The Last Worker Review

Intro

The world is obsessed with consumption. Content and shiny new gadgets compete for your attention and the likes of Amazon and their army of workers, or YouTube and its creators, will grind themselves into the ground to get you what you want. But, in a world where efficiency is paramount and people want everything yesterday, automation is becoming a real threat to peoples livelihoods. Delivery’s, public transport, writing, even art work is being handled by automation. All of this, just to make our lives a little easier bit what will be the cost?

The timing of the release of The Last Worker feels almost perfectly judged. Here we have a narrative adventure about one mans last stand in an increasingly automated world and his choice between capitalism or activism.

Story

The game puts you in the shoes of Kurt, the last remaining human worker at the corporate giant Jüngle. A shipping company that appears to be more Wish.com than the aforementioned Amazon. It’s run by a rainbow haired overlord who is always there to deliver a message of encouragement. And a reminder of the impending risk to your continued employment.

Sending out any old tat like a Trump Troll doll, action figures that riff on 80s action stars and lots of manky looking mayonnaise. The workplace is a giant maze filled with racks of packages. Robots zooming about here and there, the cogs whirring away to make sure the customer gets the right thing. Thankfully, you have a hovering cart to get about as well as various tools to do the job at hand.

Everything starts in a very unassuming way after the tutorial. Find the package, check its weight, contents and size and either send it or recycle it. The work days are all very similar snd you get a grade based on accuracy and timing. Days pass, packages are shipped, life goes on but then odd things start happening. Bots bug out, secure areas that were blocked are now open and then security turn up. It’s from this point the true direction of the narrative shows its face and your life as the last human at Jüngle will be changed forever.

What starts as a warehouse worker sim turns into a story of corporate sabotage. There are twists and turns here but unfortunately, it all sort of fizzles out. The mysteries are all resolved quickly, character motivations and development are all very guessable. The initial premise of what all this automation has done is never truly explored or seen. The cast give vague descriptions of a world in turmoil. One hooked on consumption but that’s all we get – vague descriptions. It also fires along at a brisk pace, clocking in at around 3-4 hours. There’s also three possible endings with it being possible to see each of them thanks to the scene selection option on the main menu. The only issue is none of them felt satisfying. This was a general theme throughout as none of the emotional beats felt earned either.

Cast

Thankfully the cast makes up for some of the shortfalls. Whether this is  your jovial buddy Skew – the sweary, Scouse, flying bot and Kurts best friend, or the mysterious, but disgruntled Hoverbird. Performances are of a high quality and keep things engaging.

It was great to see the other characters fleshed out a bit more  even if Kurt comes across as the usual every man. Skew for example has a well developed character arc. He’s well written and funny and develops into more than just the comedy foil.

Don’t get me wrong, we get a lot of background on Kurt, and it’s easy to empathise with his situation. He’s broken after losing his wife and has given his life to Jüngle after all. But, with no career prospects in a highly repetitive environment he seems defeated. From that point on he just felt like a vessel. Without going into spoiler territory it feels apt, but it didn’t feel like he grew as the story unfolded.

Gameplay

So what of the game itself? Well, in between shipping packages the main meat is light puzzle solving with some stealth mechanics.

The package shipping part sees you use the Junglegun – a tool that can grab items from the shelves and launch them about, kinda like the gravity gun from Half-Life 2. The packages need their weight, contents and dimensions verified before dispatch. If there is anything wrong, tag it and then recycle it. These bits are quite fun as you try to get that “J rating” and I found myself trying trick shots from distance as well. Can’t imagine the boss would be happy with that though!

This, as well as the various tools that are unlocked, will take on other uses once you venture into the off limits areas. This can be simple manipulation of lock puzzles, moving items or to getting you out of a tough situation.

It’s the stealth sections that go a bit awry and it’s frustrating because they make up a lot of the game. Vision cones and audio cues make avoidance relatively trivial, but some areas have fast moving enemies and the windows for traversal are tight. Once you’re caught, it’s an instant fail and back to then last checkpoint. There is also no way to deal with enemies until later in the game and even then, the option is limited and shortlived. Thankfully the checkpoints are frequent and loading back in is quick, but nothing is more annoying than having to repeat parts. In their defence, my eagerness and over confidence probably contributed to getting caught a few times.

The only other issue I had was knowing where to go at times. The mini-map and GPS line are great when dealing with packages but don’t work in other areas. I had a few moments where someone was shouting me over to deal with something but it wasn’t clear where they were or what I was meant to be interacting with. Now, I don’t want my hand held the whole way through a game but when a robot no bigger than a mosquito has shot off at speed to the other side of a room and keeps shouting “hey, over here” more clarity would have been helpful.

Visuals

The cell shaded, comic book styling really can be quite pretty. It’s muted, industrial colour palette is punctuated by the odd burst of colour as bright yellow bots scuttle about and direction lines meander off into the distance. It’s just all a bit too grey though and the environments lose a lot of detail. Expect to see a lot of dull corridors here just like a real warehouse!

Conclusion

No doubt there is a lot of this probably reads like I didn’t enjoy The Last Worker and honestly I’m quite torn. The cast were excellent and I loved seeing the relationships they had together. The way Kurt and Skew interact in particular was a joy and felt like a real friendship. It’s just a shame that I felt like I’ve seen the story a hundred times before and what could have been a great exploration of exploitation and tearing down The Man kinda fizzles out. This wouldn’t always be a problem but in a narrative adventure it feels like a missed opportunity.