Most of the time, the player doesn’t see any actual violence, with the exception of occasional suicide bombers, and she rarely administers it directly (with the exception of one rule that requires the shooting of rogue border crossers with a tranquilliser gun), but you know that behind every stamp and every pedantic box check is suffering: torture at the hands of border guards, return to war torn countries or political persecution, the separation of families. The game’s setting gives the bureaucracy an unusual tone of human misery and turmoil, coloured by the burden of the USSR’s history. Most of these tasks are roughly analogous to those an actual border guard would perform perhaps Papers, Please is best characterised as a bureaucracy simulator. The bulk of the game consists of checking various papers-passports, work permits, entry permits, diplomatic visas, identity cards, fingerprint printouts-against various other papers, and against various rules, and then making the decision to allow or deny entry. You play as a border guard in a fictional pseudo-Soviet republic called Arstotzka. This is the experience of playing the videogame Papers, Please. A woman’s body is dragged to the interrogation room.

‘I won’t! My children!’ Rifle butt to the head. ‘Please let me through, my children… the war.’ Call the border police.

Papers please passport order puzzle