Games That Explore The Mundane Life Of Office Workers

Key Takeaways

• The Stanley Parable
  encourages breaking the mundane cycle; choosing to follow the narrator is the least interesting path.
• Harry the Handsome Executive
  adds desk chair thrill to mundane tasks; a top-down shooter set in an office.
• Last Man Sitting
  embraces office chair Olympics with ragdoll physics in a competitive Battle Royale shooter.

Is there anyone out there who genuinely likes office work? While some handle it better than others, and it will (hopefully) pay the bills, tedium begins to set in quickly when workers see the same four cubicle walls all day, every day. It’s the kind of thing to push some people to find new jobs, while others take it as inspiration to make a video game.

These games all explore the mundane nature of office work, although their approaches to that exploration differ wildly. Some go for authenticity, others for thematic commentary, and others still turn the whole thing into a spectacle. Whatever the case may be, despite the settings of these games being an average office workplace, their interpretation of the daily grind goes a long way in transforming something soul-draining into something fun and fresh.

9 The Stanley Parable

A Parody Of Both Office Work And Video Games

Probably the most well-known corporate office game on the market, The Stanley Parable is an experiment in player agency as much as it is a game about an office worker, but that’s exactly what Stanley is, and his life is nothing if not mundane. That is, until a narrator steps in and starts dictating his every move.

Whether or not Stanley listens to the narrator is another story, literally. In fact, going along with the narrator’s instructions is the least interesting way to play the game, and leaves a lot of its best secrets hidden away. It’s a game that encourages players to break away from the mundane, and will respond accordingly when they do so.

8 Harry The Handsome Executive

A Top-Down Shooter Starring A Man In A Desk Chair

While the action may be plentiful, everything else about Harry the Handsome Executive, from the way Harry pushes himself around in his desk chair to the staple gun he uses as his primary weapon, is derived from the mundanity of office work. After all, who hasn’t wheeled around in their desk chair on a boring workday, just to insert an iota of excitement into the mix?

The story is simple enough: Harry is an executive at ScumCo., a company where fighting up the corporate ladder is a little more literal than in other contexts. Here, Harry must literally shoot his way past middle management—and a few robots as well—along the way. The game uses a top-down perspective, giving players the best view of Harry as he kicks his legs to propel his desk chair ever onwards.

7 Last Man Sitting

An Office Battle Royale

While nothing about Last Man Sitting is particularly mundane, it is inspired by the very real attempts of office workers to break through the mundane nature of their working lives; that being the competition known as “Office Chair Olympics.” Last Man Sitting is a competitive Battle Royale shooter that is still in development, but that is being called “the last Battle Royale there is to make” by its developers.

While the premise is interesting enough, it’s the ragdoll physics that really make the game stand out. Both shotgun blasts and impacts send players flying, and given that they’re strapped to office chairs, that momentum can result in some wild occurrences. It’s the kind of game that will appeal to a niche player base at first, but it’s unique enough that it should still stand out from the Battle Royale crowd.

6 Game Dev Story

Build A Game Development Studio From The Ground Up

Closely paralleling the history of the video game industry, Game Dev Story is all about allowing players to start their own game development studio and managing it into an industry powerhouse. Players can control everything from the stafff they hire to the roles they’ll perform, as well as the speed and focus of the game development itself.

Game Dev Story, despite its age, is a shockingly addictive game. The gradual increase in profits, which leads to a gradual increase in game quality (which leads to more profits, and so on), is a great hook, and the game is not afraid to throw a few surprises the player’s way. It is also impressively well-suited to mobile gaming, which may be the best way to play the game today.

5 Papers, Please

Ensure All Those Entering Arstotzka Have Their Papers In Order

There’s something to be said for a game that actively represents the mind-numbing mundanity of an office job, while also making the gameplay itself riveting. That’s the best way to describe Papers, Please. Players control an unnamed border guard in the fictional country of Arstotzka. Their duty is to ensure that everyone crossing the border has their required papers in order.

That’s easier said than done. Every day, new regulations come down from on high, forcing players to pay attention to more and more minute details about each individual’s papers, and giving them more and more protocols to follow if anything is amiss. Make a mistake, and they have their daily pay docked, which makes it harder to feed their family and keep the heat on (yes, this is a mechanic also). The tension of trying not to make a mistake, coupled with the feeling of inevitability that one will be made anyway as the complexities ramp up, makes for an intensely compelling gameplay experience, even if the job it is based on holds very little appeal.

4 Human Resource Machine

Program Corporate Drones To Solve Puzzles

Sometimes, office work can make workers feel like mindless drones, aimlessly going about their duties without thought or concern. It’s exactly this feeling that Human Resource Machine is founded upon. In this game, players manage a collection of literal employee drones, giving them orders and tasks to complete in order to solve a collection of 40 puzzles.

This game is what’s known as a visual programming puzzle game. Similar to Baba is You, players use basic programming to direct their workers through each puzzle. They are given a handful of basic phrases and must apply them correctly in order to complete the task and move up to the next “level” of the company. For those who aren’t programming-savvy, fear not; Human Resource Machine keeps things very basic and easy to understand, allowing it to appeal to the layperson and the programming wiz alike.

3 Yuppie Psycho

A Witch Has Corrupted The Company, And The New Hire Must Stop Her

Brian is the new hire at Sintracorp, a massively-successful company and one of the world’s largest to boot. Brian is wildly under-qualified for his new position, but who can say no to a pay raise, right? Well, as it turns out, Brian’s new job isn’t exactly as advertised. It seems that Sintracorp’s success is due in large part to the presence of a witch within the company, and she has slowly begun to corrupt it from within. Brian was hired to be the company’s witch hunter, and to finally set Sintracorp free from this supernatural entity.

Despite its mundane office setting and design, Yuppie Psycho is a survival horror game. Brian must brave the corporate-themed monstrosities found throughout Sintracorp in order to eventually face down the witch. The game’s pixel art style—designed on an in-house engine created by the developers themselves—and anime-inspired aesthetic all lend themselves to a feeling of both familiarity and unease, which is exactly where corporate horror like this thrives.

2 Death And Taxes

It Turns Out, The Grim Reaper Is Just A Corporate Stooge

The work of the Grim Reaper is, well, grim, to say the least. It’s a job very few are cut out for, yet players can get a taste of it in Death and Taxes. In this game, they play as a newly-hired Grim Reaper who is tasked with determining the fates of the various humans that make their way across the player’s desk.

All that is easier said than done. The Reaper’s boss, Fate, will often give the player directives on how to proceed with doling out death, but it’s up to the players whether they follow those directions or not. Saving one human or killing another can have grave consequences on the world, and in turn, affect the game’s ending. The point is for these decisions to be difficult, pushing players to make tough calls at every turn without knowing what the outcome will be or how it will ripple outwards.

1 Not For Broadcast

Editing For State TV Is More Fun Than It Sounds

Ask anyone who has done it, and it’s no surprise that video editing is tedious work. While the end product is often exciting and engaging, the process of stitching all those disparate shots together into a cohesive whole is meticulous, time-consuming, and ultimately exhausting. So what better inspiration to build an entire video game around, right?

The thing with Not For Broadcast is that, despite the mundane nature of the acts themselves, what players are editing is not talk shows or soap operas. They’re editing propaganda for a brand-new government in a fictional European country, a government that is starting to become more and more authoritarian with each passing video clip. Players must censor certain words, keep audience enjoyment high, and choose which advertisements to air; either for the ruling Advance party, or the opposition Disrupt party. These choices all impact the game’s conclusion, while the moment-to-moment gameplay makes a strong point about the influence of government interest in dictating TV broadcasts.