Papers, Please
Congratulations.
The October labour lottery is complete. Your name was pulled. For immediate placement, report to the Ministry of Admission at Grestin Border Checkpoint. An apartment will be provided for you and your family in East Grestin. Expect a Class-8 dwelling. Glory to Arstotzka.
When you think of what makes a good game, a few things come to mind.
You start recalling all those compelling storylines, cool characters, maybe an awesome line of dialogue. You might remember a moment when you really hit your stride and got a perfect killstreakcombowhatever. Or perhaps you look back on what that game meant to you in ways that aren’t on-screen. But there’s one element that never really finds itself the belle of the ball. In fact, if it’s doing its job well enough, you might not even notice that it’s there. Ladygeeks and gentlenerds I want to bring up on stage for one night only… The User Interface. That’s right, the UI might not be glamorous or particularly memorable most of the time but a lot of the success of this week’s Plug & Play is down to a truly brilliant UI. But what exactly is a User Interface I hear you maybe mumble perhaps. Well it's the menus and loadouts and screens and HUDs and health/mana/stamina/ammo/stress bars and then other things you might not even see while you play your games. The best ones are barely registered and the worst ones can pretty much kill a game's chances of being fun completely. But I can see you nodding off at your keyboard, you’re not too stoked about an article concerning interface layout and unobtrusive aesthetics. So instead let’s talk about something more exciting. Let's talk about Passport Control. Looks Legit...
That’s what this latest Plug & Play, ‘Papers, Please’ is structured around. Now don’t get me wrong, I was doubtful to begin with. I saw it as a gimmicky departure from more traditional gameplay styles that might be a laugh for a few hours, but I’m so glad to admit I was wrong.
This is a game that brilliantly creates a challenging play-style that works on so many levels and yet still remains compelling and entertaining throughout. And the bonkers thing is, that this game IS about allowing or denying entry through a checkpoint. But what starts out as just another day at the checkpoint, slowly becomes a moral minefield about balancing your chequebook with your conscience.
Interestingly, the difficulty curve you work along in the game is baked into, yes you guessed it, the UI itself. It’s a creatively clunky frame you have to work within but it both evokes the atmosphere of working in a cramped booth and also adds features that become a real pain in the neck as bulletins come in asking for more and more rigorous checks. The pixel-art geometry on the game helps to highlight the heaviness of your tools and the process of the gameplay itself. Things don’t ‘swish’ like Star Trek doors, they ‘kerchunk’ like the Iron Giant’s favourite stapler.
But what’s more astonishing than the odd complication added along the way is just how visible and interactive the UI actually is. Most games actively hide the UI in plain sight with icons and readouts that we’ve become so accustomed to seeing that we barely notice how much of the screen they take up. But in Papers, Please you’re encouraged to move the layout around, position your rulebook wherever works for you whilst keeping the key to the firearm in a handy location in case of emergency. On paper, (no I’m not going to make that jo- PLEASE, goddammit) all you’re doing is moving shapes on the screen and pressing buttons but Lucas overlays all the detail and narrative and foreboding consequences until we don’t see an editable UI, we see a workstation of an unfortunate man in an unforgiving situation.
Papers, Please is the kind of game that really reminds a gamer just how open the field is.
We take for granted traditional elements of gameplay and predictable stories, so when you get to play through something like this, it sets the bar for others even higher. Lucas Pope shows that games can walk the tightrope of dealing with deadly serious issues like immigration, deportation and government corruption but also stay true to what this entire medium is about. Playing a game, whether you feel like you've won something or you've lost something by the end. See how long you last and what kind of person you are by letting Papers, Please through to your game library.
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Tom MidgleyI play, design and write about games when I'm not hoping for someone to pay me to do these things. Archives
October 2017
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