English subtitles

Completed

♪(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