Exhausted Man is a goofy game about an extremely tired man (and a woman for the tutorial) who must get his work done at all costs.  The demo took me roughly 30 minutes and was quite entertaining indeed.  The whole time, you’ll be slinking around in a boneless fashion, including up walls, as you try to complete various tasks.  The tutorial stars a woman named Olivia, who wants to get a license that’ll show she’s mastered the art of being productive while exhausted, while the man (going by the nickname Art Blade) is preparing his demo for an upcoming game festival.

Gameplay is pretty simple.  You crawl around your environment, and you must complete the tasks listed in the upper left corner, which can involve placing an object somewhere, creating a pile of objects in order to climb and reach something higher, or simply grabbing something a certain number of times or stretching your limbs.  Each limb is assigned to one of the four buttons (A B X and Y, in my case), and you hold it in order to move the associated limb, which helps with reaching for something, though movement in this manner can be sluggish.  Which makes sense, as your character is way too sleepy than can really be considered healthy.  

While Olivia’s tasks were intended to teach me the mechanics of the game, you have more freedom to choose Art Blade’s tasks (I played through two before the demo ended).  I just chose to “organize things” and “talk to something”.  You can also decorate your room and must choose which items are going to be relevant in any given task, so “talk to something” actually involved snuggling up close to a barrel that Art Blade considered his “old buddy”.  Okay…get this guy some actual friends, please!

My main struggle came about during the task meant to organize items.  You see, as I slid around the walls, I accidentally opened a door to another room.  And then, as I tried to drop the laptop onto a piece of furniture, I ended up carrying the laptop into the other room.  And then, every time I tried to carry the laptop back to the first room, I would respawn, alongside the laptop, back in the middle of the second room, making it impossible to complete my task.  Fortunately, the game allowed me to skip the task with no consequences, but it seems strange I was able to carry the laptop into the room, but not back out again.  

This game gave me a good chuckle, as watching your character slink around like a noodle is extremely amusing.  The concept itself is pretty unique and charming, though I’m not sure how long such a concept would stay fun.  Exhausted Man got a mostly positive score of 73% on Steam, and while plenty of people liked it, a decent number of people think the game became repetitive pretty quickly, as most of the gameplay revolves around just grabbing objects and moving them around.  There is also an energy mechanic that I didn’t mention earlier, as certain tasks can add or subtract from your energy, but it sounds like this isn’t really fleshed out.  The game is available on all modern consoles and Steam, and it normally sells for $9.99 (but I’ve seen it go on sale for $5.99), which isn’t a bad price for a game that lasts about 5-6 hours.

All screenshots taken by The Duck of Indeed; forgive my strange screen dimensions…