♪(Intro music playing)♪
So, a few years ago there was the man who went up to the moon,
there was a wall that got torn down
and union that got dissolved
and now that all that stuff is over and done with
we have this game called Papers, Please
and it might be the most conventionally
"FUN" product of this weird post-pop indie workgame movement
And by conventionally fun I mean to say
that Papers, Please is technically
a polished product
It feels good, is sounds good, it looks (short pause) good enough
and it has a sense of reward and punishment
that hooks you into wanting to win
But that's all where its conventional qualities end
Winning in this game isn't necessarily glorious
and given the setting and subject matter, it shouldn't be
For those who played the free demo back in February
the core experience of playing the full version of Papers, Please
is pretty much the same thing
You're working the border checkpoint of an impoverished communist nation
in early 80's that's somewhere east of Berlin and west of Beijing
Immigrants line-up towards an inspection desk
and hand you a bunch of paperwork
you scan it over
checking for discrepancies
typos and forgeries
and after violating few of their rights you either let them pass or send them back home
And that's the whole core of the game, you're literal paper-pusher
The most basic and common action in this game is just sliding papers around the desk
And believe it or not - it feels surprisingly good
Mostly thanks to some really crisp crinkly paper sound effects
in the sharp pixel art style that filters out all but the most necessary information
Plus the printer sound effect you get when you make a mistake is really grading
For some reason that noise drove me nuts
and it makes screwing up feel that much worse
As the game goes on the nation's rules, regulations and policies change
more types of paperwork get out into the pile, so keeping your desk organized
and free of clutter becomes a secondary objective to processing the immigrants through
A few twists and turns later, you're suddenly decyphering coded messages
and actually shooting down trespassers
But all that is just mechanical, as the demo hinted at
the full game has a lot of stories to tell on the other side of that counter.
You're catching glimpses of these characters' lives, while they're at their most vulnerable
The robotic and almost anonymous bureaucratic actions on your end
carry heavy emotional weight
Depending on how you interpret your country's strict immigration policies
you might break up families of war refugees or inadvertently traffic prostitutes
You're given two chances to make mistakes before an invisible supervisor
starts docking your pay and weighing where, when and how let some of these
characters slip through the wall creates an intersection of time, ethical
and monetary pressure
In other words, this game makes processing paperwork way more
exciting and stressful than it has any right to be,
because it gives those actions long term mechanical and contextual consequences.
There are multiple branching story paths that eventually lead to twenty different endings
And they all depend on who you let throurgh, how many mistakes you make
and how fast you can push all those papers
Before long you make contact with a resistance movement
and diplomats and spies start trying to make their way through
and suddenly your decisions carry historical weight
You're seeing recurring characters show-up enough times to develop arcs
and bunch bunch of minor little details to this unverse
suddenly become important
Even names of these cities are relevant to the international politics going on
which are also influenced by the country's position on the map
and whether or not you play to the certain fraction that go to your checkpoint
at critical moments can determine how the rest of the entire story plays out
But all things considered, this game tells it's story in such unorthodox
and clever way that I am ready to recommend it based on it's uniqueness alone
I mean, what genre would you call this thing?
Is it a puzzle game? Is it a work simulator? Is it a point&click adventure?
It tells a darkly humorous political satire on a really small stage
and essential gameplay mechanic is the most boring kind of work imaginable
But the places it takes you and the things that has you do without ever leaving
that desk feel so natural in this setting, that it's also kind of creepy too
so the game is clever and unique experiment into familiar and realistic territory
and it works! Lucas Pope pulled this off very well
But the one slip-up in the process might have been the free demo
he released one year ago
Mainly, because there is not substantial amount of new content
added to the final build
The game is only 10 dollars, but it's still pretty close to the same experience
you can get for free
There's a minor bit of audiovisual polish, there are couple of new types of paperwork
to manage and also an upgrade system that has keyboard shortcuts to the interface
but it's a four hour and ten dollar game that has you doing the exact same stuff
you did for free for one hour in the demo
The problem is that after few of those hours
the repetition of processing people's papers over and over again
starts to feel less quirky and ironic and more like actual wrok
If anything, it doesn't really change or add to the experience of the demo
it just intensifies it
Ok, hear me out
This process gets really hard sometimes for no reason
On some days I swear every last person in this line is trying to hide something
So every damn time you don't probe over every little detail
your supervisor yells at you
and I get it.
I f**d up, I admit. But, do you wanna do this job?
I'm just one guy here, gimme a break!
This place is a God damn mess!
It's clear that this broke-ass government has me understaffed and insecured.
People are blowing each other off right outside my office
and the criminals are giving me more money than my employers.
And it's no wonder I take those bribes. It's the only way to keep my kid from getting sick
every time I wake up and say hi to him in the morning.
And maybe I wouldn't take them if this bankrupt administration
just pay these people just to give a damn, but when corruption is the only way to
take care of my own people, then what do you expect from me.
So no, I am sorry, I cannot do this job as fast as you think I can.
Your demands are unreasonable and I am incapable, I am trying as hard as I can
and I am still losing, so fk you, fk this country an f**k this job.
So I think that if you go into this game with the kind of precautionary mindset
then it will still feel worth the purchase.
Things get pretty frustrating, but not in an inappropriate way.
There might not be enough there mechanically to justify
the time and money it takes to play
But this thing successfully makes a game system
out of the desperation, frustration and never ending poverty
that characterized an entire era
It also makes a historical fictional allegory out of it
that makes this world seem a whole lot like their own.
It's funny, it's scary, it's insightful and it's relevant.
And for that it's a pretty damn cool game.
And throughout the frustrating repetitive grind that is playing it,
it earned a hell of a lot of my respect.
I highly encourage that everyone at least check out the demo,
but if you are to purchase the full version
then keep in mind that the kind of gameplay in demo
might lose it's novelty after the first few hours.
But after thinking about it for a while
you might realize that it's kind of the point
and that it also never really stopped being fun, for whatever fun is supposed to mean
in this kind of case