10 Great Video Games That Are Ugly On Purpose
3. Papers, Please
Sometimes a repellent art style is entirely appropriate for a game examining the wider-reaching, mostly unseen horrors in society.
That's certainly true of 2013's puzzle-simulation game Papers, Please, where players assume the role of a border-crossing immigration officer in a fictional dystopian nation.
Throughout the game you're tasked with inspecting immigrants' documentation to determine the legitimacy of their case, or whether they might be a political dissident seeking to undermine the state.
Ethical dilemmas naturally run rife throughout the masterful game, if you're able to vault the considerable hurdle that is the game's flat, unappealing visual style.
If somebody showed you a screengrab of Papers, Please sight unseen, you'd be forgiven for assuming it was a good 30 years old.
However, the muddy textures and general lack of visual detail only further underline the drudgery of the player's miserable job throughout the game.
Meanwhile the immigrant characters you're tasked with examining are rendered in such uncanny, unappealing pixel art form as to accentuate the dehumanising manner in which the state machine regards them. Genius.