the latest directives handed down from head office, and occasionally talk with a colleague or superior. It plays out against a bleak backdrop of corruption. You stand at the gates as humanity shuffles by, and you play the gatekeeper.

Every day starts in much the same way. Once the desk is arranged and the latest bulletin is read, the clock starts and the people come. Each day a new slab of paper driven bureaucracy adds a new challenge to your workload. To start with it's fairly straightforward stuff; check these dates, stamp this document, ask the same questions and check for discrepancies, but before long you've got to consider a list of caveats as long as your arm, and more forms than you can shake a stick at. The never ending stream of amendments keeps you on your toes, and stops boredom in its tracks. Without the constantly evolving challenge, there's no doubt that Papers would be a totally different proposition.

As a border control officer, there's plenty to check, and after a few days it can start to feel overwhelming. DoBs must match in different documents, weight and height must be checked, details mentioned in conversations with the officer must marry up to what's written in the accompanying documentation, stamps must be official, likenesses must be the same. Eventually you're scanning people looking for contraband, checking for inoculation certificates and much, much more.

Success here is measured in the amount of cases you can process in a working day, and the line is always too long, the workload more than you can manage. The more people you process, the more you get paid (why that's important we'll get to in a minute), so there's a compelling reason for you to burn through as many as you can in a day. The problems come when you make a mistake. The horror in Papers, Please comes from the dreaded noise of the ticker machine, which spews out citations moments after you've made an incorrect call. It's absolutely always, always your fault. Didn't check the weight and let in someone smuggling weapons? Your fault. Didn't make sure the passport hadn't expired? Your fault. Didn't notice that the gender on the passport was horribly wrong? Your fault.

If you make too many mistakes, you have to pay a fine, and this is docked from your take home pay. This is significant because, like all good citizens, you have a family at home who look to you for financial support. Don't have enough money to pay for heating, and eventually your family will freeze to death, likewise if you can't afford to put food on the table. If they get sick you'll need to buy medicine, which again costs more money. When you're in this kind of situation, a fine can be disastrous to the health of one or more of your family. It makes the bribes that will eventually come your way all the more enticing. Whether you'll want to accept them is another matter altogether.

All that on its own wouldn't make for a compelling experience, and developer Lucas Pope manages to elevate the game beyond being a curiosity by underpinning the monotony of the day job with a politically savvy story that grows in stature as the game rolls on. It's scripted, and so events will play out at designated times, but it keeps the overall experience fresh. You're never just processing passports. You're also waiting for things to unravel, to find out what happens next.

Even if you disregard the pleasingly methodical puzzle element, and the intriguing plot that bubbles underneath the surface, there is still an element of emotional manipulation that has to be admired. The people that queue up to visit your booth are often desperate, broken souls. Considering the real-world alternative for just a moment is enough to pull at the heartstrings. Throughout the game you're wielding power over those who stand before you, and in your decisions many of their hopes and dreams live or die. Many times over you'll be considering the happiness and well being of those you meet, and weighing it against the needs of your family back home. There's genuine tragedy in some of the minor plot lines, moments of heartbreak, of joy, of anger - your little booth has room for all of these emotions and more. These collisions of humanity are as fleeting as the exchanges that take place between you and those stood before you, but they're there nonetheless, and add to the richness of the overall offering.

There's twenty different endings for players to discover, so many that you're not likely to see them all (unless it becomes an obsession), and the different end states vary considerably. Starting from scratch can be a bit of a grind, but once things pick up the pace is pitch perfect. The art that comes with the different endings might have been more varied, but it's a small gripe. The distinctly spartan visuals date the game wonderfully, like a piece of paper wiped with tea to give it the illusion of age, and the simplistic sound effects only add to that effect. They're purposeful and well observed, their rasping simplicity adding to the bleakness of the overall picture.

Perhaps there could've been more variety, in the individual scenarios and the characters to interact with, but when you consider that this is the work of one man, asking for more kind of feels greedy. If you take stock of what we've been given; a wonderfully paced, intriguing and emotionally charged puzzle game like no other, it's easy to dismiss the odd discrepancy and give it the stamp of approval.