On the surface, The Company Man might seem like your average 2D platformer, until you consider the game’s rather unique theme: office work.  You see, you play as a guy named Jim, who was just hired at the Good Water Company.  Although it’s only his first day, Jim’s a rather ambitious fellow indeed, as he’s already bent on becoming CEO of the company.

As far as how qualified he is for the job, however, I can’t exactly say that “hardworking” is among his strongest traits, as we spend the entire roughly 20-minute demo attacking our coworkers with our keyboard and taking frequent coffee breaks, which simultaneously restores your health and acts as the game’s checkpoints.  Jim’s abilities are pretty basic, as he can jump, dash, and attack.  What really makes this game stand out from the crowd is the artistic style and aforementioned theme.

To start, the game looks quite nice, and the characters are animated very smoothly.  There’s also a rather…interesting sense of humor on display.  Having spent 1 year as a secretary and 10 months as an unpaid intern, I’m still not sure I totally understand some of the visual jokes and puns the game is so intent on making.  I mean, at the end of the demo, you get the ability to shoot your coworkers with a “strongly worded email”, which doesn’t take much effort to understand.  But I’m not totally sure why there seem to be so many secretaries breathing fire or why I was attacked by an old lady who can conjure up a burst of flame from her loud speakers.

Nevertheless, I had a pretty fun time with this game’s demo, which starts out in the Customer Service department and involves several literal “boss fights” with your superiors.  By the end, I was able to defeat the demo’s last boss on my first try, since Jim maneuvers quite well.  Although there were times that the game could use more checkpoints, because if you fail a tricky section of platforming and die (I mean, get fired), you might find yourself redoing said boss fight.  First rule of making a game: always put checkpoints after boss fights, please!

The Company Man seems like it has potential to be a surprisingly fun game with a unique theme, and it would appear that you can learn even more interesting attacks as you progress (like that “strongly worded email” I mentioned earlier).  As for me, however, I must admit that I may not want to relive the memories of office work, even in game form.  But if you’re so inclined, The Company Man appears to be available on all major consoles and PC, ranging from $15.99-19.99.  And since the game takes somewhere between 3-7 hours to complete, you’ll technically only need to take one day off from work to finish it….