As much of the world is getting used to working from home, it’s easy to miss the simple pleasures of working out of an office. There’s the social camaraderie, sure, but there’s also the potential to cause comical amounts of damage by slingshotting a printer through six walls and into a stack of servers. Good Job! was released today for the Nintendo Switch, capturing the wonders of an office job that isn’t tedium, but instead a chaotic place of joy.
In Good Job!, you play as the bumbling child of a powerful CEO. What you lack in skills and experience, you make up for in a go-get-’em attitude. So when someone in finance asks you to bring a new projector to the conference room, you try your darnedest to get it there as soon as you can.
The game is played from an isometric perspective, looking down on cubicles and break rooms from above. It uses a cartoony style meant to mimic the stick figures you’d see on a job poster about “Dangers in the workplace” or “How to save someone from choking.” It’s a clean look that works as a clear contrast to the outrageousness that’s about to unfold.
Practically every object in Good Job! can be picked up, dragged, or pushed around. Clipboards, desks, water coolers, and coffee cups stand in your way of accomplishing your goal. Which, if you’ll recall, is to replace the projector.
The projector is huge and unwieldy, a struggle to fit through normal doors and a danger to innocent desk jockeys you may hit if you’re not paying attention. Moving the projector from one side of the office to the other is surprisingly tricky, requiring that your hapless business scion plug in power cables to activate doors and open new pathways in between the moments of actual pushing and shoving. Sometimes the cable isn’t quite long enough. Other times, the cable, when pulled taught, ends up clotheslining Joan from sales. Not great, Bob.
There are really two ways to play Good Job! You can take it slow and steady, ensuring that every step you make honors your surrounding officemates’ personal safety.
Or you can do the other thing: Pull a power cord taught, drag in the projector like a slingshot, and let that baby fly through drywall. I’ve actually found a ton of satisfaction in both tactics, and the game rewards speed over dutifulness, generally speaking. A little structural damage in the workplace is just the cost of doing business, if you’re able to get each task done quickly.
Image: Paladin Studios/Nintendo
Puzzles get more complex as you go deeper into the office’s bowels. One challenge to restart the internet with a long Ethernet cable is foiled by a line of people waiting to use the bathroom. A stealthy approach has me finding a back entrance to the flooding restroom, mopping up the mess so that people can use the restroom, and the line dissipates. Alternatively, the server room’s walls are made of glass, and just begging for a desk to be launched through them.
Good Job! also supports same-system co-op for two players. The game plays exactly the same way, but having a second character with a second set of hands means you can solve puzzles slightly faster, assuming everyone is on the same page. Which, if you’ve ever played a physics-based co-op game, is a hard no. And yet, even when things go very poorly, Good Job!’s raucous calamities remain infinitely entertaining. The game is often at it’s best when your attempts are at their worst.
There are plenty of great physics-based “chaos” games out there, from Human Fall Flat to Gang Beasts, but Good Job! takes the concept a step further, offering up an objective-based puzzler that gives direction without requiring you paint by numbers. And sometimes going outside the lines — or through walls — really is the best option.
Good Job! was released March 26 on Nintendo Switch. The game was reviewed using a download code provided by Nintendo. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.
