Video Game / Papers, Please

Papers, Please is a self-styled "Dystopian Document Thriller" game developed by Lucas "dukope" Pope. You play as an unnamed border inspector whose job is to defend the Communist nation of Arstotzka from smugglers, terrorists, and anyone else who happens to have improperly filled out paperwork. You have a family dependent on your wage to keep them warm, healthy and alive. You can follow its devlog here.

After a shortened version of the game served as a beta for several months, the full game was released worldwide on 8 August 2013. A port for the PlayStation Vita was formally announced in August 2014, while an iPad port was released on December 14, 2014. However, a misunderstanding with Apple caused a censored version to be uploaded to the app store; the game was reuploaded uncensored a day later.

It is set in a similar universe to Lucas Pope's earlier game The Republia Times, a simpler game about running a newspaper in a totalitarian state.

The website is here.

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Glory to Arstotzka for containing examples of the following tropes:

• Acceptable Breaks from Reality: If you get a citation immediately after making a mistake, whoever's sending out the citations should be the one manning the checkpoint instead, since they're so sharp. Originally, this mechanic was implemented more realistically, but it was changed to this version to provide better feedback for the player.
• Adult Fear:
  • One man will beg you to help him avenge his daughter who was murdered by giving him information on the murderer.
  • There's a couple fleeing a government from another country. The woman's papers do not tally like her husband's.
  • There's a human trafficking ring that exploits both the widespread poverty and the strict border control to trap women in brothels.
  • The inspector's sister gets arrested and her daughter is effectively orphaned; if the inspector can't afford to adopt her or refuses to do so, the niece simply disappears, her fate unknown.
  • If you're personally familiar with life in the Iron Curtain countries from the Cold War era, this game will hit you right in the gut, especially if you've ever had to deal with a Internal Security officer like Vonel.
  • Your family is constantly entirely dependent on your hard work to stay healthy and fed. Fail to keep up adequate living standards, and they will fall ill and die. If every family member dies, the game ends, as the position of border inspector is given to someone else who can maintain a large, healthy family properly.
  • On the other hand, if your savings account dries up and you can't pay rent, you go to prison for having outstanding debts. You and your family are effectively set towards an uncertain and unfavorable fate.
  • To fulfill the first and to avoid the second, you must carefully balance your books. If you can't make enough, you inevitably have to decide who gets medicine, food and heat, and who to simply let die. And these are your family members.
• Affably Evil: What counts as evil is up for debate in a story so heavily mired in Grey and Grey Morality, but in the sense that he's a criminal (and likely would be considered "evil" in any normal story), Jorji is definitely this. Sure, he's a drug dealer, a smuggler, and possibly a black market mastermind, but he's also the friendliest, most polite and most cheerful person you'll ever meet. The Inspector can also be this, if you play him correctly.
• Alliterative Name
  • The game itself, of course.
  • The Arstotzka Arskickers team.
• Ambiguous Gender: Due to the artistic style, it can be difficult at times to determine the gender of an individual just by looking. However, if you check for discrepancies, you will be able to determine their gender...usually. Sometimes, the game acknowledges the fact that an individual looks much like the opposite gender and lets you classify it as a discrepancy. This triggers a strip search scan that can either clear the discrepancy or incriminate the entrant enough to merit detainment.
  • It doesn't help that some of them have names generally associated with the opposite gender as well.
• And the Adventure Continues: If you did not help EZIC once throughout the course of Story mode, then the game will end with you passing your audit and continuing your job as a border inspector.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • It is possible to re-load your game from any day from any play through. So if you get a Non Standard Game Over, it is a simple matter to pick up where you left off and not having to start the whole game over.
  • You're notified with a citation within seconds of making a mistake, since it would be frustrating to not know until later.
  • Non-scripted entrants will have only one major discrepancy in their documentation,^note Missing documents and discrepancies in reason/duration of stay aren't considered major discrepancies so if you spot a discrepancy that later checks out, you can approve the entrant immediately without having to waste time looking for further discrepancies.
  • For those with bad aim, missing a shot when using the tranquilizer rifle still nets you a small bonus of 10 credits to compensate for the missed work.
  • The clock for the day doesn't start counting down until you call in the first entrant. That way, you can review new rules and paperwork or get your desk arranged how you want it with no time pressure.
  • Easy Mode gives you 20 credits per day with no strings attached which provides a safety cushion (or crutch as it's mockingly called) to ease the sting on your wallet.
  • The first two citations of each day do not dock any of your pay (however you do not get paid for those people either) so you can still screw up a few times and not really feel it. It also allows you to be a little charitable to some of the scripted moral choices provided you are impeccably perfect with the remaining entrants.
• Anti-Villain: You, if you play the game right and take the high moral ground on the occasions you can. You're an employee of a frankly hellish government, but you aren't malevolent at all and just want things to run smoothly and your family to be warm and fed.
• Arc Words: "Glory to Arstotzka."
• Asshole Victim:
  • While it's possible to detain the escaped serial child killer, it's hard to feel too bad for him if the inspector gets on board with the revenge plot that ends with the father of one of his victims gruesomely murdering him.
  • Dimitri is very rude towards the inspector, insulting him if he's made even one mistake, and later on demanding to let a lover through the checkpoint even though she's missing authorization. Denying Shae entry angers and humiliates him, which is as much revenge as the player can get without triggering a bad ending. ^* Shae also ends up suffering for this, granted, but at the same time she doesn't seem personally offended if she's denied. If approved, she suggests she doesn't even want to be in Arstotzka for long.
  • Arstotzka itself is essentially this; it's a bleak, nasty place, but people keep attacking it, leading to further oppression and xenophobia.
• Badass Bureaucrat: Your job is to check people's papers ... until you're issued a tranquilizer gun and tasked with securing the border should issues arise. This trope comes in handy with all the weird events that go on during this month.
• Bad Boss: Dimitri. He insults the Inspector to his face if he got just one citation, demands that he do personal favours without pulling any strings to ensure he gets no citations while doing so, and doles out harsh punishments just for decorating the station. Pissing him off enough will also get you sent to the gulags.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: Your first interaction with Jorji has him trying to convince the inspector that he is perfectly allowed to waltz into Arstotzka without any papers whatsoever. He then tries it again later with a blatantly forged passport that a 4-year-old could make.
• Being Good Sucks: You can try to let in people with sob stories and improper paperwork, but the citations for not doing your job will catch up with you, get your pay docked and your family in dire straits. You can get two citations per day without having your pay docked, so as long as you don't make any actual mistakes, you can make it work.
• Beleaguered Bureaucrat: You will feel the time pressure, especially in the late-game when each entrant needs three or four pieces of complicated paperwork to get in.
• Benevolent Conspiracy: However you interpret the group, you cannot deny that EZIC tries to take good care of you. When you accept their $1,000 gift, the ministry of income confiscates your savings and investigates you. When the EZIC gets word of it, they send an agent (whom you must approve entry of) to help 'take care' of that for you. You won't get your savings back, but at least you won't get into trouble, and they've learned from this and decided to keep their gifts modest from now on. In the ending where you help them, they stay true to their word all the time and even send a messenger to warn you about an incoming attack from their agents and asks you to hold your fire. If you do that and let them do their thing, which is to bomb a hole in the border wall, they happily accept you among their ranks and even provide you and your family a safer place to live.
• Blatant Lies:
  • Certain discrepancies, such as the weight of the applicant not matching up with the weight given on their papers or their being from an area flagged for special security measures, require the player to strip search said applicant. The reason given is that "You have been selected for a random search." This does not apply when the strip search is triggered due to an apparent sex discrepancy, in which the inspector will instead ask if the entrant is a man or woman.
  • When you question immigrants on certain discrepancies, they may try to avoid the subject or answer unhelpfully... or just outright lie. One example of an excuse for a passport picture of the entirely wrong person is "The years have been cruel."
    • Which, if you then check their prints, may prove to be a subversion.
  • Sometimes foreigners (who, after day 3, need a document explaining purpose of trip and duration of stay) will give you answers that don't match up with the document. One possible lie is "In transit until I die." They will always correct themselves if you call them out on it.
  • Jorji's first passport states that it's issued by "Cobrastan". Either you can helpfully point out the lie, or the citation will point it out for you, to you.
• Big Brother is Employing You: You are a Border Inspector for an oppressive Communist government, so naturally this trope applies.
• Big Brother Is Watching: Antegria is spying on its own citizens, and therefore a whistleblower exposes this.
• Bodyguarding a Badass: After the player gets access to the tranquilizer gun, the guards, particularly Sergiu, will start relying on the inspector to keep them safe, despite their superior armament and Sergiu's promise to protect him. Saving Sergiu in the first attack causes him to admit to being part of a Redshirt Army afterwards. This trope is also played with if the inspector fails to destroy the motorcycle that a terrorist is trying to crash into the inspector's booth on day 28 because one of the guards will shoot and destroy the motorcycle before it can hit the booth.
• Bomb Disposal: One of the scripted events sees a bomb delivered to the booth the player character works in, requiring the player to disarm it.
• Bomb-Throwing Anarchists: The Kolechians who throw bombs at the guards.
• Bribe Backfire:
  • Detaining a man who offers a bribe, you say the line: "You cannot bribe an Arstotzkan Officer."
  • The Kolechian spy who is disguised as someone from the Ministry of Information gives the player a bribe that cannot be refused. The player can still give the spy counterfeit documents which will lead to Kolechia accusing the wrong people of being Arstotzkan spies.
  • The EZIC will attempt to buy your cooperation (or pay you for cooperating) by offering you a package of 1,000 credits. You have the option to burn it. This is actually the best thing to do even if you do intend to cooperate with them, because the massive cash influx will cause internal affairs to audit you.
  • Strangely, "bribes" include a guard agreeing on giving you a cut of his bonus for every immigrant/citizen you detain (and there is almost always a good reason to do so), and for whatever favors you do for others (such as selling a watch, or receiving money after you approve an immigrant who gives you money for being so kind).
• But Thou Must!: You can't refuse to cooperate with Corman Drex; if you don't give him his piece of paper the first time he comes through, he'll arrive and demand it later, and you won't be able to just detain him. As would be expected, this unpreventable action will not get you in any kind of trouble.
  • When the option of fleeing to Obristan using forged passports comes into play, Jorji forces you to confiscate his passport; you cannot prevent this, nor can you return it to him after the fact. Unlike the above example, you still get a citation for this.
• Can't Get Away with Nuthin': The MOA can only do one thing right, and that's to send you a citation when you violate protocol.
• Checkpoint Charlie: Working at one of these is the primary gameplay element.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Jorji Costava does not seem to be quite there, as on his first attempt to pass through customs brings no documents at all, declaring instead that "Arstotzka so great, passport not required!", and on his second attempt presents a passport from "Cobrastan" crudely drawn in crayon. No matter how many times you reject or arrest him, he remains upbeat about the whole thing. He happily proclaims that he's smuggling drugs not once, but twice. And he's also ultimately your saviour if you helped EZIC at any point, as he provides a method of escape from the country.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience:
  • Each country uses different colours for its passports.
  • There is a brass key for using a tranq gun, and a silver one for a sniper rifle.
  • The people outside your booth are colour-coded: immigrants are black, guards are blue, Sergiu is green, and the man in red is, well, red.
• Comically Missing the Point: Early on, Jorji Costava will, as part of a long chain of inept attempts, try to enter Arstotzka with an obviously fake passport. If the player decides to pass him, the citation will ignore the numerous other problems with his papers (like the fact his passport is crudely drawn in crayon) and focus on the fact that "Cobrastan is not a real country". If the player doesn't pass him, the inspector cites the above as the reason.
• Commie Land: Arstotzka.
• Commie Nazis: Arstotzka is stylistically Communist and bears certain features of a Communist country (such as the labor lottery), but the obsession with supporting large families, zero tolerance for government workers being in debt, and insanely strict border control all distinctly remind of Fascism as well.
• Commissar Cap: M. Vonel wears one as part of being a Political Officer.
• Corrupt Bureaucrat: Many entrants will try to bribe you. You can of course accept the money (and then detain them anyway).
• Crapsack World: Arstotzka is a nasty Ruritania in of itself, but what's worse is that there are people immigrating to it to get away from worse countries. Antegria is a flat-out tyranny that spies on and kills its own citizens on a whim. Kolechia is considered ten times worse than Arstotzka by Sergiu, has a poor health care system, and is full of terrorists and drugs. Obristan is another Ruritania that is apparently full of criminals, drugs, and border inspectors who are much worse at their jobs than the player. Republia is a People's Republic of Tyranny. The United Federation has a strong economy and the best technology out of all of the countries in this game, but its health care system is apparently a sick joke due to letting polio become another plague that causes international problems when it could be easily controlled with vaccines. Arstotzka, with all of its problems, has an excellent health care system, excellent scientists, a stable economy, and apparently a great transit system. The only country which does not have anything pointing to general problems in this game is Impor. Not helping is the fact that the game is set in the eighties, which was when the Communist states in our timeline got on their deathbed after years of hold out.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory: Your first inclination when coming across a scripted immigrant (whether they comment on the décor in your booth or give you something or whatever) is to assume that they always have their papers in order. Not so. With remarkably few exceptions (most notably the brothel workers), scripted immigrants can have their papers in order or not, just like everyone else. This will throw you for a loop the second time you play through.
• Determinator: Jorji is really persistent about getting past that border, no matter how many times he gets turned away or detained.
• Developers' Foresight:
  • If, for some insane reason, you decide to approve Jorji's Cobrastan passport, you will actually get a citation from the Ministry of Admission saying "Cobrastan is not a real country."
  • If you are so inclined, you can highlight the date on the Ministry of Administration Official Bulletin.
  • On day 9 when the guard enters your booth at the start of the day, you will see his weight displayed on your apparatus.
  • On day 29, Jorji will come and will suggest moving to Obristan to escape your audit. He mentions that the forger will need real Obristan passports to make them look authentic. At this point, you would approve his passport and he would give it to you, but you can confiscate it before giving it back to him:
  Jorji: Hey what the hell? You take my passport! You can see it was expensive!
  Inspector: You said I need real Obristan passports.
  Jorji: Man. Fine. I get another but little unhappy about it.
  • You can shoot innocent bystanders or border guards with the tranquilizer gun or sniper rifle to see what happens (or incidentally if your aim is bad). You either get sentenced to death or forced labour depending on the offense.
• Dirty Communists: Yourself and your fellow Arstotzkan state employees.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • Later in the game, you can detain people for having inconsistent paperwork. However, these inconsistencies in the paperwork could point to something much more sinister. You are not paid to take chances.
  • Your boss sentences you to forced labour for "disobeying a direct order" if you are caught hanging anything but official plaques on the wall for a second time.
• Distracted by the Sexy:
  • Some would-be immigrants will try to distract the player character by slipping in flyers for a certain Arstotzkan brothel with their official papers. Surprisingly, the brothel workers are scripted, and their papers are always in order, so if a girl hands over a card she can be accepted right away.
  • Another scripted entrant will try this with a love letter. She always has faulty paperwork.
• Do Wrong, Right: When somebody comes in just to drop a bomb in your booth, Calensk gets incredibly ticked off. Not because of the danger it poses, but because the bomb is so poorly made that an amateur like yourself can defuse it easily.
• Drugs Are Bad: Jorji Costava, a drug smuggler, says this himself in the following quote when he is first detained: "Drugs are bad. Not good for kids."
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: Some men have heads that look like they belong on women. You have to strip search them to find out that the passport's stated biological sex is true. If your strip search discovers that the passport states that the entrant is a man when you find that the entrant is a woman, you can arrest her for having falsified documents.
• Dystopia: It's Exactly What It Says on the Tin in its subtitle in the Steam listing.
• Dystopia Is Hard: Arstotzka's border system is a mess of rules that change on a daily basis, yet the system pays so little and has such minor penalties for failure that corruption (whether for personal gain or moral reasons) is almost guaranteed.
  • Although if ending 20 is achieved where the player remains loyal to the state, the government survives multiple dilemmas that could have allowed it to fall.
• Eagleland: The United Federation is implied to be such, with its blue passport, eagle diplomatic seal, and computerized border control. Although given its position on the map and border shape, it might actually be closer to Socialist Yugoslavia, which was a Federation with early access to computers as well (Yugoslav leader Tito was non aligned and thus had access to western goods).
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Certain endings in the game, with elements such as the upbeat, cheerful music and optimistic narration, provide a stark contrast to the grim, oppressive nature of the rest of the game.
• The '80s: The game is set in late 1982.
• End Game Results Screen: After each ending, the game shows you the stats on how many people you processed, denied, detained, etc.
• Endless Game: Unlocked when you get ending 20, or input a numeric code. There are also different modes and modifiers within this mode, including one where you cannot make a single mistake.
• Epic Fail: The guy who hands over two passports (in different names and places of issue) on day 14. You can even detain him immediately, no need for a check.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • The player character may be part of a corrupt bureaucracy in a dystopian society, but the player doesn't need to be completely heartless in their work. A smuggler trying to bribe you can be told off as you detain him, and a man accused of sex trafficking can be denied or detained despite his paperwork being in order. The game has many choices like this: one can try to do the right thing, or one can focus on doing their job.
  • When a certain terrorist attack occurs, one of the messengers from EZIC appears to inform you that they had nothing to do with it, making a point that they never harm the innocent, and even sends in an agent to investigate for you.
• Evil Is Easy: In the first part of the game, if someone's papers have a minor discrepancy, you can try to help them get their papers in order...or you can just deny their passport without explanation. The latter pays better. This is partly averted later, when you need to actually talk to the people who come up to your checkpoint before denying them, allowing them a chance to rectify any mistakes they've made.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The game's subtitle, "A Dystopian Document Thriller", as seen in its Steam listing.
• Failed a Spot Check: It's all too easy to overlook basic details when inspecting passports, especially on the later days when the difficulty and number of rules ramps up.
  • Crossing over with Noob Bridge, many new players get stuck on the third day when Jorji Costava shows up for the first time with no documents whatsoever. The player has to select the rule about needing a passport and compare it with the empty table in order to interrogate and then dismiss him. Directions to do this are found on page 2 in the daily official bulletin for this day that the player is supposed to read before calling the first entrant. The maker has been trying to make this more obvious, but with limited success.
• Fake Difficulty: A common citation is for when an immigrant's stated gender is different from their actual gender. However, the immigrant's faces are rendered in such a stylized fashion that it can sometimes be nigh impossible to tell whether they are intended to look like men or women, rendering the exercise often one of trial and error.
• Fatal Family Photo: Sergiu's locket from his lover, which marks him as vulnerable to dying even more than having My Girl Back Home (well, soon to cross the border into home).
• Featureless Protagonist:
  • The player character doesn't have a name or even an icon. The player character's wife finds a picture on the second to last day with the player character in it, though.
  • Another inspector appeared on the official website prior to release. He's a nondescript man with brown hair and glasses. Several viewers mistakenly assumed that the man was the main character of the game until Lucas Pope confirmed that he actually wasn't.
• Foreshadowing:
  • On your first day, a man will tell the player character that "Opening this checkpoint was a mistake." Terrorists carrying bombs will start trying to pass through it.
  • A certain EZIC agent will inform you that the man in red is not as dangerous as they say he is. You will know what she means a couple days later...
  • One day, the Truth of Arstotzka runs an article about how Arstotzkan doctors are among the best in the world. The next day, an entrant comes in desperately seeking a surgery that can only be done in Arstotzka.
• Friend in the Black Market: Potentially Jorji, whose certainly in the right business to be smuggling drugs and other things. Such as forged paperwork and smuggling people, if needed, to other countries.
• Friendly Enemy: Over time, the Inspector becomes a lot more friendly towards Jorji Costava, to the point where (if you screw up and offend both the government and the rebels) he can save you and your family in one of the endings.
• Gambit Pileup: The Grestin checkpoint is exactly as eventful as one would expect from the only open checkpoint in divided Berlin. There are several intrigues going on that involve the checkpoint, and you'll be involved in everything from espionage, to smuggling, to treason. For example, one of the biggest subplots is the cold war between Arstotzka and Kolechia, and the Order of the EZIC Star is actively involved in sabotaging negotiations between the two countries. Yet, EZIC is not working with the Kolechian extremists who have been suicide-bombing the checkpoint guards - they're a completely separate bunch of loonies. Should the player care, keeping an eye on the newspaper and instructions will help them keep track of what's going on.
• Gender-Blender Name: Some travelers, even when they are the gender they claim to be.
• Gender Reveal: Some travelers' looks will not match their passport's stated biological sex. Searching them may lead to definite "Oh..." moments, or result in the player ordering the arrest of a crook.
• Girls with Moustaches: Related to Gender Reveal, it's not unusual for a husky person with facial hair to step into your booth with paperwork identifying them as female...and see that they do indeed have a very feminine body underneath it.
• Good with Numbers
  • You will have to be, or will learn to be, in order to properly carry out your duties. For example, you need to be quick on date math to make sure that a work permit expires at the same time as the duration of stay on an access permit. Likewise, you will have to be able to quickly realize that "eight weeks" and "two months" are (well, reasonably) equivalent.
  • At first, mismatched passport numbers are blatantly obvious. But later on, there will be rare instances where the passport number will be off by only one digit or even missing one digit.
• Graceful Loser: Jorji never holds it against the inspector for denying him entrance (or even getting detained), provided the reasons are valid, and still even regards him as a friend.
• Great Escape: Jorji Costava, a drug smuggler, escapes jail 3 times, and Simon Wens, a serial child killer, escapes a United Federation prison.
• Grey and Gray Morality:
  • There are virtually no "right" or "wrong" choices in this game. Over the course of the game, you'll have to make ethical dilemmas whether or not you should sympathize with the entrant or obey the rules. For example, after an Antegrian man has his credentials and papers passed and allowed entry to the country (which his credentials are always correct), his wife will appear as well, but will always lack an entry permit. Allowing her in will net you a citation, but you will receive a token and a achievement for this.
  • The EZIC and Arstotzkan government are not very different. The Arstotzkan government is a corrupt totalitarian bureaucracy, but it is willing to cede parts of East Grestin to Kolechia in order to secure peace with Kolechia according to the day 27 EZIC note and is the player character's best chance of keeping a stable job and providing a better life for his family. EZIC wants to topple the current corrupt regime and is willing to grant the inspector's family a much better life than what Arstotzka offers; but it does not want Arstotzka to cede any part of East Grestin to Kolechia according to the day 27 EZIC note and does not take traitors lightly.
  • Some of the morally gray decisions are helpfully given an answer in the form of a token given for selecting what is usually the "morally right" answer.
  • The appeal and aesop of the game is that it challenges your morality and teaches you that there is a difference between "legally right" and "morally right".
• Guide Dang It:
  • It won't occur to some people to highlight the newspaper article when the murderer from Republia appears.
  • In the event where a woman asks you for help with a man she's afraid will make her a Sex Slave, when the player encounters him the first action to come to mind is to deny him entry. This simply leads to the same outcome if the player accepts him, and costs the player a fine. The correct action to do is inspecting the note the woman gives the player and the man's name on his passport or ID card, and then pressing the "Detain" button. Alternatively, the player can just give the note to the man to enable the "Detain" button.
  • An EZIC messenger informs the player character about an assassin and provides him with some white powder in a card. It instructs him to press down on it. The correct way of applying it is to click the bottom of the powder case while it's over the passport to apply it. Just don't click the powder itself. Probably justified by the fact you're handling Anthrax or some other highly sensitive substance...
• Heel Realization: The first time you play the game, you think to yourself that the first message that you get from EZIC, the one that says the government is corrupted by greed and paranoia, along with the hefty bribes they try to give you are just poor attempts to persuade you into becoming a traitor. But later on, your supervisor orders you to violate protocol for his convenience, Jorji is able to buy his way out of incarceration, and Arstotzkan dissidents attack your post which forces the Ministry of Information to institute a passport confiscation program against all of its citizens (including your own family). When you piece these facts together, you'll suddenly realize that EZIC really was telling the truth after all.
• Heroic Sacrifice: An EZIC messenger will task you with killing a man in red (Clearly visible in the queue), and promises that your sacrifice ensures that Arstotzka will be saved, and your family will be protected. Unfortunately, this leads to a Downer Ending, in which while they were able to relocate your family to a safer nation, they're unable to operate in Arstotzka, dooming them to hibernate. Whether or not you wanted to help them, this makes the sacrifice pointless...
• Hoist by His Own Petard: An EZIC messenger provides you a key to a sniper rifle to assassinate a man (which you have to miss). At the last day, you can use that sniper rifle on the two agents that run an assault on the wall.
• I Have Many Names: Some travelers state this as an explanation of why they might have a name discrepancy. Sometimes it's legit.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Almost all of the border guards suffer from this.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: The border inspector probably has no formal training at handling a gun, but his aim with both a tranquilizer gun and a sniper rifle is far better than any of the border guards' aim. Having these aiming skills is necessary because hitting one or more terrorists with your guns earns you a sharpshooter bonus that makes up for the pay for the people you could not process due to the terrorist attacks on the days that these attacks occur.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Jorji Costava, the world's least subtle and most harebrained illegal immigrant and drug runner. Your character starts anticipating his visits over the course of the game.
• Informed Deformity: One of the excuses people give if their picture looks different from their current appearance is "the years have been cruel." This can happen even if they look better than the picture in their passport.
• Interface Spoiler:
  • If the inspector doesn't say "Cause no trouble" to a Kolechian passing through the checkpoint, expect something to go down on the other side.
  • Brothel workers — the girls who hand you cards from the Pink Vice — always have their papers in order, so you can just give approval and send them on. This can save you a lot of time.
  • The four engineers who show up after Messof Anegovych asks you to give out his business cards should always be approved, but their papers might have discrepancies that will always be cleared with a thorough investigation.
• Instructive Level Design: Each time you get introduced to a new rule, document, or type of discrepancy, it's almost guaranteed the first entrant that day will show a correct example of the new document or let you exercise the new rule. The game's habits about this is Lampshaded in day 14, just as you detain your first wanted criminal.
  Inspector: Funny to see you here. Just when starting to look for criminals.
• Ironic Echo: "Glory to Arstotzka" is frequently used as a greeting among government officials and when welcoming citizens back to the country. However, in the bad endings, you're told of why you're losing your job (either for incompetence, insubordination, or associating with EZIC), your punishment, what will happen to your family, and how you're easily replaced. All of this is capped off with "Glory to Arstotzka."
• Jaywalking Will Ruin Your Life: Even if you have a perfect track record with zero citations and let his lover into the country, Dimitri will still send you to the gulags for the extremely minor crime of decorating the booth.
• Jerkass: One Arstotzkan citizen will complain at you for being "slow" and that he has a bus to catch, even if you give him back his passport in less than five seconds. Go ahead and take your time.
  • The "self-righteous" International Press Reporters will never bring in the proper paperwork required for entry. Yet if you deny their entry, they'll accuse you and the government of violating their rights to move freely into any country and trying to keep the truth of what's happening in Arstotzka from being known to the world. Grant their entry, however, and they "thank you" and proceed to write a scathing report about you and your government's incompetence which unfortunately makes it to the newspaper front-page.
• Just Following Orders: If you want to remain completely loyal to your employers or just receive zero citations, you basically have to invoke this attitude. The game will try to sway you away from following orders by testing your morality and loyalty with sob stories and bribes. The justification is also tested by the rules changing on a day-to-day basis, sometimes even undoing previous rules that could have gotten people denied entry or detained.
• Karma Houdini: Jorji Costava just keeps coming back no matter how many times you have him detained for smuggling drugs at the border. Justified in that the authorities in Arstotzka are utterly corrupt and he just bribes his way out of anything.
• Lady Looks Like a Dude: Some women have heads that look like they belong on men. You have to strip search them to find out that the passport's stated biological sex is true. If your strip search discovers that the passport states that the entrant is a woman when you find that the entrant is a man, you can arrest him for having falsified documents.
• Lampshade Hanging: At a certain point, Arstotzka gets a reputation for being a criminal haven, prompting a rule update that requires you to keep an eye out for the three most internationally wanted criminals of the day trying to cross your border. You are given a Wanted Poster with their photos on it. On arriving at work and calling for the first person in line, s/he is always on the wanted list that you just started receiving.
  You: How coincidental that you would arrive today.
• Lethally Stupid: After the United Federation suffers from a polio epidemic, you are required to deny entrants who do not have a current polio vaccination. People who have an expired polio vaccination, have a certificate of vaccination that lacks a polio vaccination, or have no certificate of vaccination at all are considered this trope, and the Ministry of Health has required you to deny these people to keep polio out. Some of those who have no certificate state that they do not believe in vaccines.
• Luck-Based Mission: It's up to random luck whether the next guy in line has a squeaky clean set of papers or not. Sometimes a string of easy passes will speed past your post, making that next one subtle flaw all the more difficult to notice. Some events are scripted, though, and on multiple playthroughs, you'll welcome them as you can stamp their paperwork and move on quickly.
• Lucky Bastard: An entrant comes into your booth with a forgery, somebody else's stolen document, or wanted status. Before you are able to detain them or even interrogate the critical discrepancy, the alarm sounds and you have to deal with the terrorists attacking your post. They just got away scot-free since you didn't get to arrest them.
• Made of Explodium: If a terrorist's motorcycle is shot (even with something as weak as a Tranquilizer Dart), it explodes and causes Splash Damage to nearby terrorists and motorcycles.
• Memento MacGuffin: Sergiu eventually gives the inspector a locket of his love, Elisa, so that she can be recognized when it's time. It's up to the player whether Elisa is let in or not, as she lacks proper paperwork.
• Mickey Mousing: The title screen scrolls up and then bobs up-and-down to the tuba in the main theme.
• Mission Control: The Arstotzka Ministry of Admission. Updates to national immigration policies are received before missions and warnings and penalties, in the form of wage deductions, are sent whenever you make a wrong call.
• Morton's Fork:
  • Eventually journalists will start showing up and attempt to use their press passes to gain entry. Deny them for having invalid paperwork, and they'll insult you for trying to silence the media and write an article about it. Accept them, and you'll get a citation for breaking the rules to help them... and they'll insult you for your inefficiency in enforcing the rules and write an article about it.
  • Day 29, when Jorji gives you his passport. You'll receive a citation regardless of denying or allowing him, either for denying a person clear for entry or for unauthorized passport confiscation.
• Multiple Endings: Depending on how much money you make and how you respond to certain events. A list of the endings with unmarked spoilers: ^{Click to expand} 
  • Ending 1: If you end with a negative balance at the end of a day you are arrested for debt and your family is sent back to their village.
  • Ending 2: Your entire family dies of sickness. You are fired for failing to support a family.
  • Ending 3: If you hand over the EZIC Documents to the M.O.I Inspector, you get arrested for your connection to them.
  • Ending 4: If you take the $1000 gift from EZIC and don't fix the problem by helping the EZIC agents that the cipher tells you to, then you are arrested for an anomaly in your finances.
  • Ending 5, 6, 7, 8: Shooting an innocent man or guard with either the rifle or tranquilizer. The only differences are getting the death penalty for shooting a guard and/or with the rifle and forced labour if it was a citizen with the tranquilizer.
  • Ending 9 & 10: On Day 23 if you do as EZIC tells you to kill the Man In Red. If you shoot him with the sniper rifle, you are arrested and sentenced to death for shooting an 'innocent man'. If you shoot him with the tranquilizer then you are sentenced to forced labour. EZIC moves your family to Obristan, but the new inspector isn't co-operative and EZIC's plans are ruined.
  • Ending 11: If your supervisor warns you about unauthorized wall hangings such as the Pennant, Family Photo or Son's Drawing, you will be sentenced to forced labour for ignoring a direct order. It is possible to reload the day this happens and remove them from the wall before he gets there though.
  • Ending 12: If you detained Shae instead of letting her through like your supervisor told you to do, he reports you for theft of Arstotzkan property, you are given forced labour and your family is sent back to their village. Denying her entry does not trigger this ending; you're merely chewed out for that.
  • Ending 13: If you haven't done enough EZIC missions by Day 31, EZIC will attack both the wall and your booth. If you stop the attack on your booth by shooting the lower of the attackers, you are arrested for failing to defending the border.
  • Ending 14: If you have done all the EZIC tasks, but then stop the attack on the border even after the EZIC Agent tells you to hold fire, your information audit leads to you being arrested and executed for working with EZIC. Before the execution EZIC manages to slip a note under your door condemning you for the betrayal.
  • Ending 15: If you have done all the EZIC tasks, let them blow up the wall then shoot both the EZIC agents, EZIC still rises to power, but your betrayal sees you have no place in the new revolution and you are killed as an enemy of EZIC.
  • Ending 16: On the day you received a bulletin about you being subject to an information audit, Jorji reveals that he knows a forger who can allow you to obtain entry to Obristan, for a certain amount of money and if you confiscate enough legitimate Obristan passports. This ending sees you unable to save your entire family and thus have a lesser ending than the others.
  • Ending 17: If you helped EZIC some of the time, the Day 31 attack on the wall will also lead to an attack on your booth. If you kill the agents sent to kill you and blow up the wall and can't escape, the information audit will see you sentenced to death for betraying the Government. EZIC is destroyed and the fate of your family is unknown.
  • Ending 18: If you gather enough passports and money, the whole family escapes to Obristan.
  • Ending 19: You let EZIC agents blow up the border wall on Day 31. Everyone waiting in line floods over the border. EZIC gains power and makes you an agent of the revolution.
  • Ending 20: You never co-operate with EZIC and do your patriotic duty as a protector of the Glory of Arstotzka.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Be honest, do you think actual border control could ever be this engaging?
• My Country, Right or Wrong: You can choose to play your character this way, following protocol to the letter and refusing bribes. After all, they did manage to give you the job to support your family (even if it was by chance).
• Nerves of Steel: The inspector retains his usual stoicism during the bomb scare on day 15, and Calensk is outright flippant.
• Never Hurt an Innocent: EZIC makes it very clear that they abide by this rule.
• Nintendo Hard: "Time IS Money" and you need to process more than 15 entrants to stay afloat. Because of this, your precarious financial situation at the start of the game will only get more precarious without sharp eyes and a fast hand which means you probably won't get far before you go bankrupt. This is not helped at all by an increasing number of rules and occasional terror attacks which cut the day short, resulting in a reduced pay. Oh, did we mention that the daily rent gets more expensive?
• No Communities Were Harmed: Arstotzka and the other fictional in-game countries. Several countries have (city) names that allude to America (The United Federation, or Republia's Bostan, for instance) and others that sound more European while the country of Impor alludes to Asian countries, especially Japan. The result is that despite the Soviet overtones, it feels like it could be set anywhere in Europe, or even in North America or Asia. In addition, Lucas Pope has written that he didn't want Arstotzka to be USSR or Russia and thus for example the word "comrade" or any of its equivalents shouldn't be used when translating the game into another language.
  • The game seems to be set in a fictional version of the Communist era Balkans if this in game map is to be believed and compared to a map of the Balkans during the Cold War◊
  • If the above is true, then the United Federation is hands down this universe's version of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Not only are both countries Federations, but both are to the furthest left of the Balkan Eastern Bloc, the borders for both seem to be similarly shaped, and Yugoslavia's leader Tito was the leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, meaning Yugoslavia got more access to western consumer goods as the United Federation is mentioned to have access to computers.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:
  • Letting someone in when their papers aren't in order gets you a citation, even if it saves their life.
  • From the perspective of a loyal Arstotzkan, promptly handing EZIC-related evidence over to the inspector may be the right thing to do, but you'll be arrested on suspicion if you do so.
• Non Standard Game Over: Any ending that results in your death (such as touching the poison you're meant to give to an EZIC target) abruptly returns you to the main menu without the End Game Results Screen and is not counted among the game's actual endings.
• Not So Different: It is none of the factions are really that different from each other in terms of immigration policy and treatment of its own citizens. This is highlighted by the similar Catch Phrases like "Glory to Arstotzka" and "Obristan Above All"
• Nudity Equals Honesty: All entrants strip on command when you click the search button. Those without contraband and those whose heads look like the opposite biological sex than what is stated on their passports but whose bodies match the said biological sex demonstrate this trope.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: People can wait in line for hours to see you before being told that their entrance were denied because of missing required documents, missing polio vaccines, or expired documents.
• Oh Crap!: The man who gives you two passports (see Epic Fail) instantly realises his mistake and starts begging you to give them back.
• The Omniscient: The Ministry of Admission's citation printer. You may not have spotted the mistake in someone's documentation, but it did! According to the devlog, the gamemaker went this way instead of having a more fallible system so it would be obvious when you slip up.
• The Order: The Order of the EZIC Star. They claim to be an ancient order dedicated to restoring Arstotzka through clandestine dealings. Whether you believe them or not is up to you.
• Painful Rhyme: An In-Universe example, the love note someone gives you on day 25 attempts to rhyme "visa" with "fire", "desire" and "wire".
• Perpetual Poverty: From beginning to end, you're going to struggle to make ends meet for you and your family (unless you're really good at the game). Even if you accept a $1000 bribe, your superiors will catch on and yank it, along with the rest of your savings, from you.
• Perspective Flip: In the "Escape to Obristan" endings, you are an immigrant handing forged documents to a border inspector. Fortunately, he's worse at his job than you ever were.
• Pet the Dog:
  • If you let his friend into the country, then your Bad Boss, Dimitri, will say that coming to the checkpoint doesn't seem so bad anymore.
  • Considering the setting, the Arstotzkan government being willing to overlook all your past bribes and wrong-doings for your loyalty and protection of the checkpoint seems uncharacteristically generous.
• Point-and-Click: Gameplay mostly consists of inspecting paperwork for inconsistencies against your rulebook and each other. Find two things that don't pass muster and you can either confront the prospective immigrant about it or just bust out the denial stamp, no questions asked. For all the simplicity, however, gameplay is surprisingly complex, with multiple plots and a number of things to keep track of.
• Police Brutality: If someone doesn't leave your booth voluntarily, the guards will deal with them by bashing them unconscious with the butt of a rifle and carrying them away.
• Power Perversion Potential: The scanner allows you to see under people's clothes. The options menu allows you to turn nudity on and off.
• Press X to Die: When you get the poison powder from the EZIC agent, there is nothing stopping you from touching the powder, even with the warning on the packet itself telling you not to.
• Prison Escape Artist: Jorji Costava escapes jail 3 times.
• Propaganda Machine: It's implied that The Truth of Arstotzka (the paper that we can read) is one of these. Ultimately, it's remarkably closer to a free press in practice, with opinion pieces and headlines that are openly critical of the government policies.
  • Could actually be an unintentional Genius Bonus, as the game takes place during the eighties, which was when Gorbachev in our timeline allowed for numerous reforms that liberalized the communist states. If the press is making open criticism of the state, its days are limited and could fall as in our timeline.
  • Also, you can notice below the title, where the price would be, that there is "no charge" for the paper. So, in a sense, Arstotzka can claim they have a free press.
• Protection Mission: Sergiu is a guard who is stationed at the border for a few weeks of the story mode. He is very vulnerable, and his subplot will end if he is killed. If the player wants that nice $100 reward for keeping him alive and letting his girlfriend through, he needs to be kept safe from the various terrorists.
• Punch Clock Hero: The player. Day in and day out you man your post at the border in order to support your wife, son, uncle, and mother-in-law who will all starve and die without support from your wage. In other words, he is a very literal punch clock hero. 6 to 6 each day, 7 days a week.
• Punch Clock Villain: The player again, if you're feeling like a dick.
• Rage Within The Machine: Potentially you, depending on how much you come to hate your own government.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: The player can choose to act as one, requiring a mix of following protocol and doing the right thing in the name of the greater good.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: The title screen is all over this.
• Redshirt Army: The Arstotzkan guards. Almost all of the time, they have terrible aim, and the week cannot go by without at least one of them dying. Once you have access to a rifle, you can potentially save two of them when an attack happens (though saving Sergiu is the only one that matters to the in-game story). Somehow, an Arstotzkan border inspector has better aim than the men who are trained to shoot on sight. Sergiu will even lampshade his bad aim if you save him once.
  • Although the guards are capable of kill shots as seen in the game and can arrest criminals without much haste.
  • Consequently, if you used the poison EZIC provided, you can get one guard killed. If you've been supportive of EZIC 100%, those guards at the end are necessary targets.
• Refuge in Audacity: Jorji not only fails to deny he has contraband but in addition openly admits to smuggling drugs into Arstotzka, bribing police to suppress information, bribing police to escape prison, and paying for forged documents when his are taken away. It's quite possible that you'd just let him through than try to make sense of it all.
• Retraux: The game's graphical style resembles an EGA game from the early '90s, though the animation is a little too smooth for it.
• Retirony: Averted in the case of Sergiu. If you save his life and let his lover through, he informs you that the next day he is getting a different post. Luckily for him, there's no terrorist attack on his last day.
• Revenge:
  • After news that a serial child killer named Simon Wens is returning to Arstotzka, a vengeful father asks you to let Simon in and confiscate his passport, so he can find and murder him. He even gives you a photo of his daughter, who Simon killed, to convince you further. He will be thankful to you if you grant him his chance. Indeed, the next day Simon is found dead in a "confusing mess".
  • On Day 19, Impor imposes trade sanctions on Arstotzkan imported goods, so Arstotzka responds by rejecting all Impor immigrants. This act quickly ends the trade sanctions from Impor.
• Right on Queue: Each day a massive line forms outside your post and it's your job to see as many of them as possible. The line never gets shorter, but subtly thins out on days following terrorist attacks, and is noticeably at its sparsest following the attack on day 26.
• Ripped from the Headlines:
  • Vince Lestrade, a Republian track star accused of killing his girlfriend, is based on Oscar Pistorius.
  • The daily newspaper writes about a domestic spying scandal in Antegria, and the whistleblower seeking asylum (and ultimately being granted it) in Arstotzka. This is based on the Edward Snowden whistleblowing scandal.
• Running Gag: Jorji Costava, a man who comes in, speaking in mangled English, and always has something wrong. For example, his first appearance has him come in with no passport. The second time, he has a made-up passport from "Cobrastan" that you can reject outright. He'll also cheerfully admit that all his papers are forged (when he finally gets his paperwork in order, he tells you it's because he paid for really good forgeries), that he's a drug smuggler, and that he'll just bribe his way out of prison if you detain him again. You actually get friendly dialogue with him as he keeps appearing, including a "Sorry, Jorji" when he has to be detained again. Funnily enough, knowing a criminal can come in handy — he can ultimately help you escape the country if needed.
• Ruritania: Arsotzka, with all of the "lovely" features of a 1980s Soviet Bloc country — job lottery, daily rule changes, smugglers, terrorists, etc.
• Sadistic Choice: There are a lot of these found throughout the game. You'll often have to decide between your paycheck and your conscience.
  • For EZIC supporters, the day that you're tasked to kill the man in red will be this. Doing what they ask will result in your death, but not doing so will jeopardize the entire EZIC movement in Arstotzka. A terrorist attack neatly solves the problem for you, as the man in red retreats back to Kolechia in the panic.
• Save Scumming:
  • The very first day, being a tutorial, has the most lenient rules regarding who can pass through — Arstotzkans versus non-Arstotzkans. As such, you can replay the day over and over for the most amount of processes in order to build up a buffer in your savings, with numbers greater than 20 possible with enough practice.
  • If you get an unsatisfactory income or a bad ending on a given day, all you need to do is replay that day from the continue screen. This is intentional, as part of the Anti-Frustration Features.
• Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: Two drug smugglers try to bribe the player with 10 credits, which is more than the credits that the player will get for correctly processing them by detaining them. Players can choose to detain them anyways.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: If the player detains his boss' lover at the checkpoint, he'll be sentenced to forced labour on trumped-up charges. In addition, the player may decide to do favors for people who he likes.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: The player can, and in many cases probably should, take bribes to let people through the checkpoint. A few citations a day aren't exactly a danger to his position.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right: Players can decide to violate protocol and let people in anyway despite papers that don't add up or exist. Doesn't stop the player from getting infractions from the state, but oddly enough their good deeds themselves aren't overturned. These actions usually get you Tokens, which are connected to Achievements.
• Secret Police: The Ministry of Information Special Investigation Division. Pro-tip: when you sit down in your booth and Special Investigator M. Vonel is already there waiting for you, be very, very careful about what you say to him.
• Serial Killer: Simon Wens is a serial child killer.
• Serious Business:
  • Gain a few kilograms since that ID card was created? Did you get married and have a new name? Was that just a bad picture day for you and the photo doesn't quite match up? Does your face look like it belongs to someone of a different biological sex than what is on the passport? All of this is grounds enough for the Arstotzkan Ministry of Admission Inspector (the player character) to throw you out. If he's feeling merciful or malicious enough, he might just ask for your fingerprints or strip search you in order to either clear the discrepancy to allow you in, or to find enough evidence to call the guards to arrest you.
  • A second offense of having non-approved decorations on the wall of your booth is enough to get you sentenced to forced labor. Although once you realize that the game portrays the frequently absurd internal logic systems of totalitarian governments ''quite'' authentically ^note if you are old enough to have spent at least a few conscious years, say the late childhood, in the Eastern Bloc, for instance, preferably before the Perestroika, or if you happen to have older relatives who did and if you try to follow that logic, it makes sense: the serious offense is not so much the trivial matter of non-approved decoration (unless it were subversive, that'd be serious by itself), but the fact that you defied a direct order, any order - totalitarian governments are big on absolutes. If you defy a trivial order like this, chances are you'll defy another order in a more serious situation, and that is a quality intolerable in a state employee and thus a part of the system.
• Sex Slave: Dari Ludum is trafficking women to force them to work in his brothel. The inspector can detain him to save the sex slaves, or let him through only to find out later that Dari Ludum has murdered them.
• Shmuck Bait:
  • In case you have been helping certain parties, you will at one point receive a dangerous item with a metaphorical Big Red Button labeled Do Not Press on it. If you click on the powder, you white out and are returned to the main menu.
  • That expensive gift you can take or burn? Taking it will eventually cost you all of your savings to be confiscated and for you to be investigated. Letting an EZIC agent in the country can help clear things up, though, but you'll never get your money back. Or, if you refuse the first gift but accept the second, more expensive gift, you'll soon get yourself a Non-Standard Game Over. Accepting the first is ok if you're low on money to begin with; you can keep the money for a day, and move up to a better apartment which you can downgrade later and keep that money. Just be sure to help the EZIC agent clear your name.
  • At one point you gain access to a tranquilizer gun to non-lethally subdue attackers. You later gain access to a quite lethal sniper rifle. Actually using it as the messenger suggested will unsurprisingly get you jailed for killing what appears to be an innocent in the eyes of your government. However, at least the messenger makes it pretty clear that using the gun that way is meant to be a sacrifice for their greater good.
  • That scary secret police officer? Yeah, maybe it's not the best idea to give evidence to him that could implicate you in even the slightest way.
• Shout-Out:
  • The countries of Republia and Antegria come from Lucas Pope's previous game, The Republia Times.
  • Because of the pre-release name submission campaign, there are/were several unintentional cameos. Every name belonging to another property is immediately removed from the game when it's discovered.
    @dukope: "You wouldn't believe how many people submitted pony/touhou/licensed-property names for Papers Please immigrants. At least, I was surprised."
  • "Dari Ludum", the sinister master of the Pink Vice brothel, is a shoutout to the Ludum Dare game jam that Lucas Pope regularly participates in.
  • The ISBN for the rulebook is the same as the one for Nineteen Eighty-Four.
• Shown Their Work: Boy howdy. As mentioned under Adult Fear, this game will trigger an emotional response if you are old enough to have experienced life in an Eastern Bloc state, preferably before Perestroika, or if you have relatives who did. It is, for all its abstraction and the fictional setting, an eerily accurate portrayal of both the actual mechanisms of a totalitarian state as well as quite an authentic immersion in the mood of a typical inhabitant. On the one hand, you have a vast, sprawling bureaucracy with a rigid, codified set of laws and instructions, some of which are mutually exclusive or contradictory and liable to change frequently (although the game ramps up the frequency in comparison to Real Life), and which are enforced by a pervasive and paranoid surveillance and security apparatus, which will set its sights on you even for small offenses, because in the totalitarian mindset, this is indicative of a potential for treason in more serious situations (particularly for functionaries of the state) - which was very much Truth in Television in the Brezhnev-era USSR, for instance. On the other hand, the same bureaucracy is thoroughly corrupt and the very people who want you to perform unerringly like an automaton are not above ignoring rules and instructions they draw up themselves if it serves their needs ^note and while one might say that corruption is a problem of all societies, including Western liberal democratic ones, it does not reflect the almost absurd level to which it was present in the USSR, being known and exploited across all social strata...which was just as true. The logical processes in a totalitarian state do differ from those in modern Western societies, which makes it hard for young Western first-time players of the game to understand what is going on or lets them consider it a typical Western satirical exaggeration, while somebody with an Eastern Bloc background will remember/recognize that the game actually does not exaggerate all that much, and will probably intuitively understand better what the pitfalls in play might be. After a bit of practice and exposure to the game, the player will get a sense of the mood of the typical Soviet citizen of the late 70s: the feeling of being a small cog in a vast, inefficient and malfunctioning machine (although you can bet that it will function perfectly the moment it is not it your interests for it to do so), leading to a Just Following Orders mentality and outward conformity to the system while trying to game it for one's own personal aims, which sometimes does work, sometimes not.
• Sinister Surveillance: Think you can get away with an easy-to-slip mistake? The citation machine would beg to differ.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Implied of Sergiu and possibly the other border guards, who served in a previous war in Kolechia. Sergiu even lampshades how his aim is not what it used to be and how he wishes to be done with the whole soldier business.
• Small Role, Big Impact: That would be you. You're just an overworked and underpaid border inspector. You determine who gets into the country based on paperwork. Which means your decisions can change people's lives, for good or ill. How you deal with the EZIC organization will determine if the current regime is toppled or stays in power.
• Sniper Rifle: One eventually gets issued to the player for those times when terrorists are about to make things a whole lot worse for Arstotzka and "budget reassignments" force some of the guards away from your checkpoint. It's only a tranquilizer rifle, though until EZIC gives you the key to a sniper rifle....
• Somebody Set Up Us the Bomb: A terrorist delivers a bomb to your booth and runs away before you can detain the terrorist. Fortunately, it is easy to disarm.
• Speaking Simlish: The spoken words in the game are filtered samples of nonsense words ("ehua?", "ihe", "gish-tot", "haouaeay", "lekrafezuh!") typed into the Mac "say" command.
  • Though the phrase the Inspector says when an immigrant enters the booth sounds a lot like a request for "Papers."
  • The other sound byte often heard from immigrants also sounds like "I have them," which makes sense with the above, even though sometimes the immigrant in question doesn't have their papers.
• Splash Damage: A motorcycle that explodes due to being shot (even with a Tranquilizer Dart) will kill or destroy other nearby motorcycles or terrorists that are close enough.
• The Stool Pigeon: An Antegrian whistleblower exposes an Antegrian espionage scandal.
• Stupid Crooks: You have to often deal with them.
  • One scripted event involves the immigrant dropping two passports with their name and photo but with different ID numbers, indicating obvious forgery. You don't even have to look at them before the "Detain" button pops up.
  • An entrant fails to present a document. If the inspector interrogates the entrant, the entrant will then present the document. The document sometimes contains incriminating evidence or a discrepancy that requires further interrogation that could reveal incriminating evidence. The entrant should have stated that he or she does not have the document. Declaring that one does not have a document merits only a denial. Presenting a document with incriminating evidence or a discrepancy that when questioned reveals incriminating evidence merits detainment.
  • Other criminals don't leave the line even when someone is arrested in front of them.
  • The world's three most wanted criminals are always in line (except for the day that Simon Wens, a serial child killer, escapes from a United Federation prison. He arrives the next day). If you perform well enough in the endless modes, you will always get an opportunity to arrest all of them.
• Stupidity Is the Only Option: Want to unlock all the endings? You'll have to do some dumb things, assuming you didn't accidentally get those anyways. Four of them involve shooting either bystanders or border guards with weapons, which is hard to do accidentally with decent aim.
• Stylistic Suck: The game almost has a grim, bleak DOS-quality graphic style that looks hideous by today's standards. The benefits of this though are that it is easier to find discrepancies and also reflects the dystopian nature of the game. Conversely, the art style is so stylized that sometimes it can be difficult if a character is meant to be male or female (see Fake Difficulty above).
• Suicide Attack: There are several suicide bombers in this game. Once you get a scanner and papers that state entrants' weight, you can detain them before they blow themselves up by highlighting the mismatched weights, enabling the inspector to use the scanner to find the bombs, and then detaining them.
• Swiss Cheese Security: The checkpoint has pathetic amounts of physical security at first, having a wall so low that intruders can simply leap over it. There is also only one guard initially who literally cannot aim to save his life. As time goes on, eventually the government responds to the terrorist attacks with heightened security measures. The player can even gain access to a tranquilizer gun and/or sniper rifle to stop attackers.
• Taking You with Me: A scripted event is for a Kolechian with impeccable entry papers to self-destruct, killing three guards at the entry border. This will happen twice, and both times, you will NOT be able to stop them because their papers are perfect. If you decide to deny them and receive a citation, the next person(s) in the line will do the same thing, even if it's already past 6 PM.
• Tempting Fate: "For sure, I am not in criminal bulletin or anything!" Unfortunately, Jorji is...
• This Is Gonna Suck:
  • Everytime you get a citation, you'll dread more and more the day your superior officer is scheduled to have a word with you.
  • The inspector from the Ministry of Information. If you've been helping out the rebel group, EZIC, God help you when you have to see him again...
• Time Bomb: If you fail to defuse the bomb dropped on your desk in a limited amount of time, it blows you and Calensk up.
• Timed Mission: Your pay is based on how many people you can (correctly) service by the end of the work day. You can't rush through people: if you admit entry to someone you should have denied, you are penalized. If you deny entry to someone you should have admitted, you are penalized. After Day 18, if you deny entry to someone you should deny, but don't stamp the denial reason, you are penalized.
• Title Drop: The game's name is the first thing the inspector says to anyone who enters the booth.
• To Be Lawful or Good: Effectively the whole point of the game. In order to keep the government off your back and stay in the black, you need to abide to their standards, no matter how oppressive they are or how much they'll weigh on your conscience.
• Took a Level in Badass: The player, once you have access to a tranquillizer rifle. Think of the many guards you could save from terrorist attacks with a well placed shot.
• Tranquilizer Dart: The player gets access to a tranquilizer gun when budget cuts forces the job of guarding the border to the inspector.
• Tuckerization: The developer took name submissions for potential immigrants from the public.
• Unable to Support a Wife: You are already married and with a family and must earn enough money to support them. Arstotzkan workers are expected to support large, healthy families. If your entire family dies, you'll be fired from your job.
• Ungrateful Bastard: The western journalists who show up with press passes instead of proper paperwork and expect to be let in to expose your country's corruption. If you let them through, they write scathingly about how incompetent the border control is.
• Vast Bureaucracy: Arstotzka. You're assigned your job through a "labour lottery". Your rulebook is updated with new complicated rules almost every day. You have to deal with at least three different ministries, each with their own set of seals (they can't even agree on a single seal per ministry).
• Verbal Backspace:
  • A surprising number of immigrants get their length of stay completely wrong. Not simply off by a short measure of time, but way off. When you confront them about the discrepancy, they universally have an "Oh, right, that" reaction. Even more amusing is that the system sees this as clearing the discrepancy.
  Immigrant: I stay for six weeks.
  (Access permit specifies 2 days)
  Inspector: The length of your stay is different.
  Immigrant: I make mistake. I just pass through.
  • If you get some artwork from your child and hang it up at your work station, one scripted entrant will insult it. If you deny or detain them for any reason, they think it's because they offended you and proclaim that such art should be in a museum.
• Video Game Caring Potential:
  • Some good people might be unfortunately in possession of an improper set of identification or insufficient amount thereof and a kind player can "look the other way" and stamp them approved anyway.
  • In one instance, a woman claiming to be at risk of becoming a Sex Slave to a man in line after her will slip you a note begging for your help. When his turn comes up, you can detain him.
  • About halfway through the game, one of the guards befriends you. A few days later, he asks for a favor. Granting him his favour will make you feel really good about yourself (but get you in trouble).
  • In the later days, you will learn that your sister gets arrested, leaving her daughter up for adoption. She may be another mouth to feed, but she is family... And adopting her gets you rewarded with an extra $100, thankfully.
  • You don't HAVE to ask questions to anyone with improper paperwork until the time comes where you need to find reasons to deny them; in fact, the moment you see an inconsistency, you can deny them outright. If you do ask, some of them may have made an honest mistake, have proper paperwork but looks like someone of the opposite biological sex, have bad papers that are not incriminating (e.g. expired or missing paperwork) where interrogation lets the entrant know what is wrong, could use your help to clear discrepancies (e.g. take fingerprints to prove an identity when the person's height or physical description is wrong, take fingerprints to look up a person's claimed alias, perform a search when the weight is wrong to prove that there is no contraband, or have a purpose or duration of stay mismatch corrected) or are criminals that are carrying incriminating evidence that can be exposed by investigating them. The fact that you're going through the extra effort just to see if it's a good person that can be admitted is showing that you care for the entrants and allows you to prevent crimes by arresting crooks. The last point requires you to be cruel to the crooks in order to care for society.
  • There's a man and woman claiming to be husband and wife that are fleeing from Antegria that they claim is an oppressive regime that will kill them on day 5. His papers are always in good order and he goes first. Her papers are never right. The newspaper will report on day 11 that a whistleblower has exposed Antegrian domestic espionage and is on the run, which suggest that the couple is telling the truth.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • You can let the guy running the sex trade through.
  • You could also just deny everyone entry, whether their papers are good or not, though that'll get you in trouble very quickly.
  • Until the rules change so that you have to interrogate suspicious potential entrants, you make a lot more money by simply denying them, as dealing with the discrepancy wastes time and you're paid by the number of people processed.
  • There's the man who tries to bribe you with both cash and a wristwatch (a "family heirloom"). You can deny him and give him back the money and the watch... or detain him and keep the watch and money for yourself.
  • Giving Simon Wens a picture of his victim will cause him to exclaim, "What the fuck!" and run back to Kolechia.
  • You can stop paying your family's bills and kill off all but one of them without losing the game. As the game wiki puts it: "[I]t is possible to [do this] in order to reduce expenses. It is also exactly as callous as it sounds."
  • One of the endings requires getting up to six Obristan passports to use for you and your family to flee the country. You get one of them from Jorji, who hands it over willingly, but you have to wrongly deprive up to five other Obristanians of their ability to travel, who are more often than not completely innocent. And they're not getting their passports back by calling the number on the slip when you'll be long gone by then.
  • A man will ask you to let his wife through, who happens to be the next person in line and both of them had fled their country to avoid being killed. The husband's papers are cleared, but the wife's is not. You can send her away, separating the couple forever.
  • Sergiu at one point asks you to let his girlfriend through. Naturally, the woman doesn't have her papers in order when she shows up. You can deny her entry, which she then asks you to give her locket back to Sergiu and tell him that she will see him in the next life. If you really want to be cruel, you can deny the woman entry and allow Sergiu to be killed in the next terrorist attack without him ever knowing that his girlfriend had come by.
  • When you detect a criminal, you can detain the crook and therefore be cruel to the crook. You can be kind to the crook by just denying the entrant or letting the crook through, but this is cruel to society. You could also join a conspiracy to murder one of these crooks for a token by letting a serial child killer through and the father of one of his murder victims, which is cruel to all but the vengeful father.
• Violation of Common Sense:
  • Many first-time players would give the EZIC documents to the M.O.I. Inspector, as what most law-abiding people would do in real life. Unfortunately most law-abiding people nowadays don't live in a communist dictatorship with a corrupt, ultra-paranoid Secret Police. Doing so will get you investigated and arrested for a Non Standard Game Over. (And unlock the "Too Honest" achievement.)
  • The second time Jorji comes through the office, he has an obviously fake passport that looks like crayon and construction paper. Rather than any of the glaringly obvious problems that can be highlighted, the only one that works (aside from cross-referencing the passport itself with the "All entrants must have a passport" rule in the rulebook) is the name of the country he came from having a minor misspelling. Of course, most players don't bother highlighting anything at this point - they'll just stamp a denial.
• Voice Grunting: Everyone, including the player, speaks in this.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Jorji's first appearance can actually trip up a new player, since everyone before him has been forthright in giving you their papers. Jorji... doesn't give you anything, and the game does not give you inline directions that the proper way to deal with a lack of paperwork is to cross-reference the actual rule in the manual with the empty desk. However, the daily bulletin that you get at the beginning of each day that you are supposed to read before starting a day will teach you this if you read it. You could spend precious in-game hours knowing that you're supposed to deny him, but not knowing how to if you fail to read the daily bulletin.
• The War Just Before: The story is set in a border checkpoint between the fictional countries of Arstotsla and Kolechia, which recently fought the Six Year War.
• Wanted Poster:
  • The newspaper prints and circulates one for Vince Lestrade who is wanted on murder charges. He is an Expy of Oscar Pistorius.
  • After Arstotzka becomes known as a haven for international criminals (which you helped create if you previously failed to arrest Vince Lestrade), you are handed a wanted poster with the world's three most wanted criminals on it and are required to detain them upon sight.
• Weirdness Magnet: Face it, the amount of stuff that happens to the player in over the game makes you wonder if there's something in the air in Grestin.
• Western Terrorists:
  • The Kolechians are responsible for most of the terrorist attacks early on.
  • The EZIC, for all their righteousness, are not above terrorism (though never against innocent citizens).
• What Happened to the Mouse?: When terrorists strike when there is an entrant in the booth, that entrant is locked in the booth during the emergency. You never get to finish processing the entrant or let the entrant leave. The entrant disappears before the start of the next day.
• What the Hell, Player?:
  • You will receive a printed citation every time you make a wrong call, and your superior officer may make a comment alluding to this depending on your performance. Some immigrants and citizens will also pull this on you, mostly if it's an immoral choice (which at least saves you from earning a citation). Although if you fall through in your word to certain people, this can be justified.
  • You can give Simon Wens the photo of his victim. He runs far, far away, and the man who wanted to kill him will not be happy.
  • Work with the EZIC group, and shoot the guys the messenger told you not to shoot? They will be suitably mad at you.
  • Some of the endings are earned with you blatantly betraying both EZIC and the Arstotzkan government in one go, predictably leading you to forced labour or death.
  • Near the end of the game, Jorji eventually offers the player an option of escaping the audit by moving to Obristan, and if the player lets him in, he'll force his passport onto the player before proceeding. The player can opt to confiscate his passport before approval, and Jorji calls the player out on it for a bit.
• Wire Dilemma: Defusing a bomb that gets planted in the booth during a scripted event requires cutting a set of wires in a numerical sequence listed on the outer casing of the bomb. This obvious design flaw is lampshaded by the nearby guard.
  Calensk: This is poorest bomb I ever see. A simple mind created this. Just cut the wires in order.
• Would Hurt a Child: Simon Wens is a serial child killer.
• You Bastard:
  • The paper will reflect what actions you took (or didn't take) the next day, subtly condemning your actions if what you did was ethically questionable.
  • The people in line will also sometimes tell you off if you red-stamp them. If their papers are fine, they might even say "You Bastard" verbatim.
  • Jorji will return with the correct documents. If you're still bitter about him constantly getting it wrong, or deny him unjustifiably, he'll call you out for it.
• Yet Another Stupid Death: After getting further into the game and becoming more proficient, you will likely resolve to never allow something as easy and frequent as an expired passport or invalid issuing city to go past your eyes unnoticed. You will just as likely do it again at some point, after checking almost everything else.
• You ALL Look Familiar: All Generic Entrants are created through an algorithm which combines different facial parts that are drawn from a database of 16 preexisting faces.
• You No Take Candle: Many characters speak in very stilted English. Word of God states that this is intentional to give this an Eastern European feel.
• Your Days Are Numbered: During the final week, you'll be notified of an impending audit by the Ministry of Information. In fact, their special investigator will audit you personally. If you've worked with the EZIC group, even helped them once or accepted one of their gifts, but haven't done enough for them to be able to start their revolution in earnest, you may want to consider escaping from Arstotzka, otherwise, the Arstotzkan inspector will have you arrested for treason and sentenced to death by the last day. On the day of Christmas Eve no less.
• Zero-Effort Boss: The EZIC attack on the final day is ridiculously easy to thwart with a couple of easy shots because the terrorists are very slow.

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