First you think it's a dystopian thriller. Then you remember that you also live in a dystopia. This game shows you how easily the system can ruin your life - there is a myriad of reasons why it can happen.

➕Exceptionally creative and unique
➕Lots of different outcomes/endings
➕Multiple path saving is great for replaying days/getting endings/achievements

🔹Can be very difficult/easy to miss the smallest things and get penalized

➖Can legit feel like work at times/can get tiring

The game world takes place entirely inside a single booth at an immigration checkpoint. There is no exploration or hidden things to be found from the world itself, all of this instead come from the choices you make.

There is a good, yet subtle, narrative. As an immigration officer, you are witnessing firsthand your country slowly succumb to certain fascist behaviors. You have many choices you can make like support the regime or helping the resistance. There are something like 20 different endings, which often only consist of a few screens and some text, but the path you traverse and the decisions you make provide a truly unique experience.

The gameplay loop consists of verifying the documents given to you by people. This starts out simple enough, with just a passport, but rules upon rules are quickly added on very quickly bogging you down. You’ll soon be shuffling 4+ documents and verifying each of them against each other, dates, times, and the person themselves.
If this sounds like it can get overwhelming, you are correct. It can and it does. I don’t think I can play this game in long spurts as it literally feels like work sometimes.
Add on the background mechanics of you are the only worker in a family that relies on your miniscule income to survive and there are some difficult choices you have to make. This intertwines wonderfully with the narrative. Do you accept bribes to let in people that shouldn’t be? These are the constant choices you’ll have to make.

If I wasn’t clear about, this can be a difficult game. There are times when I’ve missed checking a single thing out of dozens and was wrong. There’s even times when I’ve checked things and swear it was correct, but it was still wrong.
Despite the difficulty, the game is lenient in a couple ways. First, you are allowed 2 mistakes before your pay starts getting docked, and the save system is very friendly. It saves after each day so you can go back in time to any point and replay.

The graphics are not great. I’d say PS1-era look. Still, it gets the job done. I do wish the text was a bit smoother though, certain letters like “U” and “V” can be hard to interpret.

I noticed no technical issues, the game ran fine.
I noticed no bugs, but I SWEAR I was right on so many things that those MUST have been bugs! (I have no proof :( )

1440p @ 240hz | installed on SSD

Good audio. There is rarely any music, just the atmosphere that you would expect at a Soviet Russia-style checkpoint.

There is “Voice acting” but I can’t tell if its in Charlie Brown language, or a different language. So this could be nothing.

Aside from the 20 different ending routes, there is also an endless mode, if document scanning is your thing.
The game took me about 5 hours before I got my first legitimate ending, and not just simply ran out of money on day 5….not saying that happened to me at all though….(it did)

Papers, Please is a short point-and-click puzzle game with some political elements. I found it incredibly unique and creative. That doesn’t necessarily mean a good thing, as someone who has worked processing immigration documents, this returned some unfun (boring) memories, but still, I’ve never played a game like this, and it deserves the recognition for creativity.

This game shouldn’t be fun, and sometimes, it definitely isn’t. This is a game about a monotonous “Office” job that is thankless both from rude people and your employer who pays you scraps. Despite this, I found myself often enthralled with all the ramifications that my choices have. Who is going to come up to my booth? What will the outcome be? Is that person telling the truth when they say they’ll be murdered if I don’t let them in? These are the choices you have to make in a typical day in Papers, Please. The depth and consequences of your actions is something that makes this such an interesting activity.

Overall, I do recommend this game. I doubt many people would enjoy playing this long-term, but it’s wonderful for a few quick stints to appreciate the subtle narrative, the choices, and the political intrigue.

$10 is a fair price for this game. $2 historical low is a must-buy.

You can find my curator page here: https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/groups/Synik_GR

glory to arstotzka or whatever ig