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Even if Lucas Pope had had one million dollars to develop Papers, Please, even if he'd had an army of engineers, animators and producers at his disposal, even if he'd had all the time in the world, he wouldn't have produced a better Papers, Please than the one he did all by himself.Pope's border control brain teaser looks as cold as it sounds. Its minimalist pixel-art visuals are a virtual vision of the Soviet Union so fitting you can't imagine the game looking anything other than as grey as it does. The "dah, dum, der, dum, dah, dum, der, dum" title screen music hammers a nail deep into your brain, and then comes the quiet, harsh reality of your passport inspection job: nothing superfluous, just the digitised croaks of the lucky few who make it to your window, a car driving through the snow nearby, and that never-ending megaphone bark: "NEXT." Papers, Please is wonderfully bleak.
Gameplay. What a word. I'm not sure I play Papers, Please. Rather, I struggle through it, my mind frayed, my wits shooting off towards somewhere near the end of the queue of blocky black shadows that shuffles ever closer to my stamp: approved, denied. Cause no trouble.
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