Indie Corner: Office Freakout

There is a time in everyone’s life, where you start questioning the meaning of it all. You try to remember how and why you came to this peculiar point in life. You start wondering if karma is real, and if it is a real bitch. I have had all these thoughts when playing Office Freakout.

Office Freakout is a game where an employee has a mental breakdown and starts breaking down the office. It is the kind of game that looks amazing on paper but is nowhere near once you start playing it.

For those who still remember Burnout 3:Takedown from Criterion Games, they might remember the amazing game mode called: Crash. In that amazing game, you have to drive a car into traffic to make as much chaos as possible. The more stuff you damaged, the higher the score. It was one of the most amazing game modes. And I think it is something that publisher Hollow Robot LLC has to play. Perhaps then they’ll make a similar game that is actually good.

Because I’m sorry, but Office Freakout runs on the Unreal Engine? I find it extremely hard to believe. The graphics pre-date Burnout 3: Takedown, a game from 2004! Burnout even had quicker loading time. Heck, even the Witcher 3 loads faster on my computer than this game. And it needs much less loading screens! Listen, I understand that you have to load stuff in order to play a game. But this is ridiculous. The first loading screen is for the start menu, for crying out loud . You have to sit through another loading screen before you can play, if you are still alive by then. But don’t think you can start playing after that because somehow the developer thought that a countdown time was really necessary after all those loading screens. And to make matters even worse, the game comes with an unskippable and annoying video that’s even more dull than watching grass grow! Click wrong once, and you can read the entire Wikipedia website while the video goes on. Ooh, and good luck if you want to restart a game because you have to sit through another lifetime of the earth before the loading is done.

A long loading time is acceptable if the game is good. But sadly, there is nothing good about this game. You might think that the destruction is fun, but it is way too boring to be entertaining. The amount of clicking you have to do, to destroy the simplest thing in the office, it just drains out any kind of fun to be had in this “game”. The destructions, the main selling point, is just dull. The animation of breaking things gives you more reason to quit than to continue. To make matters worse, there is even a “rampage” meter, that runs empty over time. That is if you ever get it filled at all. The speed at which it drains is dazzling! Blink, and you lose 95%. I came closer to a real-life Office freak out while reviewing than ever before.

Sure, you can pick up items and power ups to fill the meter. But while the power ups are original (a paper airplane that “destroys” anything it hits), they feel nowhere near as POWERups. It takes to long too run the animation, they barely destroy anything. And the “rampage” meter is barely filled at the end of a power up. In Burnout 3: Takedown, you start the crash timer the moment you hit something, followed by amazing explosions, the feeling of absolute destruction. After you destroyed the car, you can control the wreckage to create even more chaos. If you performed well, you would gain access to an extra explosion! Simple and fun gameplay, no need for endless clicking. Just drive your car into the traffic, perform well and you could literally blast your way to the high score. That’s what makes a game enjoyable; not this

PS: Normally I don’t mention storage space, nor recommended specs. But Office Freakout needs 3GB of storage! And 8GB of RAM! 8GB RAM!!! That is the same RAM requirements as the Witcher 3 or Civilization 6! Games like Clustertruck or Rive only require 500MB/1GB of storage, but look so much better. Just let that sink for a moment, and you realize this game is utter garbage.

Worst game of the year.

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