PAX East: Hell Of An Office Preview

Sep 03, 2023

43 Studios' debut takes office drones on a speedrun through the underworld.

Hell of an Office is a speedrun-focused first-person platformer that takes the aesthetic of id Software's Doom reboots, combines it with the gameplay of Neon White, and turbocharges it with urgency through "the floor is lava" rules that force you to make it to the finish line before magma is lapping at your ankles.

For Victor Espin, the game's creative director and 3D artist, the inspirations come primarily from two very different sources. I spoke with the developer at PAX East this past weekend, and he told me that Doom was, indeed, an influence for the team at Barcelona-based 43 Studios. But, the game's hot hell is blended up with a humorous infusion of office culture, which Espin says took some cues from The Stanley Parable.

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The early access build, which 43 was showing off in its entirety on the PAX Show Floor, is comprised of 40 levels, each of which can be completed in a minute or so once you know what you're doing. The levels are arranged in groups of 10, and each introduces a new mechanic.

In the first group, Infernal Office, you learn to dash and shoot, the bread and butter of navigating each purgatorial level. I didn't encounter any enemies across the 20 stages I had time to play, but I still had plenty of reason to use my gun (which is actually just a stapler). To move across a chasm, you dash. But if you need to get vertical, you shoot towards your feet, rocket jumping up.

Over time, the game introduces a variety of obstacles and platforms that you need to learn how to navigate — and learn it well because success in this workplace means being proactive, that is, achieving lightning fast response time. Though there are plenty of simple horizontal platforms, there are also little bits of concrete floating in the air that you need to guide your office drone toward in order to bounce higher. These often have helpful words graffitied on them, like "180" to indicate that you need to turn around right after hitting it. Later, the game introduces platforms that you can't rocket jump on and which disappear after a second or two of standing on them. And, fitting the office theme, there are walls of documents that you need to shoot with your stapler to open a fiery hole in the middle.

Throughout all this platforming, the lava is always rising. If you go too slow, it will catch you, promptly ending your run. The portal you need to pass through will be submerged beneath the molten rock if you don't move fast enough. While in Neon White you can finish the level at your own pace and work up to achieving a world class finish, Hell of an Office makes you work to learn to speedrun from the beginning.

Though it isn't doing any serious worldbuilding, I enjoyed seeing the office knick knacks around each level. You can measure your speed by what percentage of a "World's Greatest Boss" coffee mug is still visible above the lava. And some platforms have a ton of staples protruding from them, suggesting that many other workers have tried this route before you.

Hell of an Office is out now, in early access, with a full release planned for September.

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Andrew King is a Features Editor at TheGamer. He has been working as a journalist since 2016 and is a museum caretaker in his spare time. He loves immersive sims, RPGS, and David Lynch movies.