The movie Office Space struck a chord with just about everyone working in a cubicle environment in the late ’90s, nailing the ridiculous of the everyday grind. Office Space: Idle Profits, out now for iOS and Android from Kongregate, nails the grind in a different sort of way.
In the film, disgruntled Initech office workers Peter, Samir and Michael Bolton come up with a plan to introduce a virus to the company’s servers that would skim pennies from every corporate account, eventually making them rich. Office Space: Idle Profits takes that concept and turns it into an idle clicker.
Players purchase floors at Initech, which generate pennies. Invensting money back into the unlocked floors increases penny yield. More money equals more floors equals more money.
Floor to floor life is spiced up slightly by the introduction of collectible animate versions of characters from the movie. Folks like good old Milton or the doctor who dies while hypnotising Peter to not give a shit about office concerns can be collected, levelled up and assigned to the different office floors, augmenting their output.
The downside here is that outside of a free pack that pops every six hours, the characters have to be purchased using currency either earned slowly through play or purchased with real money. Also it seems like the only way to upgrade the characters is through purchasing packs, so they aren’t such an attractive addition after all.
Oh, and then there’s the tapping section. As you earn cash you slowly level up, unlocking animated takes on scenes from the film. These you tap on for extra money and experience. Samir here pounds angrily on his steering wheel as you tap. Now and then an old man in a walker hobbles by. It’s late ’90s comedy gold.
As I was sitting in my bathroom tapping at Office Space: Idle Profits over the weekend, it occurred to me that I was basically performing the same sort of pointless-seeming repetitive nonsense that made the film resonate so strongly with me back in the day. That’s either ironic coincidence or subtle genius. I can’t figure out which, and I don’t want to…
Office Space: Idle Profits is now available as a free download on iTunes and Google Play.
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