Lucas Pope sure is an odd duck, but in all the right ways.
His games are almost always entirely unlike anything you’ve likely ever played before: the protagonists of his games are not heroes, cartoon animals, or dudes with big swords; they’re insurance brokers, direct mail employees, or newspaper editors. His games often take aspects of life often treated as boring drudgery-work and finds the unexpected gameplay loops within them.
An air of Kafkaesque bureaucracy and a dystopian seems to be a running theme in his games as well: In his game The Republia Times, you play as the editor of the eponymous newspaper of a dictatorship and work to either improve or harm your country’s reputation to suit your needs. Six Degrees of Sabotage has you seeking out the behavioural patterns of citizens to root out a network of saboteurs via surveillance footage.
Papers, Please is not only his first full-length game, but also is a combination of these two uniquely Popeian game elements to create the perfect storm.
Overview
Papers, Please, described by the promotional material as “A Dystopian Document Thriller”, sees you playing the role of the newly appointed customs officer working at the border of the fictional country Arstotzka. Your job is to inspect people’s papers, check for discrepancies, and either let them through or deny them entry to the country. Every successful check you perform by the end of the day nets you more cash, which you mostly spend on keeping your family housed, fed, and warm.
I know the idea
of a paperwork simulator doesn’t sound interesting on the surface, but Pope’s specialty is being able to take actions that seem dull on the surface and turn them into rather engrossing games. If you’ve ever gotten into a comfortable rhythm at a somewhat repetitive job, this game captures that feeling perfectly while actually being a consistently fun challenge.
Gameplay
Like I said, this game is all about the papers, as the name would imply. It starts off simple: The borders are only open to fellow Arstotzkans, so only let them in. Then the borders are open, just as long as everyone has a passport that’s all correct and not expired. Then non-Arstotzkans start needing entry permits, work permits, vaccination records, with rules piling up one after the other to give you more and more to worry about as you check each document for discrepancies.
If that all sounds hectic, well, it is. Thankfully you have a handy little pocketbook in-game which gives you all the information you’ll need to cross-reference with the documentation. After a while, you’ll start to memorize information like the valid issuing cities of each country and how to spot forged seals. If you don’t feel like that, however, some people have made physical copies of this book just to make their lives a bit easier. Does it break the point of the gameplay, or is it just a smart move? You decide.
For every person you successfully process, you get some money. You’ll find most of this money going to keeping you and your family’s basic needs met, and if you ever fail to pay your rent or let your family get too cold and hungry, it’s game over. Just like real life! Unfortunately, unlike real life, you don’t get paid by the hour, so your ability to keep yourself in the black is entirely based on how quickly and accurately you can process people. Make mistakes and you may find yourself getting docked pay, so try not to do that.
Visuals
Pope’s games always try to evoke a uniquely retro look and feel, Papers, Please made to look like an old DOS game of the early 90’s, but with a clear modern polish to keep it from looking too much like a relic of the past.
You’ll be spending a lot of this game just looking at people’s faces, so thankfully you don’t see too many identical people popping up. The faces are all distinct enough that even on the small, grainy passport photos you can tell when it’s supposed to be the same person or not. And that’s good because you’ll be doing that. A lot.
Overall, the graphics are fine. They’re serviceable, nice and stylish, they get the job done. Definitely not what you’re here for, though.
Story/Themes
As you’ve probably guessed by this point, this game has a lot to say in regard to immigration, politics, and governmental oppression. It’s not exactly subtle in how it depicts Arstotzka as an expy of USSR-era Russia, but that doesn’t mean it’s critiques can’t be considered relevant in more modern climates.
One key tension in the game is between Arstotzka and the neighbouring country Kolechia. Not too far into the game, a Kolechain suicide bomber gets past your gates and kills several armed guards, prompting sudden rule changes which heavily discriminate against Kolechian citizens. Suddenly, you’ll be asked to perform ‘random inspections’ on all citizens of Kolechia attempting to enter the country, performing invasive x-ray scans of their bodies to check for weapons or contraband.
This isn’t the only time the rules you must enforce change with the seemingly fickle politics of the world: On one day you will be told to deny all citizens of Impor due to nothing more than trade disagreements, and near the end you’re confiscating passports of Arstotzkan citizens to prevent them from leaving the country. As simply one single cog in the massively oppressive machine that is Arstotzka, you don’t have a say in the unpredictable political climate of your world, but you do get to choose your tiny acts of defiance here and there.
The game has a handful of moral dilemmas for you to ponder… however, I will admit that the only real ones the gameplay can offer boil down to “This person has a very good reason to get to Arstotzka, but there’s a discrepancy on their papers! Do you let them through anyways?”. Whenever someone started to tell me about their family or their sick mother or whatever it started to make me roll my eyes because I knew this person was gonna have an expired passport or something. However repetitive the scenario may be, it does have quite the impact due to the nature of your paycheck: Letting this person through might mean the difference between affording to feed your child or not, especially if you’ve already made a mistake or two earlier today. Turning away these people feels bad, but you may internally justify it due to needing to cover your own ass. Nevertheless, genuine consequences for your actions in a video game is always something to praise.
Now, I said you have no real influence in this world, but technically that’s a lie: One of the big plot threads that goes throughout the game is your possible involvement with a shadowy organization called EZIC. You have quite the valuable position to them, and they have some big changes they’d like to make to Arstotzka. Play along with them, and maybe you’ll help them spark a people’s revolution… or maybe they’re just as bad as the old guys but with some better PR. Either way, you can decide for yourself if you want to humour them or kick them to the curb, and there’s pretty good reasons to pick either option.
All in all, Papers, Please has a very engaging setting and sells the oppressive, dystopian atmosphere incredibly well. It gives you plenty of opportunities to help shape the story as you decide who to help and who to turn away.
Final Thoughts
Papers, Please is definitely one of the most unique games you’ll ever play. A surprisingly interesting gameplay loop, an undeniably eye-catching premise, and a story that was enough to genuinely make me shake. Plus it’s a pretty cheap buy so… why not? Might as well get it, what else are you gonna do with your time nowadays huh?