As promised — and after a tiny storm of controversy over Apple’s initial rejection of the app over so-called pornographic content — the award-winning dystopian document thriller Papers, Please is now available for iOS.
Created by developer Lucas Pope, Papers, Please puts the player in the role of a faceless document processor in the fictional Eastern Bloc country of Arsotzka. Your task is to inspect the passports of people trying to cross the border, turning them away when their passports fall afoul of an increasingly byzantine array of bureaucratic guidelines. Make a wrong move, and it could cost you, and your family your life… but there will always be temptations, moral and otherwise, to look the other way.
Depending on how you play Papers, Please, there are over 20 alternate endings to the 30 game levels. There’s also an Endless Mode, so there’s plenty of replay values.
Papers, Please is one of the most cerebral games I’ve ever played, and so I’m glad it came to the iPad. Apple initially rejected the app because of some very artful (and not erotic at all) nudity in the game, which is a testament to Apple’s frustrating double standard when it comes to letting adult content into the iTunes Store, but not the App Store. That said, the original Mac version of Papers, Please allowed users to choose to censor out the nudity as well, and it feels that developer Lucas Pope himself doesn’t think much was lost in the compromise.
You can buy Papers, Please for iPad for just $5.99.
Source: iTunes
