While I am not in the best place to be streaming, it should be a good time to start putting thoughts to paper on some of the newer simulation and other games that are coming to the market at the moment. Let’s start with Office Management 101 from tulevik.eu.
Now to start with, this is an indie game which has recently hit early access. I know… I know… I have been massively burnt by games that I though had early access potential before [Oh! Hi New Cities] but this one feels clunky, feels chunky and I like it. I watched the trailer, I looked at the screenshots and I read the reviews and I thought; “it’s £10, what can go wrong.” When I am reviewing games from small studios, I almost always buy a key.
Tulevik.eu is a small independent development team formed by two brothers, Rhio and Raimo. The game hit steam Early Access in March 2022, although from their press kit it sounds like they have been working on and off with the game for some time between other projects.
Step 1: The Office Management 101 trailer
Let’s take a look.
Now I know what you are thinking. It looks like an interesting game with basic graphics and some reasonable pixel art. Okay, you might not be thinking that, but that is what I thought. So let’s take a look, with some screenshots of my game play thrown in.
Tutorial – I think
So the place that I went to was the tutorial. Learn the basics, get acquainted with how Tulevik.eu wanted me to play the game. I know this is an early access game, but I was a little underwhelmed by it. Five whole minutes – and I still had change – as all it really had me do was play a prefabricated kitchen and toilet, and get my first project.
That was pretty much it. The text boxes that pop up do suggest that you get more help on how to play the game in the first scenario. Frankly – first gripe – one or the other. We can either flesh out the tutorial (although it does ask you if you want to continue it) or we can move the entire tutorial into the first scenario.
[I know. I know. It’s Early Access]
One of the things that I immediately saw from the tutorial is that Office Management 101 is deliberately designed to be a clunky, almost Minecraft style of design, running it on 1080p felt that it was not great zooming in at the extremes that the game interface allows. I think that stopping the maximum zoom in a few steps would work better; but that is just a personal preference.
For reference points, I have played this both on a 2560x1080x32 and 1920x1080x32 resolution; both felt similar.
Office Management 101 does get better – Scenarios
So flagging straight into the scenario system and into the promised additional tutorial information. Now, this actually is a great point exactly about why I think the tutorial should either be a tutorial, or a part of scenario number 1. This one screenshot shows everything that I think makes my point and how actually I think Rhio and Raimo have taken the time to think about the demonstration of it.
The thing is though that I am finding the progress really slow. Over the course of an hour, the only things you will really do is find contract work and assign it to people. I found I spent most of that time with the game in fast-forward speed, and it felt like something was missing. I know I have already said this, but the speed is just perfect for the tutorial.
Something that is not in the tutorial, or certainly not intuitively that I could find, is how to deal with the paperwork. I will let you work it out if you are buying the game, but you have to box the paperwork manually, because no other bugger is going to do it for you!
As you progress through the scenario, and as your employees finally stop talking at the water cooler and do some work, you will find your CEO getting access to more work and being able to earn more money. The levelling is not necessarily obvious at the moment, until you have done enough to get a prompt to say you can level up; a little niggling early access thing to easily implement if the developer felt it warranted.
But…. there is only one scenario?
So I managed to complete all the goals in the first scenario and get myself into the second year of the game. What Now?
It appears in this scenario system, there is only one scenario at the moment. Nothing is unlocked by completing it?
Audio
Now, the audio. That was a pleasant part of the game.
The Office Management 101 music kind of reminded me of SimCasino at times, I wonder if this has some from a similar vein of royalty-free music packs. It would be nice to keep this soundtrack through the game, along with the obligatory rain when it’s wet pit-patting underneath. It’s quite soothing, almost to a point of taking your attention away from some of the parts of the game that need improving.
A Current Conclusion
As you can tell, I have not played as much as I would have liked to at the moment. I am getting in a few hours here and there though, before I head to work at 4am, and I can see real promise in this offering.
I think at the moment though, for Early Access aficionados, there is enough to take a look at and hope that progress is made. If you are looking for a half finished, or near-beta game to play then I do not think right now that you are going to enjoy Office Management 101.
If you want to check the game out then you can find it on the Steam Store and on the developers dedicated Office Management 101 website.