The Company Man is an action-packed platformer developed by Forust Studio and published by Leoful. While many games of its similar genre take place in fantasy or sci-fi settings, this time you’ll be fighting your way to the top in a corrupt office workplace. While this hectic platformer is sure to keep you entertained, its simplicity may leave you wanting more in a few areas.
The story follows Jim, an average salaryman who has big dreams of climbing the corporate ladder towards the CEO position finish line to finally put a stop to the company’s amoral practices. Armed with his trusty keyboard, he faces off against crazy coworkers and demanding department heads along with a few friends. As the plot progresses, Jim’s reasoning for actually wanting to be the CEO becomes clear.
The strongest aspect of the story has to be its sense of humor. Not only does it perfectly represent a typical office environment to an extremely absurd degree, but it throws subtle jokes through the environment and character designs that only someone who’s worked in a place like this would understand. For example, each department’s environment is cleverly represented by some joke like accounting being a winter level because of frozen assets. It both gives variety in its level design while establishing the game’s lighthearted tone as well. The same can be said by many of the enemy co-workers and evil managers as well like with the marketing department being made up of corporate hipsters and the legal department being full of vampire lawyers.
It’s enjoyable to see where The Company Man goes next with these subtle jabs. The only place it falls short is with the main character, Jim. While he does make harmless jokes here and there, it sort of takes away from the turning point moment in his character and seems strange how he looks down on everyone around him. His motivations also seem confusing at times as he’s constantly having to “fire” his co-workers when he’s dedicated to fixing the corrupt dealings happening at the top of the company.
If you have played any typical action-platformer before, then you’ll be able to pick things up fairly quickly as the gameplay itself is pretty simple. Jim has a standard slash attack with his keyboard which can also shoot angry emails that consumes your energy bar. Along with his jump, he also can dash, which you’ll be spamming a lot to get yourself out of some hairy situations. The main goal is to get to the end of each level and defeat the boss so you can go up to the next floor until you reach the CEO suite. While fending off against hordes of bloodthirsty co-workers, you’ll also have to adapt to the level-specific mechanics and traps that are in places, such as the spikey gold bricks in the legal department or the teleporters in the marketing department. There’s also a coffee break checkpoint system, which both gives you full health and saves your progress in the level as well.
After defeating a boss, you’ll be awarded a new upgrade to your keyboard’s range attacks, which can turn it into a laser or shotgun blast. While these new upgrades are fun once and a while, they tend to consume too much of your energy meter, so I eventually just stuck to one range attack for most of the game. You’ll also have access to a shop on the ground floor, which has other useful upgrades for sale, like increased health or faster energy recharge, which you use coins that you collected from enemies to purchase. Word of advice, the first upgrade you should buy is the health replenisher upgrade that gives health back after firing a coworker. This upgrade alone makes the game 10 times easier as struggling to conserve your health won’t be much of an issue except for boss fights.
As mentioned before, the gameplay is straightforward and not anything special. While it’s enjoyable to traverse all these unique-looking levels and fight against these eccentric enemies, the combat and platforming element won’t blow you away. It would’ve been nice to include more weapon types using different office supplies like dual-wielding staplers just to spice things up a bit. The Company Man is also sporadic with its difficulty and for weird reasons. The checkpoint system and upgrades make it, so the exploration gameplay isn’t that challenging, so the bosses are going to be what truly put your skills to the test. However, it felt like each boss’s ranking in terms of difficulty was out of place. For instance, the R&D manager was the one I had the most trouble with, but she’s only the third and each subsequent boss gets easier afterward. The showdown with the final boss of the game was less of a pain than the R&D manager fight.
I also thought that there could’ve been more creative in implementing some of this difficulty as well. While I was very impressed by the environments and enemies, the level design could’ve used a little more work in some areas. For example in the final level, the only reason it’s fairly more difficult than the others is because it had a lot of these spikey gold bricks which would sometimes appear out of nowhere and kill you. After completing the game once, you unlock impossible mode, which will make enemies and bosses harder to kill, but the environments are still not doing enough to challenge you to keep going.
Though it has its flaws, The Company Man was certainly an exciting time from start to finish. The charming art style that makes up many of the subtle jokes through the environments and character designs will amuse anyone who’s worked in an office setting before. The simplicity in the gameplay can also be seen as a positive as it won’t alienate beginning players who just want to play a brief platforming adventure. If you’re trying to find a way to relax after a full day of being berated by your manager, you can’t go wrong with Forust Studio’s first project on the Nintendo console.
7.5/10
Check Out The Company Man Reveal Trailer:
For more information, visit: https://leoful.com/the-company-man-en/
I've loved playing video games ever since I first played Battletoads on the NES when I was a kid. Since then, I've played a wide variety of games on different systems, including Xbox One, PS4, Switch, and have mostly gravitated towards open-world RPGs and action-adventure games with amazing storylines and character arcs. I'm passionate when comes to writing and interested in working as a narrative designer.
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