Working stiff

Came across this the other day:

Payroll, a game where you experience the daily life of an office worker. Now, while I’m not sure how many people out there want to play something based on the drab, day-to-day lifestyle of a white collared worker (probably only a few, if any at all), but the game does a fine good job at portraying it.

Be thrilled by the task of getting a cup of coffee from the employees’ lounge. Gaze at the wonders of a cubicle farm. And be shocked by the horrors of the fax machine breaking down midway through sending a message.

Seriously though, even when I live this kind of life every day, I found this game to be pretty fun. I guess much of it comes from the ascetics of it looking like it came out of 1995. In fact, ’95 seems to be the theme as the setting looks like it takes place during that year, what with all the technology spread throughout the office. Adding to it, the fake box art has the old school Windows logo, reminiscent of Win 95. But, of course, there is also the way the game looks.

Holy cow does it look primitive! But at the same time that’s its charm. When walking around the office, the environment is in 3D, but your fellow co-workers are sprites, as they tend to pivot so to always face your direction as you walk around them. The textures are low, low res, having everything look extremely blocky or pixelated, but are rendered well enough to interpret what everything is.

Even though the game’s visuals are very basic, the exploration is huge. I love games that cram a lot of interactive objects into small environments, similar to some of the areas found in Duke Nukem 3D like the arcade in the movie theater. For Payroll, interactivity mostly just involves sound effects like picking up a phone and listing to a ring tone, or hearing someone speak like adults do in the Charlie Brown Peanuts cartoons.

Some of the art assets are neat to pick out. For example, if you turn on one of the hulking CRT computer monitors, you’ll catch what looks like a web browser with the horribly basic interface from that time. In addition, the IT room has nerd posters hanging on the walls like Mulder’s “I want to believe” and one of the Tardis from Dr. Who. It’s a lot of little things, but it makes the world feel alive and lived in.

Supposedly there are multiple endings to the game. For me, I’ve played the game twice but only saw one ending. I’m planning to keep playing to see what the other endings are, which is not asking a lot since the game takes less than 30 minutes to complete. The game’s music helps with this as it’s a repetitive, jazzy styled midi-like track that has a nice sound to it.

Interested? Then click this link to get to the purchase page. At minimum, the game is only $1, but you can name your price so to help out the indie developer. Come on, that’s less than that drink you have next to you. At least, that’s what I’m imagining it to be.

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