Review: Papers Please
Aug. 19th, 2013 08:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalGlory to Arstroska!
Papers Please is one of those odd little indie games (its development "team" had exactly one person on it) that is very compelling despite the subject matter and deliberately primitive 16 bit graphics.
The year is 1982, and in the game you are a newly appointed border control agent in the Eastern European nation of Arstroska. It's your job to examine the passports of both foreigners and Arstroskan citizens to determine if their papers are correct so as to approve or deny their entry. You get paid ten Arstroskan dollars for every correctly processed customer during your 12 hour shift, which goes towards paying for rent, food and heat in your crappy class 8 apartment that you share with your extended family.
That's it.
Except that isn't it, because the entry requirements and paperwork you have to examine change on an almost daily basis, bomb throwing terrorists sometimes slip through to make things even more difficult as security ramps up, and oh, what are you going to do for that woman who's husband just came through but who doesn't have the correctly dated visa slip? (Never mind the guy who tries to slip through using a passport written in crayon.) The result is a tense game where you must balance comparing several different pieces of information to make sure they all match while doing it all quickly to earn enough money to survive.
Recommended.
Papers Please is one of those odd little indie games (its development "team" had exactly one person on it) that is very compelling despite the subject matter and deliberately primitive 16 bit graphics.
The year is 1982, and in the game you are a newly appointed border control agent in the Eastern European nation of Arstroska. It's your job to examine the passports of both foreigners and Arstroskan citizens to determine if their papers are correct so as to approve or deny their entry. You get paid ten Arstroskan dollars for every correctly processed customer during your 12 hour shift, which goes towards paying for rent, food and heat in your crappy class 8 apartment that you share with your extended family.
That's it.
Except that isn't it, because the entry requirements and paperwork you have to examine change on an almost daily basis, bomb throwing terrorists sometimes slip through to make things even more difficult as security ramps up, and oh, what are you going to do for that woman who's husband just came through but who doesn't have the correctly dated visa slip? (Never mind the guy who tries to slip through using a passport written in crayon.) The result is a tense game where you must balance comparing several different pieces of information to make sure they all match while doing it all quickly to earn enough money to survive.
Recommended.
