Papers, Please 17+

In the world of mobile gaming, it’s getting increasingly hard to find decent content in an ocean of user-created slop and profit-driven monopolies. This one continues to be one of the best experiences on any platform, and will keep you entertained for hours. Papers, Please is very reminiscent of chess, it’s easy to pick up and very hard to master. You’ll find the initial processing of applicants a fair challenge and enjoyable, and will quickly master noticing minute discrepancies in traveler data. As a border enforcement agent, those discrepancies will get you fired if you miss them. The game evolves, though, and the amount of documentation you’ll need to check grows significantly. You’ll evolve with the game, and you’ll note that it’s a satisfying challenge to continue to improve yourself as you navigate it. A satisfying story mode is accompanied by assorted endless challenges once you’ve beaten the game, making sure you still have plenty to entertain you once you’ve passed the main portion. Pick this one up, give it a try, and take notice after you’ve started playing that an hour’s passed and you didn’t even know it.

I remember playing this in middle-school on PC when it first came out and later once they ported it to iPad. This (along with FTL) we’re two of the best indie games of that era to get ported to iPad, but neither had iPhone versions… until now!!

I thought it was a bug when I was browsing through the App Store and saw a cloud download button next to… Papers, Please. So, I clicked on it, and much to my surprise, after *all* these years, Lucas Pope went out of his way to redesign the gameplay to fit on these tall phone screens we have now, much like he did for multitouch on the iPad years ago. Thank you!!

Not only that, but at least in my experience, this redesign has made the game much easier by virtue of greater efficiency in accepting and returning documents, making it easier to earn money and progress. I’ve gotten further in the story I’m the past couple days than I ever did all the other times I played it.

If you haven’t taken a look at this modern indie classic, give a spin and enjoy doing your part for your country! Glory to Arstotska!!