Before I bought "Papers, Please", a friend of mine told me that he'd heard it described as "the most Soviet game I've ever seen". It's a fitting description - as you attempt to eke out a living handling passports in the Grestin border checkpoint, it is clear that you are a small cog in a deeply dysfunctional machine. The game grows ever more challenging as you are presented with a proliferation of new rules and regulations, and still more so as you face the challenge of dealing with crooks, smugglers, revolutionaries, and desperate folk of all descriptions, of deciding who to allow through, who to reject, and who to arrest, all with the knowledge that your livelihood and that of your dependents relies on your ability to spot the tiniest of discrepancies in the ten or twenty seconds you can afford to spend examining this particular downtrodden would-be immigrant's documents.

"Papers, Please" breathes a tremendous amount of story and life into the world through the simple mechanism of passports and entry passes. On one day, a woman arrives joyous about the opening of the border, hoping to see her son for the first time in six years. On another, a man tells you about his days working as an immigration officer in another country, remembering how they rejected the majority of those trying to enter there. Still later, a woman from the town you grew up in arrives at your window, remarks as you study her papers what a brat you were growing up, and promises, as she leaves, that she will tell your old neighbors that you are alive and well. And these are characters you never meet again - those like Jorji, Calensk, and Sergiu are a great deal more than that, even as limited as your decisions are.

"Papers, Please" is hard, but more than worth your time.