izigame.me

Yuppie Psycho is a game I really like in terms of its concept and vibe. It's not unusual for office culture to be lampooned, criticised, or taken to bizarre directions but this is the only example I can think of where that environment is turned into a survival horror game. The way this manifests is pretty neat in terms of how it influences the game's structure wherein it's based around various levels of social hierarchy within the company system that the game allows you freely travel between. It also has cute novelties like having your inventory being justified by typical stuff you'd see office workers eat or use for work.
The gameplay for Yuppie Psycho is very lacking, however. Waiting around in observation of enemy movements is not unusual for stealth games and it has a presence in the horror genre too. But the difference is that, in those games, you generally have an active role in how enemy ai works and you're given a lot more gameplay options than waiting under a desk until the threat moves away. Since the game provides virtually no options of interaction beyond that, it's entirely reliant in how these threats manifest itself. To the game's credit, this comes in a variety of forms. This can be a full screen beam of lights to actual monsters roaming about. But the thing is that none of these threats save for one boss do anything about you hiding which just makes these encounters a dull game of patience until the threat in any room leaves an opening for you to move and none of them are capable of catching up to you anyway (aside from the aforementioned boss) so it's usually easy to avoid them regardless.
The other element to the gameplay is the resource management. Reading the reviews on here is funny because of how many people got filtered by the concept of resource management which is very common in this genre; yet, I seem to be the odd one out in thinking the game is very generous in how many resources it gives you. In contrast to something like Resident Evil or Signallis, your resources are never for direct combat and you never have to think about using such resources to eliminate threats within a given area. There's no "fight or flight" dilemma in this game. There are limited saves but the game is so generous in its handouts on witch papers that saving is trivial and they always slap down a save spot with a piece of witch paper before any major boss/setpiece so it's rarely tedious if you end up dying. The game's structure is also fairly linear despite how it's laid out so it's also not really a case of considering pathing when utilising your saving resources. There's also pencils, and while a bit more scarce if you're being liberal in using them, once you realise there's only a few instances where you actually need to use them and that avoiding mines is easy it also becomes trivial as a resource. Health only becomes an issue depending on how good you are at avoiding damage and admittedly there are certain setpieces and bosses which can drain you pretty hard, especially if you played carelessly the way I did. But again, the resources are so generous here that I could actually get away with playing carelessly and justify it by abusing the health items. Since the entire resource game comes down to these 3 resources and you have unlimited space in your inventory, maintaining them feels like an afterthought due to how generous the game is about giving them to you. I'm genuinely baffled by the people who find this aspect frustrating. I'd love to see them play something like Pathologic or Fear & Hunger if they think this game is rough about it.
The third core aspect of the gameplay is psuedo-adventure game puzzle solving. This is amusingly the game's strongest point and frankly what's going to be taking up most players time. While the actual solutions are usually pretty straightforward and obvious, on occasion it does provoke you to investigate areas more to get clues about how solve certain puzzles. This is bare minimum when it comes to the design of these games but I do think a bit more thought was put into this aspect of the game because it does encourage you to jump between floors and snooping around to grasp any sort of solution. They could have pushed this a lot harder to the point you're making interactions with NPCs that change the layout of levels or playing around with item interactions more, but I'll still take this over waiting any day.
The narrative provides solid hooks due to how bizarre the general atmosphere is and how NPCs seem to have no real reaction to it but I don't think this is dealt with in a satisfactory way. Named characters all fit into office comedy stereotypes but nothing is done with them in the narrative beyond their one note joke. Despite the setting, it doesn't seem to have anything it wants to explore regarding office culture or any specific drama that comes with that. There is light commentary about the cutthroat mentality of classism but aside from two characters this is largely ignored. In both of these cases the whole concept is treated as a joke despite the legitimately horrifying ramifications of it that the story implies. Nobody seems horribly concerned about what their place in the hierarchy means for their social status nor is there any questions asked about the actual ethics of Sintracorp even having this hierarchy to begin with. The side characters just tacitly accept everything and even in the ending when you end the curse none of these characters seem particularly phased or particularly care about it, which gives off the impression they never had much stakes in anything that happens in the plot. There are some potentially interesting plot beats such as Inay's relationship to the robot or Chapman's relationship with his father that could have played into larger aspects of the narrative's theming but they end up getting tossed aside and made mostly irrelevant.
Another issue I have with the plot is just how generally detached Brian is from it. He's portrayed as the straight man who's the only one aware of how crazy the setting actually is, but beyond the obvious love interest in Kate; which is obscenely trite and boring, he has no stakes in anything. The core of the story is moreso about the family dynamics of the companies founders and while I do think there's some spice in that it comes off as limp because Brian has nothing to do with any of it. We see this dynamic play out from Brian's perspective but he never feels obliged to invest himself in that drama or has anything to say about it. He's a white bread protagonist who acts on heroic impulses and that's about it. The most his investment matters is simply as a goal to end the curse and his relationship to the Sintra ai to a lesser degree, but the latter doesn't play off of the family dynamic in any way whatsoever despite later plot twists. There is solid hooks about the curse's origin, but the story is way too vague about the family's general goals or ethics to make any of that interesting within the grander scheme of the setting. We have no idea what sort of business Sintracorp even is or how its founder operated or what motivated the owner to adopt Domori specifically. The most we get are vague clues about their household dynamic which only gets explored in the alternate route, but even in that case it's too underbaked to be satisfactory.
This review has been mostly negative but despite it being deeply flawed I do find it interesting enough conceptually that I don't flat out hate it. I love the monster designs and the general quirkiness is extremely charming to me. I've grown to find more value in novelty than polish/depth when it comes to games these days and Yuppie Psycho fits that bill. But I just can't help but feel so much of it is missed potential so I can't recommend it.