Lets be honest: this is not a game you will walk away from happy.
This game is bleak, and I am not just talking about the drab colour palette that has been used. In my opinion the game is a ruse, and instead of you playing it, it plays you.

At first glance, you're a borderguard, sitting in your booth and being tasked with making sure, that only the permitted civilians enter your country. This is stressfull, because you have limited time and the criteria to go by change daily.
You'd think that most games will increase the difficulty when you progress to another level. That's correct and thats part of whats going on, but there is more to it in Papers, Please. It tells you the story of a regime that gets more hostile to its neighbors (but also their citizens) everyday.

But there is another part of the game. Some might say it's a minigame, but I say it's actually the maingame. This is were the horror of it all actually sets in.

After finishing your daily routine of stamping passports and getting foreigners shot, you are presented with a screen about your familys budget. Your flat needs heating, your family food.

This is why you do this job. This is why you ask others for their papers. Please.
As the game shows in the passport-stamping part and with the newspaper clippings each day, this is an uncaring world. Even more so, that your regime sees you and your family as expendable and replaceable.
It is solely on you, to make sure that your wife and kids survive. If is up to you to decide if a sacrifice will save others.

Because food and heat are always lacking in one way or another, you can expect for someone to get sick. If you can't afford the medicine needed, they ultimately will die.That is not just a possibilty but its a reality in this game.
You never interact with this family, there are no portraits of them. Just a list with their "designation" Wife, son, mother in law, etc.
It's easy to see this as a minigame or something thats happening in between the passport stamping. You might feel like its important for your score to keep them alive as long as possible. You could be calloused and not really care at all about your mother in law (ingame and out), so let her starve. It is not part of the passport stamping game anyway.

But why bother doing this menial and sometime horrible job at all?
Failure in your duty is recognized immediately. Let someone that should not enter the country, no matter if by accident and carelessnes or out of sympathy (a bribe might generate sympathy), your superiors will let you know instantly with a fax. Don't expect to get the same attention when doing good work. (Art imitates life?)

I argue that this is not a game about stamping passports. It's about caring and about fighting an uphill battle, that no one will know about. You're not the gameworlds hero. Your regime doesn't recognize you as a positive or negative force at all. You are just one guy in a borderpatrol booth. They just don't care about you.
If anyone at all cares, it is your family, that need you as their provider. And thats why you'll get out there and play the stamping passports game.

So, papers, please and glory to Arstotzka.

The game may look complicated, but it is merely complex. Don't worry about the cluttered play areas in the screenshots. The game asks you to explore and experiment. Having all these acitivites, lore and locations lying about allows you to organize it to the way you want to play the game and to the focus you set to your current run.

Also, life as a cultist just is more complicated than right and wrong or truth and lie. Sure, have your believers go out and imprison someone. Using them in ungodly rituals to summon demons from the hidden world, doesn't sound like something one would do. But you'll never know what possibilities this will offer. Just follow your passion.

I'd like to say something like "Just play, you can't do anything wrong." but that's the opposite of the truth. It's not a lie though. You'll see.