Mixed Bag . . . . 6/10

Intro:

I saw this game featured on a number of indie-centric logs, and the trailer really sucked me in. After seeing this on sale, I decided to get it. The game was clearly designed with a nostalgia/retro blend. The art and music both excel in this area.

Aesthetics:

As previously mentioned, the art and music have a very retro, nostalgia-inducing feel. The music particularly stands out; even though it's the only background music in the game, I still found it catchy through the very last level. Provided the player is familiar with Roguelikes, older games, and/or just outright likes that retro feel, they should enjoy this game. Otherwise, the low production values may turn them off.

Gameplay:

The item system is pretty amusing, given than you can equip (and eat!) any item you come across, and the fact that you actually *replace* your body parts with random office supplies is pretty hilarious to look at. Each item has several variants (shitty, copper, iron, silver, gold, mithril) that more or less tell you which have better stats, but things get confusing once you consider that different items have different base values (is my iron phone better than my silver lamp?). The stat system is also a bit confusing. First off, the equip menu *says* that arms are tied to your agility and feet are tied to your attack, but my personal observations show that it's the other way around. Furthermore, It seems that the LUCK and AGI stats are inconsequential (can the developer elaborate on these?), so I only needed to worry about HP, DEF, and ATK.

The flexibility of the camera system is a welcome feature, because it lets you switch between third-person and first-person modes. Third-person is great for scouting levels before diving into enemies, while first-person is great for both a front-seat view of the carnage as well as allowing better tactical positioning, since turning and walking at the same time is a bit awkward in third-person.

The game starts to get repetitive after about 30 levels (and there are 100 of them). There are only a handful of enemy classes, and every level has virtually the same layout. The game tries to mix things up with a "Boss?" battle every 10 levels or so, but they're very anticlimactic, which makes them feel more like a tease than anything meaningful. By the time I reached the real boss battle on level 100, I was pretty bored, and I had only really stuck with the game past level 40 to see how high the tower went. Speaking of which, climbing the tower isn't that hard at all. As long as you experiment with upgrading items regularly, and as long as you always carry a lot of items to eat, you should generally be fine. I found that intelligent positioning while in first-person made things even easier since, really, the game comes down to trading blows, and preventing yourself from getting surrounded goes a long way.

Conclusion:

Super Office Stress's definite strong points are the novelty of its item system and the nostalgia-grab of its throwback art design. However, the sparse variety of enemies, the confusing array of item types, and the repetitive level design take away some big points. While I was tired of the game after just a couple of playthroughs, I'll say this game is worth a couple of bucks--maybe not so much after the sale, but I feel that dropping extra cash wouldn't be a waste, so long as the developer learns and improves in the future.

FINAL SCORE: 6/10