Mini-Review: Papers, Please
Before Papers, Please, if anyone had suggested a video game or story based on a bureaucracy, I would have just laughed it off. That sort of thing is generally very dull, with lots of examination and careful study of the facts to ensure that everything is correct, and with lots of people who can have any kind of "I'm right, you're wrong" in the world. I've seen it in the line, I've briefly worked a "bureaucratic" position a couple of times being a student member of the course registration office in college as well as working in the admission's office of the college as well, and I can say that it does get rather dull and stressful.
Then I saw Papers, Please and my first thought was "this is a joke, right?" Well, come around to a significant time later, and I finally start playing the game and figuring out what it's all about. The premise is very simple: you are a random person selected from a lottery to work at a brand new border checkpoint for your home country, Arstotska. Your job is to screen people coming into the country and either deny them entry or validate them and let them in. It's a simple job that most could relate to to being very boring, like most of these types of positions.
The game starts off very simple, introducing the basic concepts of denial and acceptance with the stamping on the passports. However, this very quickly becomes more and more complex, leading to a deceptively straightforward learning curve. The game starts with a simple "sort by nationality", asking the player to deny anyone who is not a returning Arstotskan citizen. The very next day, they have to verify the image looks like the person, gender is correct based on picture, the issuing city is correct for where the country, and that the passport has not expired. If the inspector dismisses a valid person, or allows entry for an invalid passport, the game automatically types out a "citation" notice explaining what the player missed.
The game then also begins to introduce conflict, with potential terrorist attacks becoming a problem, issuing forth a secondary form which is valid "entry ticket" that quickly becomes an "entry permit" where the person must explain why they're coming to the country and how long they'll be staying before they leave. Combine this with everything else, and the game starts becoming somewhat frustrating, all while still maintaining a fun and quirky style.
Part of the fun and charm emanates from the setting itself. The character played is a father of a family that is struggling with intense poverty and living in a class-8 apartment to start. There is barely enough money for daily rent and food, as every person admitted only adds up to five credits, and each citation invalidates the credits the inspector would get for processing the individual. The art style is quirky and vaguely abstract, with the people resembling human beings but their skin color often being quite different. Everything else, though, is actually eerily similar to actual passport processing. Cross-referencing numbers, checking information validity, issuing fingerprint forms, checking expiration dates, checking the passport portrait against the person standing in front of you as well as any other pictures on other documents; the list of details that can be missed just keeps piling on as the game progresses. With only 10 minutes, roughly, in real time simulating a full 12-hour shift in game time, the pressure is on to process as many people as possible all while maintaining accuracy and detaining criminals or suspicious individuals. This is all while dealing with salty individuals, fun faces and the added threat of terrorism stopping work for the day, meaning that you aren't paid nearly as much thanks to the interruptions.
The true "fun" of the game comes from the way it refines the detail oriented precision required to complete it. The learning curve, while deceptive in how hard it actually is, is also well balanced. I never felt that any new piece of information was an unfair addition while I was playing, or that I hadn't learned enough from previous experiences to be able to work with what was presented. That being said, the frustration factor in this game is also very high. Missing even a small, one-letter difference can mean getting a citation and not getting credit for the person you just processed with thinking you had done fine. Add to that that multiple citations in a day start subtracting credits from your payment and, ultimately, can get you fired if you keep it up too much, and the frustration can quickly become a valid excuse to want to uninstall the game. This is somewhat kept in check through the cheeky humor, the nice moments in the game, and the charm that the broken English in the game holds, but taking breaks is definitely recommended once the frustration hits.
If you're looking for a completely different experience, give Papers, Please a try. It's a cheap game, it's a short enough game, but it's got hours of replayibility thanks to its randomly generated characters and "endless" mode once you complete the game without failing, leaving or joining any odd groups. There's also the added challenge of getting no citations throughout your work and processing as many people as possible at the same time for veterans coming back to enjoy the story again. The music is simple but well done and the sound effects are rather satisfying to hear as well. Nothing quite beats hearing the "thunk" of the stamp against the passport before you hand it back. Overall, I would recommend this even if it's just to try it and see if you like it.
Then I saw Papers, Please and my first thought was "this is a joke, right?" Well, come around to a significant time later, and I finally start playing the game and figuring out what it's all about. The premise is very simple: you are a random person selected from a lottery to work at a brand new border checkpoint for your home country, Arstotska. Your job is to screen people coming into the country and either deny them entry or validate them and let them in. It's a simple job that most could relate to to being very boring, like most of these types of positions.
The game starts off very simple, introducing the basic concepts of denial and acceptance with the stamping on the passports. However, this very quickly becomes more and more complex, leading to a deceptively straightforward learning curve. The game starts with a simple "sort by nationality", asking the player to deny anyone who is not a returning Arstotskan citizen. The very next day, they have to verify the image looks like the person, gender is correct based on picture, the issuing city is correct for where the country, and that the passport has not expired. If the inspector dismisses a valid person, or allows entry for an invalid passport, the game automatically types out a "citation" notice explaining what the player missed.
The game then also begins to introduce conflict, with potential terrorist attacks becoming a problem, issuing forth a secondary form which is valid "entry ticket" that quickly becomes an "entry permit" where the person must explain why they're coming to the country and how long they'll be staying before they leave. Combine this with everything else, and the game starts becoming somewhat frustrating, all while still maintaining a fun and quirky style.
Part of the fun and charm emanates from the setting itself. The character played is a father of a family that is struggling with intense poverty and living in a class-8 apartment to start. There is barely enough money for daily rent and food, as every person admitted only adds up to five credits, and each citation invalidates the credits the inspector would get for processing the individual. The art style is quirky and vaguely abstract, with the people resembling human beings but their skin color often being quite different. Everything else, though, is actually eerily similar to actual passport processing. Cross-referencing numbers, checking information validity, issuing fingerprint forms, checking expiration dates, checking the passport portrait against the person standing in front of you as well as any other pictures on other documents; the list of details that can be missed just keeps piling on as the game progresses. With only 10 minutes, roughly, in real time simulating a full 12-hour shift in game time, the pressure is on to process as many people as possible all while maintaining accuracy and detaining criminals or suspicious individuals. This is all while dealing with salty individuals, fun faces and the added threat of terrorism stopping work for the day, meaning that you aren't paid nearly as much thanks to the interruptions.
The true "fun" of the game comes from the way it refines the detail oriented precision required to complete it. The learning curve, while deceptive in how hard it actually is, is also well balanced. I never felt that any new piece of information was an unfair addition while I was playing, or that I hadn't learned enough from previous experiences to be able to work with what was presented. That being said, the frustration factor in this game is also very high. Missing even a small, one-letter difference can mean getting a citation and not getting credit for the person you just processed with thinking you had done fine. Add to that that multiple citations in a day start subtracting credits from your payment and, ultimately, can get you fired if you keep it up too much, and the frustration can quickly become a valid excuse to want to uninstall the game. This is somewhat kept in check through the cheeky humor, the nice moments in the game, and the charm that the broken English in the game holds, but taking breaks is definitely recommended once the frustration hits.
If you're looking for a completely different experience, give Papers, Please a try. It's a cheap game, it's a short enough game, but it's got hours of replayibility thanks to its randomly generated characters and "endless" mode once you complete the game without failing, leaving or joining any odd groups. There's also the added challenge of getting no citations throughout your work and processing as many people as possible at the same time for veterans coming back to enjoy the story again. The music is simple but well done and the sound effects are rather satisfying to hear as well. Nothing quite beats hearing the "thunk" of the stamp against the passport before you hand it back. Overall, I would recommend this even if it's just to try it and see if you like it.
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