Papers, Please is an indie game that plays in a way that you as the player don't do much at all in comparison to other games. You get not action set pieces, no big shoot-outs with the bad guys. Instead you are faced with certain small choices. Do you let the one guy in who's passport is just a bit past its expiration or do you reject him? Do you come over every applicant's forms like a hawk like a good worker and make zero mistakes, mistakes that will go on to bring you punishments from the higher ups, or do you just glance over the important info so that you can get through as many people as you can in the short days to boost your pay and help keep your family healthy?
These are the small choices that go to make this game a memorable experience after so much time away from it. The little moments where a clump of pixels that barely looks like a human's outline is shot down by guards only for you to return the next day with new rules and regulations on who to let in and who to not is what adds to the uneasy dread of the nation of Arstotzka.
This game revels in the hopeless feeling of the cold and oppressing Soviet states in Eastern Europe had. It even looks like a game from the time with the 8-bit look of the game that looks like it could be a commodore game from the mid 80's. Its a game from another time, a time that is gone and that some would like to forget about but is important. It's important to learn from the period but at the same time it is important to add something more to bring it forward to our time.
Go play this, play it for a night and see what a video game can be.
