Is this possible? I want to load this game on a flash drive for my students to play through in groups. When I attempt to install to the flash drive it tells me it has to be installed to a local directory only. Why is that? Many other indie games allowed me to install to the flash drive. Is there any way around this? I think this would be a powerful game for students to experience.

Have you tried installing it to a local drive first, and then simply copying the entire "Papers, Please" directory that's created onto the flash drive?

If you do that, you should be able to run it from the flash drive without issues, unless your machine(s) have access to flash drives restricted (which could be the case since it's strange that the installer would even bother making the distinction).

If you plan on running it via the shortcut you'll also have to edit the shortcut so that it finds the right directory/executable (alternatively, just create a new shortcut by right-clicking the exe on the flash drive).

The reason for this is probably that the save games are stored in the AppData directory, not in the game's installation folder.

This is true of almost all games released these days. If not AppData specifically then one of the similar directories in the current user's profile is a common save game/config location.

That shouldn't stop someone from installing it to a removable drive, as the install location shouldn't impact where save games are stored. It just means your save games will be in the current logged in user's profile, and not the removable drive.

I guess if the PC was set up such that the profile isn't writeable at all, then it's possible the installer would have an issue; however it could (and should) get around this by falling back to saving in the game directory. So maybe check if you're using a locked-down Guest account or some other restriction on the PC you're using...