Papers, Please

Papers, Please depicts the life of an immigration inspector at a border checkpoint for the fictional country of Arstotzka in the year 1982. Arstotzka has recently ended a six-year-long war with the neighboring country of Kolechia, yet political tensions between them and other nearby countries remain high.

As a checkpoint inspector, the player must review the documents of arrivals – allowing legitimate travelers through the border, denying entry to those with insufficient or expired documents, and arresting suspected criminals, terrorists, and entrants with forged or stolen documents. For each in-game day, the player is given specific rules on what documentation is required and conditions to allow entry, which become progressively more difficult over time. One by one, immigrants arrive at the checkpoint and provide their paperwork, which must be reviewed against the scheduled rules. If discrepancies are discovered, the player may interrogate the applicant, demand missing documents, compare the applicant's fingerprints against identity records, and order full body scans.

Papers, Please was developed by Lucas Pope, a former developer for Naughty Dog on the Uncharted series. Around 2010, after the release of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Pope left the company to move to Saitama, Japan, with his wife Keiko, a game designer herself. The move was partly to be closer to Keiko's family, but also driven by Pope's desire to pursue smaller, independent projects. While at Naughty Dog, he had been working with Keiko on side projects and wanted to move away from the "definite formula" of the Uncharted games to explore more experimental ideas.

The couple worked on a few independent titles and briefly relocated to Singapore to assist a friend with another project. From his travels in Asia and return visits to the United States, Pope became fascinated with immigration and passport control work, observing that inspectors had "a specific thing they're doing and they're just doing it over and over again." He recognized that the "tense" experience of checking passports could form the basis of a fun game.

Papers, Please received positive reviews on release, receiving "generally favorable reviews" from 40 reviews on Metacritic. Papers, Please has been praised for the sense of immersion provided by the game mechanics, and the intense emotional reaction it evokes in players. CBC News' Jonathan Ore called Papers, Please a "nerve-racking sleuthing game with relentless pacing and dozens of compelling characters – all from a desk job". Simon Parkin writing for The New Yorker blog declared Papers, Please the top video game of 2013.

He wrote: "Grim yet affecting, it's a game that may change your attitude the next time you're in line at the airport." Some critics received the story very well: Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw of The Escapist's series Zero Punctuation lauded the game for being a truly unique entry for 2013 and even made it one of his top five games for that year; he cited the game's morality as his reasoning by explaining that "[Papers, Please] presents us constant moral choices, but makes it really hard to be a good person... while you could waive the rules to reunite a couple [...] you do it at the expense of your own family...