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Pretty much this. The brunt of gameplay is basically a 'spot the differences' game, where said differences are between the people passing through and the rules.

Day one, only people from Arstotzka are allowed in. Easy enough. Picture on passport has to match the person coming up though. Expiration date has to be after the current date, too.

As the game progresses, laws are added, removed, valid papers are added, combined, etc etc etc. Eventually you end up having to check people and their papers for 15-20 points; miss one, you get fined.

Also, there's 20 different endings, depending on your decisions and performance in the game (go broke, help the rebels, etc).

I haven't looked at passport control the same way since then. Also pretty sure passport control I've been to is much less stringent than that in Papers, Please.

GLORY TO ARSTOTZKA

This is all very relevant to the gameplay, but I find the most interesting part of the game is the story and how it evolves based on your decisions. You can let anyone through. You can, and are asked to, cut people breaks. You can be a hardass. You can be a tool of the revolution.

It all comes down to the choices you make. At one point, for example, someone with their papers in order comes through and says his wife is next in line. Her papers are not in order. What do you do? Split up the couple to make your money? Or cut them a break and get a demerit.

You can even help drug smugglers and refugees, if you so choose. Or you can earn extra cash by locking up people who simply have an expired certificate.

Few games give you or support this type of narrative freedom.

I think you touch a bit on that, but the game mechanics are interesting:

* you have a limited time every day to review people at the border.

* you are paid per person processed.

* mistakes result in unpaid work. More than 3 mistakes results in penalty on your pay.

* regulations get more and more complicated as you go, making it more difficult to process many people, and making yourself prone to mistakes.

* your family well-being is conditioned by how much you make every day.

* events and personal situations try to touch on your emotional side to incite you to let some people pass (or refuse passage) - making it more difficult to earn your money as well - while giving some hope of later positive effects.

It's really intricate.

The only issue with the game is that it's kind of short, and the main point of the game after a while is to try to go through the story several times to see how your actions can make a difference in the story.

Yeh, I was sort of trying not to give away too many plot devices whilst covering the general concept. Hence no mention of the event on the 2nd or 3rd day, the recurring characters/linked stories, etc. As you point out, it's in some ways a bit of a (very compelling) one trick pony, so experiencing those naturally was a really important aspect of the game's impact to me.

I was thinking that there is one thing that the game could have done better. Your 'Family' part is very much just a statistic on the score screen. While the game tries to create some bonding with random characters on screen, it would have been great if they author had a side story for the family, so that you have an extra emotional incentive to do better and better at your job.

Zero Punctuation did a good review of this game [0] (starts at 3:20) and sums up the attraction to it pretty well in my opinion. "It presents constant moral choices but makes it really hard to be a good person."

[0] http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation... (probably not SWF)

He also points out a plot hole. Who controls the failures?

It's like there's an invisible control just after yours that never misses.

I just imagined that there is some awesome surveillance on your little post, with nameless people watching over your shoulder.

Papers, Please 2 right there.

It's just a gameplay mechanism. If you want actual realism, then every 'day' in the game should take 12 or so hours to complete, you should have a meal break and regimented toilet breaks, so on and so forth.

I mean, no-one believes that a border crossing is only open for a few minutes only per day, any more than they believe there's an all-powerful control after yours. It's like how the Sims put in toilet requirements for simulation purposes, but it turns out that your character can go without the toilet for a couple of days, then miss half a shift at work because of a visit.

Oh yeah, I should have put "plot hole" in quotes. It's more an acceptable break from reality.

That part actually bothered me, to be frank. For several reasons.

1. It indeed gives the impression that your work is monitored, which should not be the case.

2. It's a mechanism to give you penalties, but it does not really affect the story-line in itself. It would have been great if a person you let pass by mistake actually ends up changing the situation (i.e. becoming a terrorist the next day or something) and therefore introducing more regulations to make your work more difficult.

3. It could have been done in a more subtle way. For example, the guards at the right of the screen could do a random check on top of the ones you do, and find out, not 100% of time but at a certain ratio, you actually make/made mistakes.

And yet, secret agents double-checking the work of lowly border patrol agents without their knowledge fits right into the atmosphere of the game.

Then why would they let the illegal immigrants (or the ones with improper documentation) go through ? That's where the game does not make sense.

Immigrant communities often live together. Let one known undocumented worker in, and State Security can then follow them to uncover existing communities.

I feel bad having just written this.

The developer addresses this in his post-mortem thread. It a fascinating read, starts about half way down.

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=29750.645

Indeed. Here's a direct link

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=29750.msg966317#...

Thanks for bringing that to my attention

Eh, it's somewhat reasonable to expect the failures to get caught quickly. Perhaps there's routine immigrant checks at housing estates, or an employer finds out and reports the illegal immigrations.

But then any attempt you make to be lenient is meaningless, since the person will get caught right after you let them in.

While we're mentioning The Escapist, fans of the game would probably enjoy LRR's sketch [1] about it as well, one of Andy's best.

[1]: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/loadingreadyrun/...

I read the original article and was quite intrigued at the premise (a game about document inspecting, how novel), so I shelled out the $10 and bought the game.

Gotta say, after only playing the game for about 20 minutes your review was entirely accurate and I can't wait to make my girlfriend play the game...

What I really love about this game is its meta qualities. Frankly, it's impossible. You simply can't beat it under any normal play. Its utter difficulty actually becomes part of the storytelling experience as you realize you simply will fail no matter what. You truly feel despair when you play.

Moreover, I've found myself becoming rather patient with people who work in the TSA directly because I now know how shitty their lives must truly be.

I would say that, based on what OP said is the premise of the game, TSA agents' lives have zero relation to this fictional character.

I didn't find the actual comparison work difficult at all. I always had plenty of money and explored the endings freely. Then again, I used to work in the Census Bureau and spent a lot of time increasing my efficiency at very similar tasks.

Sounds a bit like Jetset - a satirical game by Ian Bogost of Cow Clicker fame. You're a TSA agent who must comply with the ever-changing set of passenger screening rules. From what I gather, it was a game designed explicitly to infuriate the player.

I think there's a bit of that in Jetset, but the tone is lightened by quite a bit of mockery in humorous choices of items and silly rules. It still has some of the angle of trying to keep up with a pointless bureaucracy, but the whole operation takes on a farcical quality, so the critique of the TSA it implies ends up being more like "clown cops doing security theater", not TSA=1984.

To be fair, that seems like a much more accurate characterization of the TSA.

You were closer with the word "satire". This kind of game is Ian Bogost's specific shtick; it's worth looking him and his writing up if you haven't already.

If it's all in the setting I hope he releases a sequel set in a developing country where you're trying to rack up as much as many informal "administration fees" as possible without getting caught...

If you detain people in Papers Please the guard who does the actual detaining gives you a cut. It feels like sort of a bribe.

It's corruption distilled to its core. The guard (reasonably) gets extra compensation for doing extra duties (detaining immigrants). The guard wants more money, so gives you a cut to detain more people. You start detaining people who you wouldn't ordinarily have to.

Basically this:

http://madamenoire.com/289369/surprise-surprise-judge-senten...

However you can't just detain anyone. The games sets specific conditions to let the detain button appear as a choice. So you can't just go and detain everywhere at will.

Still you have moral choice to either turn back a person or detain him/her for something minor such as expired or missing permind. And you do the immoral thing becsuse you need money for medicine fo your kid.

However, there are cases where the "detain" button appears even though the person is following the rules (the cases I can think of are where the person's name or appearance has changed, but they pass the fingerprint test)

On top of that, you then have some people coming through where you _want_ to fudge the tests, either because they're nasties you don't want to let through, or because you're compassionate and don't want to separate families.

What I find most intriguing about Papers, please is that the game forces you to make moral and ethical choices. During the course of that boring chore you'll have to decide whether to take bribes or help the revolutionaries. Or should you try to save that girl from being human trafficked for prostitution or just do your job to feed the family.

What is even more chilling is that this was day-to-day business in many European countries less than 30 years ago.

It's probably day-to-day business in some European countries today (refuse the Syrian immigrant entering Germany or let him pass). Not to mention other interesting locales like North Korea are probably a similar place.

" You have a finite amount of time to process people through the security gate each 'day' and you're paid based on how many people you get through, with fines for incorrect processing (which of course gets harder and more convoluted as the game goes on)."

Ah I see, this is the fictional part of the game

When I heard the premise, I was kind of disoriented, and the way you've described it maintains that feeling. If you're border control for a desperately impoverished former soviet state, who are all these people who want to immigrate?

Most of the people are short-term visitors. Relatively few people you check through the border are immigrants.

Not to mention that in a real communist state, you would never be paid per unit of work done, you would be paid a fixed stipend.

The game explains that the other bordering country is even more impoverished. There are also transit passengers, returning citizens, and temporary workers.