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♪(Intro music playing)♪

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So, a few years ago there was the man
who went up to the moon,

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there was a wall that got torn down

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and union that got dissolved

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and now that all that stuff is over
and done with

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we have this game called Papers, Please

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and it might be the most conventionally

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"FUN" product of this weird
post-pop indie workgame movement

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And by conventionally fun
I mean to say

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that Papers, Please is technically

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a polished product

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It feels good, is sounds good,
it looks (short pause) good enough

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and it has a sense of reward and punishment

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that hooks you into wanting to win

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But that's all where its conventional
qualities end

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Winning in this game isn't 
necessarily glorious

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and given the setting and subject matter,
it shouldn't be

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For those who played the free demo 
back in February

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the core experience of playing
the full version of Papers, Please

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is pretty much the same thing

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You're working the border checkpoint
of an impoverished communist nation

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in early 80's that's somewhere 
east of Berlin and west of Beijing

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Immigrants line-up towards
an inspection desk

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and hand you a bunch of paperwork

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you scan it over

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checking for discrepancies

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typos and forgeries

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and after violating few of their rights you either let them pass or send them back home

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And that's the whole core of the game, you're literal paper-pusher

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The most basic and common action in this game is just sliding papers around the desk

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And believe it or not - it feels surprisingly good

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Mostly thanks to some really crisp crinkly paper sound effects

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in the sharp pixel art style that filters out all but the most necessary information

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Plus the printer sound effect you get when you make a mistake is really grading

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For some reason that noise drove me nuts

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and it makes screwing up feel that much worse

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As the game goes on the nation's rules, regulations and policies change

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more types of paperwork get out into the pile, so keeping your desk organized

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and free of clutter becomes a secondary objective to processing the immigrants through

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A few twists and turns later, you're suddenly decyphering coded messages

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and actually shooting down trespassers

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But all that is just mechanical, as the demo hinted at

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the full game has a lot of stories to tell on the other side of that counter.

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You're catching glimpses of these characters' lives, while they're at their most vulnerable

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The robotic and almost anonymous bureaucratic actions on your end

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carry heavy emotional weight

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Depending on how you interpret your country's strict immigration policies

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you might break up families of war refugees or inadvertently traffic prostitutes

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You're given two chances to make mistakes before an invisible supervisor

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starts docking your pay and weighing where, when and how let some of these

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characters slip through the wall creates an intersection of time, ethical

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and monetary pressure

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In other words, this game makes processing paperwork way more

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exciting and stressful than it has any right to be,

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because it gives those actions long term mechanical and contextual consequences.

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There are multiple branching story paths that eventually lead to twenty different endings

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And they all depend on who you let throurgh, how many mistakes you make

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and how fast you can push all those papers

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Before long you make contact with a resistance movement

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and diplomats and spies start trying to make their way through

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and suddenly your decisions carry historical weight

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You're seeing recurring characters show-up enough times to develop arcs

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and bunch bunch of minor little details to this unverse

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suddenly become important

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Even names of these cities are relevant to the international politics going on

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which are also influenced by the country's position on the map

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and whether or not you play to the certain fraction that go to your checkpoint

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at critical moments can determine how the rest of the entire story plays out

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But all things considered, this game tells it's story in such unorthodox

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and clever way that I am ready to recommend it based on it's uniqueness alone

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I mean, what genre would you call this thing?

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Is it a puzzle game? Is it a work simulator? Is it a point&click adventure?

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It tells a darkly humorous political satire on a really small stage

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and essential gameplay mechanic is the most boring kind of work imaginable

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But the places it takes you and the things that has you do without ever leaving

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that desk feel so natural in this setting, that it's also kind of creepy too

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so the game is clever and unique experiment into familiar and realistic territory

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and it works! Lucas Pope pulled this off very well

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But the one slip-up in the process might have been the free demo

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he released one year ago

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Mainly, because there is not substantial amount of new content

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added to the final build

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The game is only 10 dollars, but it's still pretty close to the same experience

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you can get for free

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There's a minor bit of audiovisual polish, there are couple of new types of paperwork

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to manage and also an upgrade system that has keyboard shortcuts to the interface

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but it's a four hour and ten dollar game that has you doing the exact same stuff

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you did for free for one hour in the demo

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The problem is that after few of those hours

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the repetition of processing people's papers over and over again

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starts to feel less quirky and ironic and more like actual wrok

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If anything, it doesn't really change or add to the experience of the demo

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it just intensifies it

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Ok, hear me out

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This process gets really hard sometimes for no reason

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On some days I swear every last person in this line is trying to hide something

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So every damn time you don't probe over every little detail

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your supervisor yells at you

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and I get it.

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I f**d up, I admit. But, do you wanna do this job?

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I'm just one guy here, gimme a break!

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This place is a God damn mess!

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It's clear that this broke-ass government has me understaffed and insecured.

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People are blowing each other off right outside my office

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and the criminals are giving me more money than my employers.

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And it's no wonder I take those bribes. It's the only way to keep my kid from getting sick

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every time I wake up and say hi to him in the morning.

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And maybe I wouldn't take them if this bankrupt administration

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just pay these people just to give a damn, but when corruption is the only way to

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take care of my own people, then what do you expect from me.

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So no, I am sorry, I cannot do this job as fast as you think I can.

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Your demands are unreasonable and I am incapable, I am trying as hard as I can

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and I am still losing, so f<b>k you, f</b>k this country an f**k this job.

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So I think that if you go into this game with the kind of precautionary mindset

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then it will still feel worth the purchase.

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Things get pretty frustrating, but not in an inappropriate way.

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There might not be enough there mechanically to justify

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the time and money it takes to play

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But this thing successfully makes a game system

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out of the desperation, frustration and never ending poverty

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that characterized an entire era

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It also makes a historical fictional allegory out of it

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that makes this world seem a whole lot like their own.

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It's funny, it's scary, it's insightful and it's relevant.

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And for that it's a pretty damn cool game.

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And throughout the frustrating repetitive grind that is playing it,

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it earned a hell of a lot of my respect.

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I highly encourage that everyone at least check out the demo,

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but if you are to purchase the full version

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then keep in mind that the kind of gameplay in demo

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might lose it's novelty after the first few hours.

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But after thinking about it for a while

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you might realize that it's kind of the point

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and that it also never really stopped being fun, for whatever fun is supposed to mean

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in this kind of case