Papers, Please: Complete Guide

How to survive 31 days as an Arstotzkan border inspector: inspecting documents fast, keeping your family alive, navigating EZIC, and chasing all twenty endings.

Researched September 2026 — current as of version 1.4.11 (the Unity engine update line; the last patch shipped March 2023). Live games change; check the linked sources if something differs.

Quick Start

• The story mode lasts 31 in-game days. Each day you process a queue of entrants at Grestin Border Checkpoint, then manage your family's budget at night.
• You are paid per correctly processed entrant. Speed matters as much as accuracy. More correct stamps means more money for rent, food and heat.
• Mistakes earn citations. The first couple each day are warnings; after that, citations cost you money. A handful of mistakes can wipe out a day's profit.
• Use Inspect mode on everything suspicious. Click the inspect button, then click two pieces of information that disagree (say, a photo and a physical description) to raise a discrepancy. Only then can you interrogate, fingerprint or search.
• Read the daily bulletin. New rules arrive constantly: new documents, banned countries, required vaccinations, wanted criminals. The bulletin tells you what changed today.
• Your family comes first mechanically. If you cannot pay for rent, food and heat, family members get sick and eventually die. Going into debt ends the game outright, and family deaths push you toward the bleak endings.
• The game saves at the start of every day and lets you reload any earlier day. Experiment freely; you can always branch.
• There are twenty endings. Your choices with EZIC, your family's fate and a few key entrants decide which you get.
• Glory to Arstotzka.

The Daily Loop

At the booth

Each entrant hands you documents. You compare them against the rulebook and the bulletin, then stamp Approved or Denied on the passport and hand it back. Later you can also detain entrants when evidence justifies it.

Tools you unlock over the campaign:

Tool | What it does

Rulebook | Seals, issuing cities per country, document rules, district names

Inspect mode | Highlight and link mismatched details to create a discrepancy

Interrogate | Question an entrant about a discrepancy; sometimes they admit it or produce a missing document

Fingerprinting | Compare fingerprints against an ID card or record to catch identity fraud

Search / body scan | Reveal contraband or physical mismatches such as weight or sex

Detain | Arrest an entrant; some days you earn a bonus for detentions

Transcript | A record of what the entrant said, usable as evidence in Inspect mode

At night

After the shift ends you see your earnings and your family's status. You pay for:

• Rent (mandatory, and it rises early in the campaign)
• Food (skip it and family members become hungry, then sick)
• Heat (skip it and they get cold, then sick)
• Medicine when someone is sick
• Occasional one-off costs and optional booth upgrades

Balance is the whole game. Skipping heat for one night is survivable; skipping food and heat for several nights in a row is how families die.

Documents You Will Handle

New paperwork is introduced gradually. The common ones:

Document | Who needs it | What to check

Passport | Everyone | Expiry date, issuing city matches the country, seal and photo, name and number match other documents

ID card | Arstotzkan citizens | District, name, date of birth, height, weight, photo

Entry permit | Foreigners | Name, passport number, expiry, purpose and duration

Work pass | Foreign workers | Matching name, valid expiry, Ministry of Labor seal

Diplomatic authorization | Diplomats | Must list Arstotzka among the nations the holder may enter

Grant of asylum | Asylum seekers | Name, fingerprints, passport number

Identity supplement | Foreigners (for a period) | Height, weight, physical description

Certificate of vaccination | Required during the polio outbreak | Polio vaccination must be present and in date

Country list from the rulebook: Arstotzka, Antegria, Impor, Kolechia, Obristan, Republia, United Federation. Kolechia has just ended a six-year war with Arstotzka, and rules frequently target it.

The fast inspection order

A routine that catches almost everything:

• Expiry dates first. Expired documents are the single most common trap and take a second to check.
• Issuing city. Compare the passport's issuing city with the rulebook list for that country. Fake passports often use a city from the wrong country.
• Names and numbers across documents. The passport number on the permit must match exactly.
• Photo and physical details. Look for a different face, sex, height or weight.
• Seals. Check the Ministry seal shape on permits and passes against the rulebook.
• Today's special rules. Wanted criminals, banned countries, required vaccinations or documents.

If everything lines up, stamp Approved and move on. The quicker you handle clean entrants, the more you earn.

Money and Your Family

Your family: wife, son, mother-in-law and uncle, and later a niece can join the household. Each has a status (hungry, cold, sick). Status that stacks for multiple nights leads to death.

Rules of thumb:

• Always pay rent. Unpaid rent leads to debt, and debt ends the game.
• Rotate what you skip. If money is short, alternate skipping food and heat on different nights rather than skipping the same one twice.
• Buy medicine as soon as someone gets sick. Sick family members get worse fast.
• Bribes and bonuses help. Some entrants offer cash; certain days pay bonuses for detentions. Accepting bribes carries risk, but it can save your family.
• Booth upgrades pay back. Upgrades that speed up stamping increase how many people you can process per day. Buy them early if you can afford them.

EZIC and the Story

EZIC is a secret organization plotting a coup against the Arstotzkan government. Starting partway through the campaign, a mysterious figure contacts you with EZIC messages and tasks: letting certain people through, handing over items, or taking actions against specific targets.

• Helping EZIC leads toward the endings in which the coup plays out.
• Refusing EZIC or reporting its messages leads toward loyal endings, but has consequences of its own.
• Your household matters: some endings require your family to still be alive, and some routes involve escaping to neighboring Obristan, which needs the right documents for everyone who comes along.

Other recurring characters, such as Jorji Costava, keep showing up in the queue with increasingly creative (and usually invalid) paperwork. Watch for returning faces; some carry story consequences.

Chasing all twenty endings

• Use the day-select save system. Load the day before a key decision rather than restarting from Day 1.
• Keep one "clean" loyal save. The ending most players consider the "true" loyal ending requires surviving all 31 days without the state catching you and without helping EZIC in a way that dooms you.
• Many endings are failure endings. Getting arrested, going into debt or losing your family counts. They are part of the list, so you can collect them deliberately.

Endless Mode

Beyond the story there is an unlockable Endless mode that strips out the story and family management. It focuses purely on processing entrants, limited only by your error count. It is excellent practice for speed and rule memory, and the fastest way to learn issuing cities and seals without the pressure of rent.

Achievements and Hidden Tokens

The Steam version has 13 achievements. Seven of them are hidden country tokens, one per nation: Arstotzka, Antegria, Impor, Kolechia, Obristan, Republia and United Federation Token. Each is tucked away somewhere in the campaign; use the day-select system to revisit days rather than replaying the whole story.

The remaining six are story and performance achievements: Glory to Arstotzka, Member of the Order, Hired Rifle, Too Honest, Worker's Best and Snowier Pastures. Steam hides their descriptions, so expect several to be tied to specific story branches and endings. Keep separate saves at key days (EZIC contact, late-game decision days) so you can branch for each one.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Stamping before reading the bulletin. A new rule on a new day catches most players at least once.
• Missing expiry dates. Check them first, every time.
• Forgetting the passport number on the permit. A single wrong digit makes the permit invalid.
• Denying without a reason when a detain is possible. Detaining when the evidence supports it can pay a bonus on certain days.
• Spending on heat and food every night early on. In the first days, rent and a small cushion matter more. Plan a few nights ahead.
• Letting a sickness sit. Medicine is expensive but a death is permanent for that save branch.
• Ignoring fingerprints on identity-fraud days. When names match but something feels off, fingerprints settle it.

Advanced Tips

• Drag documents to the same area of the desk every time. Muscle memory speeds up every check.
• Learn issuing cities by heart. It is the check that takes longest if you open the rulebook for every entrant.
• Use the transcript as evidence. If an entrant's spoken purpose or duration differs from the permit, link the transcript in Inspect mode.
• Process clean entrants fast, slow down on flagged ones. Most of your income comes from volume.
• Use short-term bribes strategically. If you are a few credits short of medicine, a bribe can be worth the risk; do not make it a habit.
• Consider command-line options if the display is wrong. Version 1.4.11 added options to force 720p or 1080p fullscreen, and version 1.4.x added switches for vsync and stretching.
• Rolled-back build. If the Unity build misbehaves on your machine, the previous 64-bit legacy build (1.2.76) remains available on a Steam beta branch.

FAQ

How many days is Papers, Please? The story covers 31 days at the Grestin checkpoint.

How many endings are there? Twenty. Many are failure endings; a few are the outcomes of loyalty, EZIC's coup or escape.

Can I go back to an earlier day? Yes. The game saves at the start of each day and lets you load any previous day, which makes branching easy.

What happens if I run out of money? Going into debt at the end of a day ends the game. Always prioritize rent.

Is there a mobile version? Yes. An iPad version came out in December 2014, a PS Vita port in December 2017, and iOS/Android phone versions on 5 August 2022. Lucas Pope rewrote the game in Haxe on Unity for the phone port, and the desktop versions moved to that engine with version 1.4.9 in March 2023.

Is the game still updated? Only occasional technical fixes. The latest release was 1.4.11 in March 2023. For the tenth anniversary in 2023, the developer also released a free demake, LCD, Please.

What languages are supported? Many, including Korean, Turkish and Czech added in the 1.4.x update, and Ukrainian added in 1.2.76.

Sources

• Papers, Please – Wikipedia
• Papers, Please official site
• Steam news: Version 1.4.9 Engine Update, 1.4.10 and 1.4.11
• Steam store page (app 239030)
• Steam achievements for Papers, Please