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XGD > PSP > WTF: Work Time Fun
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 Information
Reviews Work Time Fun were they thinking?, August 4, 2008 Rating: 6.0/10 By Nineteen Seven It’s a daunting task to attempt making a game where work is fun.
Wait, let me rephrase that. It’s a daunting task to make a game about work that is actually fun. There are far too numerous games that hide the ethic of work behind quests and challenges, achievements and unlockables. The idea of ‘grinding’ in a game is to keep the player enticed into spending hours on a task with the idea of a reward at the end of the tunnel, and whether people find it acceptable or not, the sole prospect of unlocking that new costume or upgrading that sword to its highest level is, in and of itself, a job of its own.
What about a game that lets you know first and foremost, albeit indirectly, that the entire idea of the game is about grinding and nothing else, and that there’s a good chance rewards won’t be worth the work you put into it? You may find it strangely appealing that Work Time Fun’s presentation consists of odd photos and surreal, erratically stylized artwork. Look beyond the face value and you’ll find a game that not only assaults the player with a lazy interface, amongst other things, but represents the idea of the game itself.
The premise of the game is simple to grasp: you’re in Hell, and you need to work. Beyond the cast of characters, fellow employees you never see beyond trivial e-mail messages, your only ‘ally’ in a sense is the Job Demon, who presents you with four initial jobs upon entering the Employment Center. While other jobs may be available, the ones the Job Demon has selected are the ones he will pay you for (the list is randomized upon quitting a job in progress). The jobs themselves are simply mini-games, each with the presentation and the base appeal of a Flash game you might find on the Internet. These jobs include sorting chickens as ‘males’, ‘females’, and ‘dying’ for a solid ten minutes, chopping wood, making candy, rallying protests, and counting traffic. One job, named ‘Pendemodium’, has you placing caps on pens and going on to the next, occasionally giving you a pen that’s upside-down and needs to be flipped. This particular game lasts until you decide to quit, paying you based on your workload, but the game has a maximum pen count of sixteen digits… Sixteen digits. Let that sink in a little – type that into a calculator or something, and you’ll see the redundancy of what’s in store.
At the end of a job well done, you’ll be presented with a paycheck that rarely rewards you accordingly; some jobs, which can last for minutes on end, may pay you a measly sum of two dollars, and others won’t even pay you if you fail to complete some. If this is staring to sound discouraging, then the true rewards will seal the deal. After accumulating your sums, you can head onto the Vending Machine to purchase prizes in the form of trinkets. Machines are divided in monetary intervals, starting from three one-dollar vendors and ending with a single hundred-dollar “Gold” machine. On the odd occasion, you may randomly purchase a new job, one of thirty-six in total (with four two-player challenges), each job’s estimated quality rising with the costs. Tools can also be won, which come in the form of mostly useless, though often entertaining knick-knacks. A Ramen Timer can be found if you’d like to know when your noodles are done (note: requires you to cook), a Flash Light can turn your screen into a blinding light, and a Restaurant Bill Splitter can be found and used to make sure you don’t get stiffed when eating out with whoever. Finally, the most common reward you’ll be buying is ‘trinkets’, which are useless props from all the jobs you’ve unlocked. Since the Vending Machine service is random (outside of value limits, that is), there’s a more than solid chance that all your hard-earned cash is going down the drain. After you waste all your money on the hopes of unlocking that next job, your next course of action is to simply do it all over again.
If you saw the score given to WTF, you’re probably wondering where the merit lies within this game, considering everything that has been said, has been negative. What is the appeal of Work Time Fun?
Seeing as the game is nothing more that a grindfest, the first part of finding fun within this game is to accept it for what it is: a pointless time killer. When you know and admit to yourself that the payoff will always be underwhelming, then the premise of the game becomes much easier to swallow and the merit in the experience itself can be seen. For one, the art design is incredibly surreal, often mixing the passive with the macabre to deliver an unsettling yet comical vibe. For example, the ‘Chick Sorting’ job gives you a picture of baby chicks on striped lines, and the corner of the image is interrupted by a goblin-esque grim reaper. The loading screen, which appears seldom between games due to the fast load times, is a cartoon image of thousands of people heading for an abstract hut, covered with billboards and signs. The mix of real photographs scattered within the game eventually feels natural, and after a few minutes of playing the art design will feel almost natural. The audio also falls into that category of ‘strangely fitting’, as its music is as erratic as its imagery. While some jobs have little to no music, what exists matches the art design or compliments it by the least.
The game has a humorous atmosphere to it, with its numerous e-mails your Asian co-workers send you. People like Ken and Mr. College compliment you on new jobs and performances, as well as their own personal lives involving fishing and failed dates, while the little boy Lai who often boasts about irrelevant things and asks you ‘Yes/No’ questions with only one chance to answer, often ending with a simple comment about your answer. Useless spam also comes your way in the forms of work notifications, birthday wishes, new merchandise that you can purchase, and the occasional offers that take money beyond your will in return for ‘boosts in happiness’ and so forth. The game has an odd sense of comedy behind it and you’ll probably notice it upon playing it for the first time. That is, if you haven’t pressed Start and the title screen, which will eventually provoke an old man to coax you into starting the game (“Hey! Come on! It’s Work Time Fun!”).
The jobs themselves are also fun in their own right. Incredibly redundant, repetitive, usually resembling cheap homemade games you can find on the net with a lazy style to them, some even being difficult to the point of being worthless, but the sheer lackluster presentation will hook you in if you’re in the right mindset. You’ll find cheap knock-offs of Lunar Lander, Frogger, Baseball, Dragon Warrior, and numerous timing-based games, each sporting a different look from Atati-esque graphics to simple ‘Photoshopped’ images floating around in pre-determined patterns. A few favorites include Bouncer Bash which has you protecting a band by throwing groupies rushing to the stage, and Buddha’s Quest, an old-school RPG fighting game that lasts for a hundred levels, with no payoff if you lose (!). There's a two-player mode in which you can trade games and trinkets if you're itching to collect everything this game has to offer.
I’m still confused as to whether or not the developers knew exactly what they were doing with this game. On one hand, this game feels incredibly lackluster and packaged for a quick buck, and I wouldn’t be surprised if most of these games weren’t ripped of some guy’s website. However, the presentation has a stimulating and blatant approach to the concept of games being nothing more than pointless grindfests, with its sole redeeming factor being within playing and enjoying the game first, rewarding yourself second. Work Time Fun is a decent game for the PSP, and it’s worth playing once at the very least. It’s purchase worthy, but find it at a low price; it just might be underwhelming to most.
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