Papers, Please

An old friend of mine gave me this indie game and for something where the graphics are intentionally blocky old-school and your main task is stamping "approved" or "denied" on passports it is surprisingly fun (and stressful)! Having won the "work lottery" you are tasked as the sole operator for a new border gate that sees an infinite queue of people wanting to enter your militaristic state.

The working day goes from 6am to 6pm which translates to around 10-15 minutes in game time so you have to be quick. For each person you process correctly you are paid $5, while each person processed incorrectly deducts your total salary by $5. At the end of the day your meager earnings have to pay for the ever increasing rent and optional food, heating, and medicine for the rest of your family too.

While the first day is pretty straight forward, each new one adds requirements that you need to verify quickly. So far I've had to deal with expired passports, mismatched names, incorrect tickets, forged stamps, and a crazy dude who enjoys wasting my time with false documents. Terrorist attacks also make your day shorter so you'll have to make sure their weight matches what is on the scales in case they are carrying bombs and the like.

Basically it's a timed memory game whose difficulty rapidly increases with each level which includes some interesting moral choices to boot. I think it is something that everyone can enjoy (though there's a nudity setting in there so, minors be warned - guess some people may try to flash their stuff to distract/delay you later on). Papers, Please - I give it two out of two stamps up.