Papers, Please by Lucas Pope puts you in the role of a border inspector in the fictional country of Arstotzka. Over 31 days you inspect documents, earn a modest salary and decide how much risk you can afford for the sake of your family. The game contains twenty different endings, and which one you see depends on your choices more than on your speed. This walkthrough explains the major routes and how to plan them.
How the Daily Loop Works
Each morning you read the newspaper, learn what rules have changed and start inspecting arrivals. You compare passports, permits and other documents against the current requirements. Correct decisions earn credits, while mistakes bring citations and reduced pay. At the end of the day you spend your earnings on rent, food, heat and medicine for your family.
That economic pressure is the engine of the game. Because you are always one bad day away from trouble, honest inspection and careful spending matter just as much as dramatic story decisions.
Protecting Your Family
Many endings depend on whether your family survives. Keep track of their needs each night. Heat and food come first, rent second, and medicine whenever someone gets ill. If you cannot afford everything, think about the cost of losing a relative compared with the cost of skipping a payment. This is a heavy choice by design, and the game does not offer a painless answer.
Accuracy beats speed in the early days. A few extra seconds spent checking a document usually saves more money than rushing for extra arrivals.
Inspection Habits That Pay Off
- Read the daily rules before the first arrival. New requirements appear often.
- Check every field in a fixed order so you do not miss discrepancies.
- Use the available tools and questions to confirm doubts instead of guessing.
- Keep a steady rhythm. Hurrying causes the mistakes that cost the most.
The Major Story Routes
Although the game has many branches, they can be grouped into a few broad routes. Plan which one you want before you begin, because a few choices early in the month lock out others.
The Loyal Route
Follow the rules, accept the official line and focus on keeping your family stable. This path tends to produce the quieter endings, and it is a good first playthrough because it teaches the basic loop without extra risk.
The Underground Route
Midway through the month you meet a hidden organization that wants your help. Cooperating changes your story and opens new endings, but it also exposes you to danger from both sides. Whether you assist them, hesitate or refuse will decide where the story goes next.
The Failure Routes
Some endings come from repeated violations, financial collapse or being arrested. Seeing them is part of collecting every ending, so do not be afraid to make a deliberate mistake on a later run.
Economy Tips for the Early Weeks
Money is tight at the start, so build small habits that protect it. Process every arrival in the same careful order, and avoid risky guesses when a document looks unusual. Citations can wipe out a day’s profit, so the cheapest way to earn more is simply to make fewer mistakes. Save a little whenever you can, because emergencies such as illness tend to arrive just when the budget is at its limit.
How to Keep Track of Your Choices
Because the endings depend on many small decisions, keep brief notes as you play. Write down which day each story event appeared, what you chose and what happened to your family afterward. When you replay a branch, these notes let you jump straight to the interesting part instead of repeating a month of routine inspections. They also help you notice patterns, such as which choices tend to lead to arrests or which ones protect the household.
Planning a Route to Every Ending
The efficient method is to save at the start of each day and replay branches from there. Make a note of the major decision points, then try opposite choices each time. Collect the easy endings first, then target the harder ones that require keeping the family alive and navigating the secret organization. Expect to play the game several times, because that is how it is meant to be experienced.
Every ending is a different answer to the same question: what is your job worth?
Common Mistakes
- Letting too many violations pile up in the first week.
- Spending money on non-essentials while the family is cold or hungry.
- Ignoring a story event because it looks unrelated to the booth.
- Expecting the first playthrough to reveal every ending.
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Papers, Please is a game about small routines and large consequences. Once you understand the booth, the budget and the story branches, collecting every ending becomes a thoughtful project rather than a chore.