An extremely unique game, that tasks you with an apparently extremely boring job. You work at a border crossing and you have to check the papers of aspiring immigrants.

What sounds like an easy and mind-numbing task rapidly spirals in a kafka-esque nightmare of ever-changing rules, exceptions, supplementary paperwork and devious details. By the end you become an extremely efficient machine, able to process immigrants and spot inconsistencies in the paperwork in a quick glance. But be careful: tensions are high, and there will be several illegal applicants, smugglers ans terrorists. Some you will even have to eliminate yourself.

Underneath this bureaucratic surface, there is a story of insubordination, insurrection, crime, and moral dilemmas. You are often put in difficult positions: do you deny entry to a woman that lacks the correct paperwork, but who is reuniting with her family across the border? Do you want to support the secret organisation that wants to overthrow the current regime by strategically denying entry to (and sometimes directly eliminating) their opposition? Bear in mind that any failure to follow protocol will result in citations and monetary penalties. Helping the resistance may sound great, but you risk making your family go cold and hungry.

This is an experience that could really only be conveyed through a videogame, and I have extreme respect for Lucas Pope, who managed to make the role of a dull bureaucrat feel so thrilling, overwhelming, and morally challenging.