After being teased for quite a while now, the "Papers, Please" short film adaptation has finally made its way to Youtube. As you would expect from the source material, it follows a lowly border crossing inspector in his dreadfully bleak and depressing day-to-day routine.

There is obviously more to it, but to say anything else would probably ruin the film for you, so I'd highly recommend just going in completely 'blind'. The whole thing is only nine minutes long, so even if you end up disliking it I'd say it was still well worth a look, if for no other reason than the overwhelming atmosphere. Anyway, here's the film:

Personally, I can't say I'm a big fan, mostly because I left the film without any sort of an emotional impact. The actors were great and the atmosphere perfectly portrayed that Cold War era depression, but there was just something missing, and I think that relates to the length of the film itself.

In the "Papers, Please" game you spent hours doing the same dreadfully boring job until the 'real' story kicked in, so by that point you were well and truly immersed into the world. In the film adaptation, however, everything is resolved within nine minutes so there is just not enough time to get invested in the character and the world he inhabits. A real shame since even this fairly shortened story had a ton of potential.

That said, I still have to commend everyone who made the short film happen because while it might not be perfect, it's one most faithful video game adaptations we've seen in quite a long time!