Sometimes you have to haul all the smugglers you’ve caught down to the local labor camp, where they can make up for their crime of having a flask in their car by mining ore for no pay. Your superiors might call you in to assist on an urgent matter, and you have to stalk a known rebel through the gloomy woods or investigate a local murder. Contraband Police also occasionally takes you away from your post.

But it’s also not the real meat of the game it’s a side dish to the main course of doing some border stops. The game’s shooting and driving mechanics are very floaty, and as long as you occasionally duck into some kind of cover, it’s rare you’ll lose a conflict. Or a band of rebels might ambush your post, and your colleagues finally come in handy as the border crossing becomes a battlefield. The game likes to throw you curveballs when you’re most at ease - a guy might speed past the border post and into Acaristan, and you have to sprint to your official work truck and chase them down. everything is subject to detailed control. Every second driver is a smuggler and the vehicles are stuffed with hidden contraband. In Contraband Police, you play as a border police inspector in a communist country of the early 1980s.

Fun and interesting adventures are frequent and well paced, and the game offers a polished core gameplay loop with an action spin that greatly expands on what Papers Please started. The game gives players meaningful choices, both big and small, that make the player feel like they have an impact on the world they find themselves in. Contraband Police is an enjoyable experience, but it has some annoying bits to deal with and there are definitely better alternatives with similar premises and gameplay.

Contraband police pc