The Company Man Review

Jump into The Company man if you want to wager a war with the corporate machine!

You can become the best keyboard warrior in the office and fire your co-workers and proceed to blast some unwanted e-mail at your horrible bosses.

The Company man is a well-designed 2D-action platformer brought to us by developer Forust. A small indie development team based out of Malaysia who make it clear with this title that they’ve spent plenty of time within the office.

(Firing a co-worker)

The Story Of Jim

You’re in a typical dead-end job, or so it would seem. You’ll play as your average Jim, a university graduate who is ready to launch into his new career within the Good Water Company.

Jim had a confusing childhood and a jobless father who would always tell him how the “working life” is a hard one. Throw a mother leaving your father for CEO into the mix and you’ll understand why Jim is so keen to throw himself into the world of work, to avoid becoming a mirror image of his father.

It doesn’t take long for Jim to understand why his father wanted to avoid the working life, on account of the horrible bosses and unbearable co-workers.

(The customer service assistants have stinky breath and qualify as unbearable co-workers)

Jim’s Journey To CEO (Gameplay)

You’re going to have to guide Jim through multiple different departments on the road to becoming CEO of Good Water Company and make real change in the process. You’ll be granted a very fitting keyboard sword to fire unworthy co-workers as you make your way through each department.

There are 7 departments that are very well designed. For example, you’ll have to deal with environmental frozen assets (literal frozen safes) whilst venturing through accounting or dealing with fire breathing assistants in Customer Service. Each level is designed around a real-life department and grasps the feeling of each very nicely. They manage to use both the background and foreground to effectively give you that office feeling.

Little details such as office fans, stationery and stacks of paper can be found lying around this very messy office and it helps to create a believable office space. Each department tries to capture the feeling of its real-life counterpart with a little bit of an added twist, and it does this well each and every time.

(Make sure to avoid those frozen assets)

Now, when it comes to weapons, you’ll have a generous amount to play with here and they work well with the variety of different enemies this game wants to throw at you. You have a basic keyboard sword which is your only weapon, this is where the different abilities and energy come in.

As you progress through Good Water Company, you’ll unlock different abilities, allowing you to make the most out of your keyboard, and play around with the most efficient ways to tackle the variety of enemies. You change types of attacks with the RB/LB buttons, with attacks ranging from a long slash, a projectile blast of hate-mail, using your sword as a keyboard boomerang and more.

Depending on who and where you’re fighting, it’s good to get to grips with each ability, as some enemies probes challenging and are easier to deal with from afar with some of your keyboards ranged attacks.

Of course, these will need energy to perform so you can’t spam these attacks over and over. Energy is recharged over-time or when you reach the real-life work day fuel; coffee. These coffee stations will replenish all health and energy before you push on.

(Ah, reminiscent of a real day at work)

As you work your way through each department, you’ll eventually come to an end and have to fight the manager (boss) of that department. Some of these encounters are quite fun and challenging whilst others frustrating. I also did run into a quite game breaking bug that almost made me entirely give up playing this.

Once you’ve completed the third boss and drop down to continue on through to the end of the department the camera freaks out and glides back up to the boss arena and fixes itself there, forcing you to (if you can even be bothered with trying) mash buttons endlessly in the hopes you do what’s needed to progress. After defeating this boss 5 times before working this out, it definitely put a dampener on my overall experience but aside from this one glaring issue, which might have only affected me, it runs fine and is a pretty good time.

Of course, between each level you will be returned to The Lobby, where you can speak to the receptionist who grants you access to the next level by rewarding you a new access card and visit the appropriately named Overpriced Coffee Shop, to buy upgrades to help you reach the top of Good Water Company.

The Verdict

Currently listed on the Xbox store at a price of £16.74 (or $19.99 for my US friends) I’d say this is definitely one to keep your eye on. If you’re a lover of smaller games, like a bit of a challenge and enjoy those serviceable stories, then this’ll be right up your street.

Putting that one glaring issue I had with the boss to one side, it’s a really good time for 2D action platforming fans and it’s without a doubt one worth picking up.

A job well done from the team at Forust.

DISCLAIMER: Reviewer has completed the main storyline once and has amassed a playtime of 6 hours and managed to obtain 28/36 achievements for a score so far of 490/1000 Gamerscore.