Office Horror

Office Horror is a homebrew game for the Nintendo 64 by Tykkiman and Nekromantikko of Kepuli Games and released on 28 May 2024. It’s a simple horror survival game where you have to find your way out of a haunted office.

Spoiler alert: Before you continue reading, I’d recommend that you just download and play the game to avoid spoilers.

You can download the game from its download page by using the password escapefromthehorror or from its itch.io page.

Office Horror style and gameplay

The plot behind Office Horror is fairly straightforward. You play as an office worker who is locked in an empty building, possibly after working well after closing time. The objective is therefore to find the key and make your way back out of the office.

The office itself is a maze that contains about 20-30 sections that you can explore, with a few dead ends here and there. It’s not too difficult to navigate, all you need to do is go as far from the entrance as possible to find the key and then retrace your steps on the way back.

Throughout the game, you can read the protagonist’s inner monologue which helps to give a bit of ambience to what is otherwise a quite nondescript environment.

Once you find the key, the lights shut down and you are now followed by a larger ghost version of yourself. Getting touched once will result in a game over.

Review and conclusion

Office Horror is very basic kind of game. As long as you come in with that mindset, it’s not a bad game to play through.

There are a few missed opportunities though. At the beginning of the game, there’s a short ‘puzzle’ where you have to move to a dead end to open a door in the previous room, but that’s never done again. Also the way back is the exact same as the path to the key in the first place. It could have been much creepier if the map was mirrored or if there were any more of those dead ends that had to be opened.

The baddie is creepy in the way that he just follows you (with some rather accurate pathfinding). Even though you can run faster than him, it is terrifying when you run into a dead end and realise that you have to turn around and dodge him head-on.

That said, it is graphically quite impressive considering that it’s the team’s first project on the N64. They brought in 3D graphics, some impressive ambient lighting and a short but effective story and ambience to play.

Overall it’s a fun little game even if it is a bit short. It’s best to go in blind and try to figure it out yourself.