Hehe This is bureaucracy! The loop keeps me playing until the end!!

LOL all that trouble!!! good game

This is hilarious! A great use of the theme too

What a traumatizing experience.. Well done.

That was fun!

This felt so sureal and real at the same time. I love it.

That was both fun and traumatizing haha I have to say the audio you used for the office cracked me up so much. Well done.

Hilariously infuriating. I managed to not rage-quit before the end, which made me feel a real sense of accomplishment. Well done - Kafka would be proud!

I really liked it, exactly my type of humor (the sideways desk, \*chef's kiss\*) yet I'm ashamed to say the depths of the office consumed me and I didn't manage to finish playing it - got lost for a really long time near the department of managers and gave up. Still, I adore this game. Great job!

Also, the ambient sound is just perfect!

great idea and take on the theme, the managers office was hilarious.

Incredibly funny concept, and all too real as well. Had a couple performance issues, but nothing unplayable. Good stuff!

This is too accurate! Would have loved an option to go see a doctor and skip to the end ;)

This was legitimately the funniest game I have played in any Ludum Dare competition I have entered :laughing:. I can tell that someone in your team must have had a pretty traumatic experience with either asking for holidays or with general bureaucracy.

Now, some actual critical feedback about the game. The graphics are textbook example of what is called "programmer art" but in this case it really fits the humorous nature of the game. I also loved the audio with the keyboard typing and people coughiing in the background. The humor is of course the strongest point of the game, I burst out laughing when I entered the manager room and they were partying. Also, the level design was legit, there was some thought put into how you would traverse from one room to the other.

Overall, this was a very solid LD submission.

Everyone commenting thus far, thanks for playing & very glad you enjoyed!

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@pierogo

Sorry that you got beaten by the machine (do we need to publish answers x))! But thanks for taking the time to observe some of the off-the-main-track details :D

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@fireye

I think I probably should be blamed for the performance issues, I imagine it's probably the pathfinding for all the wandering employees (particularly managers...). Sorry! But thanks for sticking through anyway :)

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@exofrenon

> The graphics are textbook example of what is called “programmer art”

You might have a point there :D, we are programmers by day. The main player character was a horrendously rapid mockup that was to be a stand-in for a better asset — so very purposeful programmer art — but we liked how frazzled he looked, so in the end he stayed as the main character :D.

I think that is probably the most programmer art-y piece there, though I guess the actual employees are a bit nondescript, without any particular distinguishing features or even arms and feet! (and of course they all look the same) — on purpose since that makes them feel less individual, which was the vibe we wanted, but yes I guess that is easier to draw too ;-).

Very happy you enjoyed the managers' room, I did probably spend longer than I should have, on making them have a good time.

I genuinely burst out laughing when I got to the managers’ room – funniest game I’ve played this jam! I once worked on this kind of cursed ant hill and the game reminded me, in a hilarious way, why I’ll never make that same mistake again. I had lots of fun exploring the bureaucratic maze you constructed and made sure to beeline for the jitter juice for extra speed. I also really love the funny little details: the department of employee satisfaction and promotions and empty, department of demotion is very overstaffed, omnipresent portraits of big brother *cough* boss, the stack of beds, mini maze leading to the department of efficiency, the existence of the “department of departments”... Great entry!

man, thats a big office! :D

Hah, that was fun interpretation of the theme!
Nice work! :heart:

I cried so much but it was so much fun at the same time. Love the subtle audio, it adds a nice touch. The idea is really great and the department names are really funny. Also not sure if this is intentional, but the level design is so good cause I always follow the arrow but always get to a dead end and the department I have to get to is right behing the wall - this adds so much to the funny aspect because it feels so relatable. Thank you for this entry, it is awesome!

Why have you brought the hell of this office to our fun game jam? Really though, nice entry very funny. There was just enough back and for to make me start to get annoyed but luckily I found the vending machines to zoom across the office! Couple small notes I have is that the collisions on the generic office workers at their desks felt a little too big and I kept getting caught on them, especially when I had speed trying to navigate the main office floor. Also maybe some sort of small indicator of which cabinets are interactable when you need to find something in them. It took me a minute to realize that in the HR room. Other than that solid job!

The game masterfully builds tension throughout, culminating in a moment that actually made me laugh!

This is probably my favorite LD 57 game! You did a great job with the humor and appropriately frustrating layout of the office. I wonder if there were some easter eggs in the game, I'll have to play again and explore. It would be really Stanley Parable-esque to have a hidden story, in the background. Nice job!

I know that it was planned, but, anyway, i hate this stretch-joked backtrack-exploting dung. But background visual is not bad.

That was a lot of fun and really satisfying remembering where all the departments are :smile:. I would play more of this if there were more levels and some kind of enemy, maybe security guards chasing you :shrug:. Very good non linear game play and fits theme perfectly. Great job!

I love flamingo room haha. Game was painfully fun ^^ Nice dev art it has a lot of charm !

Was I basically solving a maze? Yes.
Do I like mazes? No.
Did it feel like solving a maze? No.
Did I Enjoy playing this game? Yes.

I was chuckling during nearly every dialog due to their absurdity. I think some of the hitboxes for interacting with things could be adjusted since I felt like I was interacting with things a bit too easily even when I didn't mean to but other than that I don't really have anything negative to say. A good and funny game, I just wish I could've gotten the holiday approved for my birthday.