Papers, Please 2013

Is it still worth playing?

Lucas Pope's 2013 game about an immigration inspector at a border checkpoint in the fictional totalitarian state of Arstotzka in 1982. Each day you check travelers' papers against rules that grow harder over time. The tools are few: questions for the traveler, a fingerprint check, a body scanner and two stamps, plus the option to have someone arrested. Every decision has a cost at home. Mistakes bring citations that lower your pay, and your earnings have to cover your family's food, heat and medicine, because debt ends the game. At the booth, some travelers offer bribes, and taking them risks prison, while agents of a secret organization plotting a coup pass through it. The story mode has 20 endings, and a timeline save lets you branch from any day. Holding the day's rules in your head while a line of travelers waits still turns each shift into a small puzzle of speed and care.