Yuppie Psycho

Loses the point a bit towards the end, dropping a lot of its potent social commentary for an ending that leans on undercooked supernatural mystery, and the gameplay is fun and varied and uses the survival horror framework well but isn't anything special, and probably has lackluster puzzles overall. It ends up with an experience that comes out swinging but lands with a bit of a dull thud. But man, what an explosive entrance. Yuppie Psycho is like if Office Space were directed by Takashi Miike, marrying body horror and demented gore with the brutalist grind and drudge of office work-life. There's a lot of fun and darkly humourous parallels between the literal monsters on-screen and the real-life understated sociopolitical hurdles they represent, like the forced positivity of group meetings, HR being depicted as literally venomous, or just all the sarcastic, underhanded double-talk under the guise of collective improvement that's really an excuse for demonstrative classism. It's a potent atmosphere and Yuppie Psycho just nails it.

It's interesting that a game set in a giant office block, meant to be as boring and utilitarian as possible, is still able to have a map compact enough so you're never far from your objective but with enough landmarks that you never lose your way entirely. It's a fantastic map design for this genre, and the grueling resource economy aids both the genre conventions and the narrative's atmosphere of having to push through scarcity, despite how impractical it is. I was always amazed and interested in what was around the next corner, although as great as it was to hear Garoad on a soundtrack again, it probably wasn't the best choice for total immersion. The game's A-plot is far and away its biggest issue; it has a few compelling mysteries but mostly fails to wrap them up elegantly, even with diligent note-reading and backtracking. It keeps Yuppie Psycho just barely out of the echelon of great indie survival horrors, but it is an insane experience regardless, and easy to recommend.

Released in 2019 and then basically updated with the "Executive Edition" (i.e: a more fleshed out game) in 2022, "Yuppie Psycho" is a nice way of shining hope in a sea of overtly-serious or way too childish indie horror games.

There isn't a lot in the way of ground-breaking mechanics, but the theme and fun really help it get a lot more fun. The first day at the office where everyone is running around, craziness is accepted at normal and people are two-faced as they try to climb a corporate ladder (all the while real monsters and co-workers can hurt when you stumble into their point of view). The anime-influenced cut-scenes are also nice, but you'd wish they might have also had some when some sort of bosses were also introduced.

The game's story gets a bit grey and murky towards the end even after finding the several endings and reading the little lore notes along the way and maybe the vaporware aesthetic of the inside of the computer is a bit long in the tooth, but it's still a lot of fun and makes me want more.

It's a very fun, cute adventure game but has a little too much reliance on following guides at certain points, and a recent update makes getting a good ending slightly more difficult to achieve but i love this game <3