Border Officer

Border Officer is a point-and-click work simulation game with a political angle. If you are familiar with the award-winning "Papers, Please" game developed by Lucas Pope in 2013, you will notice that Border Officer borrows and copies quite a few elements, including the austere Eastern Bloc vibe just before the Soviet Union came crumbling down.

In essence, Border Officer assigns players the duties of an immigration and customs agent stuck at a remote checkpoint in a fictional country where the socioeconomic climate is pretty bleak. The bureaucratic consists of checking passports, visas, and potential contraband. Your despotic superiors make life very difficult with onerous regulations that change frequently. Infrastructure is crumbling, the political climate is tense, and you have to manage a meager salary in order to feed your immediate and extended family. As with "Papers, Please," you will be expected to make some tough choices.

The 3-D graphics in Border Officer could be better, but they run fairly smoothly on Windows computers. The user interface is fairly easy to grasp and responsive, but you may notice a few bugs such as passports and visa permits falling through the immigration office counter; in some cases, you can reset the situation by interacting with the ancient desktop computer, but if you encounter bugs in other sections of the depressing border town, you will not be able to fix them and the game will freeze.

Border Officer lacks the snappy dynamics of "Papers, Please," but it does have a powerful political message insofar as making fun of the state of many borders around the world. This game needs to be polished from a technical point of view; perhaps future updates may address its various issues.

Border Officer Pros

• Political message is on point.
• Nice graphics.
• Friendly user interface and controls.

Border Officer Cons

• Too many bugs.