Lucas Pope marks 10 years of Papers, Please with a free demake for your browser

Papers, Please

Congratulations. The October labor lottery is complete. Your name was pulled. For immediate placement, report to the Ministry of Admission at Grestin Border Checkpoint. An apartment will be provided for you and your family in East Grestin. Expect a Class-8 dwelling.

Dystopian border control simulator Papers, Please turns 10 years old this week, and developer Lucas Pope has marked the occasion by demaking it. Created in collaboration with Keiko Pope, the resulting browser-based LCD, Please "runs" on a mocked-up LCD console, akin to Nintendo's Game & Watch. Pope is also celebrating the anniversary by donating $100,000 to the International Rescue Committee.

The demake gives you the simplified strokes of the celebrated 2013 game: you're a border control officer, approving or denying entry to the fictional country of Arstotzka, which boils down to checking mugshots and bios against faces that, in this rendition, call to mind Rorschach blots. The representation of an LCD screen with "baked-in" graphics is impressive - I had to fight the urge to tilt my computer to catch the sunlight while playing.

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