10 Video Games That Deal With Difficult Themes

Although Papers, Please is objectively about - and set in - an immigration office, it could easily be applied to any other soulless, Kafkaesque (please don't hate me for using that word) office of faceless bureaucracy. All from singularly brilliant designer, programmer, writer, composer (stop being so talented!) Lucas Pope.

Your time is spent approving or rejecting papers as an immigration officer. Stamping or not stamping. Seems easy. However more and more rules are gradually introduced. And maybe a person with falsified documents who desperately needs over the border comes along... but you can't risk admitting them because you have a family to support as well. So maybe you could also accept the odd bribe too...so it goes.

Papers, Please illustrates the mindless brutality of bureaucracy, whilst also humanising those in these jobs, who make often heartbreaking decisions in the name of an ineffective government.

Now, I know it's not all about me, but I feel I should share a short anecdote:

Several years ago I spent two years, a lawyer, medical records and a tribunal hearing to tell the government that I was ill. I hated the people who rejected my initial claim for a very long time.

Papers, Please caused me to see them in a very different light.