Papers, Please

Papers, Please is a game that puts you in the shoes of an immigration inspector working in an office on the border between Arstotzka, the glorious communist state where you live, and Kolechia, a neighboring country that has just emerged from a bloody six-year war. It's your job to decide which immigrants can cross the border and which have to turn around.

Your character, the aforementioned immigration inspector, spends his days at work confined to his booth. During the work day, you'll have to process as many immigrants as you can, always taking into account the orders and suggestions you've received that morning. Ultimately, it's up to you to decide who can enter the country and who can't. And everyone has their own story. Each of the immigrants in front of you has their own reasons for wanting to cross the border.

Although the stories they tell are important, the most important thing during inspection is to take a good look at all their papers. For the first few days, you only have to look over the passport and perhaps another piece of paper or a permit. But as the weeks go by, tensions at the border begin to escalate, requiring you to pay attention to many additional factors. You'll have to look at fingerprints, do body scans, and manage many other bureaucratic tasks that will make it harder to do your job in a timely manner.

Before stamping the green or red stamp to determine whether the person in front of you can cross the border, you'll need to take a series of factors into account. The first and most important is that if you make the wrong decision, you'll lose money. And money, as you'll soon discover, is a precious commodity in Arstotzka. If you don't bring enough money home, your family will suffer, and the hunger and poor health of your loved ones will become your main concern. Your decisions at the border between Arstotzka and Kolechia will have repercussions not only for the people who want to cross the border, but for you as well.

Papers, Please is one of the best games of 2013, and it's a luxury to be able to enjoy it on Android devices. This is a timeless classic that, despite the passing of the years, continues to feel as wholly original and groundbreaking as it did when it was first released. It's a true triumph for video games as a powerful storytelling medium.