Papers, Please

Papers, Please is a treasure, do you hear me. Fuck impartiality in games reviews. Papers, Please is a treasure and you should go and play it. I mean, all right, things went a little bit tits up and I may have ended up getting me killed and my family killed and the country going to shit but honestly when you give a humble boarder crossing guard that kind of responsibility you have to expect a little bit of rough sailing before the smooth, gentle seas of submitting yourself to totalitarian repression.

I'm probably moving too fast here for the guys not in the loop in regards to the latest indie simulator hit. Papers, Please, is a game by Luca Pope, also creator of 6 Degrees of Sabotage and the Republica Times. You play as a boarder inspector for the newly reopened Arstotzka Grenin gates and do keep up, because you are quickly going to have to learn on the fly, checking documentations and passports and being absolutely, concrete sure you're letting the right guys in lest you and your family pay the price.

As with all of Pope's games you play a fairly unimportant little man in a very important position. You have a lot of power, tenuoisly, and will inevitably turn somewhat into a monster as your family start to starve because you tried to do a one fingered salute to the system. There's big plot, and there's little plot. You have a lot of agency to play how you want providing you're prepared to deal with the consequences; sure, play the countries hero. Or you could actually make sure your son doesn't starve to death by earning the daily bread.

Right, facts. Lucas Pope does everything, and he should be applauded because this game is beautiful. There's been somewhat of a spate of games that are too dreary for my tastes, but Pope has a hard enough grasp of colour that while soviet greens, greys and sludges are the ruling class it serves to make the few splashes of vibrancy pop.

Papers, Please, £6.99 available on steam, GOG.com and Lucas Pope's personal website where also a class act demo can be found for the people that'll want to give it a bash before they commit.