Bundles of paperwork, waiting in line, and lists of government regulations are not things you’d necessarily associate with fun gameplay. Yet they are the trappings of Papers, Please (Lucas Pope, 2013), a puzzle game and self-described “dystopian document thriller” where you play a border inspector in the fictional 1980s Eastern Bloc country of Arstotzka, and you have the power to allow or deny people entry into your “glorious” nation. Designed by independent developer and former Naughty Dog programmer Lucas Pope, the game has sold hundreds of thousands of copies and won the “Innovation Award” at the 2014 Game Developers Conference. The core gameplay consists of examining people’s passports, work permits, and other paperwork for discrepancies or failure to follow government-issued rules. Let the right people into the country, and you receive wages to pay your rent and feed your family; let the wrong people in, and the consequences start with fines and get worse from there.
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