Papers please game passport template
Later, an outbreak of Polio mandates that all entrants must present an up-to-date Certificate of Vaccination. On Day 14, the official Daily Bulletin issued by the Ministry of Admissions begins including pictures of the three most-wanted criminals of the day, who are to be detained if they attempt to enter the country. Then a scanner is introduced to catch out anyone trying to smuggle medicine or contraband into the country. Then citizens of Arstotzka need to present ID Cards. Then citizens from other countries require a valid Entry Ticket. On day two, you can admit anyone, as long as their documents aren’t expired. On the first day, there is only one rule you may only admit citizens of Arstotzka. You are the nameless, faceless inspector manning a checkpoint between Arstotzka and Kolechia and your job is to approve or deny entry to anyone who tries to enter the country. The gameplay in Papers, Please is simple, at least initially. But perhaps the most disturbing thing about Arstotzka is that in spite of all of this, hundreds of people line up every day for a chance to get inside. The fact that detaining wanted criminals and human traffickers is a task that falls squarely on the shoulders of an unnamed immigration inspector. The reaction – or lack thereof – of one of the guards when an angry stranger drops a bomb on your desk, screams “Death to Arstotzka!” and runs out of the booth. The way your second day of work is hastily cut short by a terrorist attack, but your third day of work continues on as if nothing has happened. There are dozens of touches, some big and some small, that highlight what kind of country Arstotzka is. The world-building in Papers, Please is fantastic. Lucas had previously developed The Republia Times, a short free-to-play browser game about a newspaper editor who is pressured into printing strictly favorable stories about an oppressive government, and borrowed elements from the setting to create a dystopian Soviet-like country named Arstotzka. It was this state of frequent departures, arrivals and document inspection that inspired the idea of a game based around a passport inspector with the difficult task of determining who was and who wasn’t granted entry into a country. In 2013, Lucas was temporarily living in Singapore, helping to port a game named Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken to the PS3, and having to frequently travel back and forth to the United States. But first and foremost, Papers, Please is the breakout game of Lucas Pope, former Naughty Dog programmer and undoubtedly one of the most exciting stars of the current indie scene. Papers, Please is the winner of the 2014 Seumas McNally Grand Prize Award at the Independent Games Festival, an accomplishment that its developer would repeat in 2019 with Return of the Obra Dinn.
Papers, Please is possibly the most triumphant example of a video game that manages to take a repetitive, menial task and present it in a context that makes it gripping. Papers, Please is one of the first games to come up in any discussion about video games as an art form.