Well, there’s a title for a game right there. There’s a Gun in the Office comes from developer/publisher Ragir and publisher Take IT Studio! Would you believe me if it told you that There’s a Gun in the Office is a game about a gun being in an office?

“You’ve been kidnapped and have to get out but luckily, there’s a gun in the office. Unluckily, your captor comes back home every day, so you have to cover your tracks when you go out of your cell. Use each passing day to get closer to the gun until you can finally leave.”

That blurb up there covers the game quite nicely. You have been kidnapped and everyday, your kidnapper leaves you locked in an apartment in a skyscraper. When left alone, you can explore your high-rise prison, but only for a limited time. As you explore and look for a gun (that is on the office of the apartment) to help you escape, you have to ensure that you don’t leave anything out of place for when your captor returns. If you so much as leave a cupboard door open, they will know you have been out of your room and your escape plan is ruined.

Labelled as a horror stress simulator, There’s a Gun in the Office does it’s very best to lay the tension and suspense on thick, while avoiding a lot of the tropes that you’d usually find in the horror genre. There’s no blood, no monsters to avoid/kill, etc. This is all about building the stress and forcing pushing you are far as you can go before it all gets too much. taking place over several days, you make little increments of success each day as you slowly form your plan to find the gun and escape. If your captor does fand anything out of place, you have to start the day again.

Let me just walk you though the first day. You room is locked, but you have the key hidden away. The first task is to find the key, you can then use that key to unlock your door and explore the apartment. You kidnapper always leaves the key to the kitchen somewhere in the hallway. You get that key and unlock the kitchen and now have access to another room. Here you find some food to keep hunger at bay. That’s about all you can do on day one. So now, you have to work backwards and put everything back how it was before the kidnapper returns. Close and lock the kitchen door, put the key back where you found it. Go back to your room and lock it, hide the key again. And that is the basic gist of how the game works.

Every day, advancement becomes a little tricker with more for you to do. Just as long as you put everything back the way it was, you take another step closer to getting into the office where there is a gun to help you escape. There’s a Gun in the Office is simple, but it tries hard to keep you on your toes. It is also a pretty short experience and I got to the end credits in a little over an hour. You escape in five days and each day is only a few minutes long in real time. There are multiple endings and once you know what to do on each day, a run through can last around 20 minutes or so.

Getting to my summary, does There’s a Gun in the Office work? For me, no. The game relies heavily on trying to stress the player out, and I don’t get stressed all that much. I used to be a head chef, a very high pressure and stressful job. So I’m used to dealing with mass amounts of stress. What I got out of this was a little memory game with a time limit and as long as you have a pretty decent memory, you’ll glide through this with no problem. The very short length is another issue. Even though there are different endings, I’m not sure that multiple playthroughs are really worth it. I have to admit to liking the basic concept, but this plays more like a little distraction that you would find in a bigger game that keeps you entertained for a few minutes as you take a break from the main gameplay.

As I say, this didn’t work for me personally, but that does not mean that it won’t work for you. If you are the kind of person who gets anxious and tends to feels stress easily, than There’s a Gun in the Office will definitely hit you harder than it did me. There’s a Gun in the Office is an interesting idea, but a bit too easy, too structured and handholdy for me. The short game time is reflected in its very budget price and it is available now for everything.