[…] weeks ago I wrote about a billion and seven words about Papers Please, which was a indie game that touched me in a rather personal way. Not only did it posses a wickedly […]

Hey Lucas this is a really cool read. It was good to see your take on this game (through the lens of your/your parents’ experience with the real thing). I haven’t played it (these days I prefer watching others play X) but I saw a review on the avclub and it seemed pretty interesting.

@ reza:

It’s amazing how ideologies driving these systems can be completely different (communism is by nature secular and very anti-religion) and yet the mechanisms of oppression are always so similar.

If you end up in Warsaw, definitely check out the Old Town. It’s like walking though history. Also best ice cream place ever. You can pretty much just ask anyone there where the good ice-cream are and they will point you in the right direction. Most summers there is like a 15-20 minute queue in front of the place during peak hours. :) The Palace of Culture and Science, despite being the 6th tallest building in EU is kinda boring. Nice view from the top, but the whole thing is like a big, somber reminder of the soviet oppression (original name was “Josef Stalin’s Palace of Culture and Science”). So there’s that.

Luke, What you described in paragraph starting with :”This might be obvious….” is actually what is happening currently in the country i live in, Iran. You know, When you do sth. authorities do not confirm, they will call you up and show you documents saying that “WE ARE WATCHING YOU” . and may god help someone who does anything officially prohibited. (sorry for my bad english, an unfortunate language barrier)
and as you might know almost everything is extremely prohibited in Iran. A poor soul who’s been seen with a beer can, can be condemned to death. And women not wearing scarf are humiliated by Public Safety Police and sent to prison. There are many examples.

Our fucking totalitarian government aside, Reading some Bruno Schulz and Szymborska and watching some polish movies in college years, I fell in love with polish culture. I hope to see Warsaw in the recent future when traveling aboard becomes much easier.

@ Victoria:

Heh, very true. That said TSA and immigration officers in US ain’t much better sometimes. Maybe there is something about airports that brings out the worst in people. :P

Great write up.

Wow, looks interesting! Though to be truly authentic it shouldn’t have ‘please’ in the title :) When I get back to Ukraine, each time I look at grim faces of border control officers who look at me with suspicion: Why did you get back? Which flight were you on?

Chris Wellons wrote:

Wow! I wasn’t expecting something so insightful in the middle of an indie computer game review.

Well, I think credit here goes to Lucas Pope for creating a game that lends itself so nicely to deeper analysis, and allows tangential discussions of it’s themes and motifs. When you review a game as entertainment then you are going to talk about the game itself, and not much beyond that. But when a game is a piece of art, the review naturally evolves into more introspective and thoughtful discussion about the things the game talks about. :)

I haven’t played Republia Times yet. I will check it out and report back. :)

Wow! I wasn’t expecting something so insightful in the middle of an indie computer game review. That was really interesting, Luke. One of my college friends was from Romania, his family having fled to the US just before the fall of the communist regime. His stories sounded a lot like yours, and he would also get agitated at inaccurate western depictions/conceptions of the Eastern Bloc. He was extremely grateful to have escaped it.

Have you seen the sister game to Papers, Please: The Republia Times? In that one you’re a newspaper editor in Republia and you have to keep readership high as well as satisfy the state’s censorship demands. Does that game get the subtleties right, too?