It used to be said that your school days were the happiest of your life, but now that accolade has surely been taken by your office days. Not only can you spend your time avoiding actually doing anything (there's just so much to see on the Internet), the office is also a hotbed of coffee, gossip and rumour. You even get paid to turn up!
It's hard to imagine a better setting for a few mobile mini-games. Alas, the folks at Indiagames obviously work in a different atmosphere to those of us suffering with David Brent as our leader. Don't expect any saucy going-ons around the photocopier or boozy Christmas parties here. Instead, these six mini-games adopt more of a sporting theme, with waste paper basketball (the strangely named Wasteketball), chair racing and crazy golf amongst the activities on offer.
Let's start on a positive note with Putt Putt Golf. As with all of the mini-games here, the controls are simple, with '4' and '6' used to choose the direction your ball will take through the obstacle-strewn table. Pressing '5' activates a power meter, with a further press selecting the exact level of oomph. Too much and the ball will fly out of play, as unlike proper crazy golf, there are no boundaries to bounce your ball off.
Putt Putt Golf is definitely the best of the Office Games. But after nine holes of such fare, there's little more enjoyment to be had.
Worse, all the other mini-games fall far wide of the mark.
The previously mentioned Wasteketball, for example, sees you using a fan to blow waste paper balls into a bin. The power of the fan varies with every shot, so you have to judge your angle just right to get a basket. And when we say "just right", that's exactly what we mean.
Your mood won't be improved either by the game continually telling you you're rubbish when you miss. That you have to play for three minutes makes it about as much fun as emptying the trash.
The other games are either so easy or incompetently designed, they offer no challenge. Rating high on both scores is Chair Racing, a hugely wasted opportunity. Using a topdown view of the action, you race around an office-based track against two other racers. As you start the first lap, it seems okay. The problem is the course is massively long in comparison to your basic speed, and the three boosts you're given only last about a second each.
One time it took us so long to make it down the back straight without the need to touch any buttons, our phone's power-saving mechanism kicked in. Then you find you have two more laps to complete!
With a bit more thought and attention to detail, Office Games could have been a nice collection, but it's hard to see anyone having much fun with these games in their current state. In fact, you'd probably be better off just doing some work.
Office Games
The golf mini-game has its moments, but taken as a collection, there's about as much enjoyment in Office Games as in filling in your tax return
