Negative or ominously truthful stories are to be suppressed. This is accomplished by running stories that cast the government in a positive light (“Agriculture Output Doubles”) or play on the nation’s fears (“Terrorist Leader’s Hideout Destroyed”) or are simply titillating (“Superstars Chad and Jenlyn File for Divorce”). The player’s job is to boost the population’s loyalty to the regime. In that game, the player takes the role of editor of the titular state newspaper of the fictional country of Republia.
With Papers, Please, Pope builds on themes he explored in his first independent game, The Republia Times (2012). (Screenshot from ‘The Republia Times,’ designed by Lucas Pope) You could, easily and legally, hand a few of these people over to the guards and make a few bucks on the side.
Every now and again, a traveler comes to your booth with a heartrending story - a dying loved one, children they’ve never seen - but the wrong documentation. Immigrants who haven’t kept abreast of the constant changes in state policy are much more common. Criminals - sometimes even terrorists - attempt to pass through the Grestin checkpoint. He tells you he gets a bonus for each person processed for detention. (Screenshot from ‘Papers, Please,’ designed by Lucas Pope)Īround day two or three on the job, one of the soldiers who guards the checkpoint steps to your window. Some travelers don’t have the correct work visa, or have papers that would have been valid yesterday. With each passing day, there are more details to check. Perhaps a prospective immigrant doesn’t resemble the photograph in their documents, in which case fingerprints must be taken and processed. Faces are checked against the state’s most-wanted list. If a traveler is heavier than the weight indicated in their passport, then they must be questioned and X-rayed for contraband. Rumors of insurgent groups with forged documents mean every seal and stamp in an entry visa must be double-checked against those in your handbook. A trade war with a neighboring country causes the Ministry of Admission to ban travelers from the nation.
Take out your green ACCEPTED stamp, mark the appropriate box on the entry visa, hand the owner back his or her documents, and call the next person in line.Īs the game progresses, the restrictions on immigration become more complex. Those holding Arstotzkan passports - assuming the information contained therein matches the person at the window - are considered citizens and may cross the border. The state’s instructions are initially simple. This is accomplished by checking each traveler’s documents - passports, visas, work permits - for authenticity and cross-referencing with various guidelines handed down by the state. The rules are simple: Decide who can enter the country. Papers, Please puts players in control of an unnamed border agent in the fictional Eastern Bloc totalitarian state of Arstotzka in 1982. (Screenshot from ‘Papers, Please,’ designed by Lucas Pope) Which, in the words of Obi-Wan Kenobi, was true from a certain point of view. Eventually, I decided that “doing paperwork” had to mean toiling on some kind of contraption made of paper. Then he sighed, said his boss was “a slave driver,” and carried on eating.Ĭlearly, from Dad’s mournful body language and dyspeptic pronunciation, one could infer that paperwork was bad. One of my earliest childhood memories involves my father, hunched over his dinner, sawing away at some meat substance and complaining about “paperwork.” He spit out each syllable as if it were a piece of insect that had flown into his mouth. Correlate missing or wrong seals against the appropriate countries in the documents chapter of your rulebook.” Another layer of bureaucracy and paperwork has been laid upon your shoulders. “Double-check that required documents contain valid seals. So when you arrive at work, you are not surprised to find a bulletin from the ministry announcing tighter security measures. This morning, you read in The Truth of Arstotzka, the state newspaper, that thieves broke into the Ministry of Admission. Others, perhaps, come for more nefarious purposes. Some come to work some are just passing through. Every day, immigrants and citizens returning home queue in an endless line, snaking through barbed-wire obstacles, in the hopes of entering the country. Your wife is sick and you can barely afford to pay the heating bill. Every day, you leave your family at your state-provided apartment and walk to work: a gray pillbox, flanked by soldiers, on the outskirts of East Grestin.
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