Indie puzzler Papers, Please brings its thought-provoking border control gameplay to Android

As an immigration inspector, you’ll get to choose if you’re loyal to the state or willing to use your position of power for your own means

Papers, Please started as a PC release in 2013, coming from Lucas Pope, the same indie dev behind Return of the Obra Dinn. Eventually, the dystopian puzzle game found its way to the iPad and PlayStation Vita, but a smartphone version was always missing from the lineup. Thankfully the developer recently revealed he would be bringing the game to Android and iOS on August 5th, which is today, so just as promised, Papers, Please is finally available on the Google Play Store.

More or less, Papers, Please is an uncomfortable game where you’ll fulfill the role of an immigration inspector working for a communist state. It will be up to you to decide who gets in and who doesn’t, perhaps allowing bribes to line your pockets, or maybe you prefer to do the bidding of communists by sucking up to your masters and squashing the little people. The choice is yours, which is precisely what makes the game so dang interesting.

Now, this brand-new mobile version of Papers, Please is a port, but there are a couple of changes worth pointing out. First and foremost, the entire game is presented in a portrait view; there is no landscape support. The game’s timers have also been adjusted (such as day length), and since the UI is new for mobile, there’s only one booth upgrade available, though it would appear the game’s economy has only seen a slight rebalance for entrants processed after 6 PM. So you get a new UI fitting for touchscreens, but thanks to the format, it appears some tweaks were necessary to balance the game better for mobile play.

As expected, this is a premium release, available for $4.99, and there are no in-app purchases to be seen. You get the full game, and performance is on point, though there is no controller support; the entire game works through the touchscreen, but seeing the game was designed for mouse input, the touch controls work wonderfully on phones and tablets.

All in all, today’s launch for Papers, Please is a welcome one, finally bringing the game to smartphones after nine years. Thankfully the title plays just as great as it does on PC and the iPad, ensuring the asking price is well worth the expense. So if you’ve been itching to role play as an immigration inspector working for a totalitarian government, you can now do so from the comfort of your Android device, as this may be one of Android’s best games yet.