Fired by Olaf Nowacki
Well, it finally happened. We—an ordinary guy—have been canned from our job, so we’re back in our office, early in the morning, to pack up our meager things. Fired is a “revenge play,” according to its subhead, and we’re going to ruin our boss with printouts we’ve made as proof of the crimes he’s committed: “fraud, embezzlement, falsification of documents, psychological harassment, sexual assault and that’s not even all.” (It makes one wonder what isn’t on this list.)
The game is well-written and well-implemented, even though it sometimes follows classic illogical text-adventure logic. We drive a forklift through a wall not so much as it’s a realistic thing to do but rather the game needs a way to make us physically progress forward. There’s a key in an unidentifiable blob found in a microwave, and only by attaching the blob to some velvet can we get it out.
Perhaps the oddest item in the game is the doll that resembles the boss in his office. It’s a giant, weeble-wobbly thing that also somehow talks? The solution to its puzzle also feels the weakest—it all gets a little nonsensical.
Thematically, though, I like how unified the game is. The game’s title, the Talking Heads poster, and the game’s crucial final action (literally burning down the office building) are all nicely tied together. However, there were several points along the way where, to quote a different Talking Heads song, that I couldn’t help feel like a psycho killer. We really, really, really don’t like our boss, and we’re repeatedly told so through a bunch of insults that are amusing enough on their own but start making me question whether I enjoy playing such a bitter PC. But fundamentally the story seems to be a satire. The whole scenario, particularly with its end, feels much more like Office Space than the sort of true madman revenge one might see in Poe. The game is listed as a comedy, after all.
I suppose we could go into a Marxist interpretation of the game, where we’re the abused working-class hero finally standing up against the owners of production. And it’s difficult to ignore the game’s parallels to today’s anti-billionaire sentiment shared by many who are not billionaires. But the game seems a little too light for that kind of analysis.
For me, it’s a fun and quick romp through many a cubicle-dweller’s wistful fantasy in a classic old-school style. It isn’t groundbreaking and occasionally leans too much on surreal. (In our world, there literally is no polished floor that is more impassible and treacherous as a sheet of ice—it’s just a mechanic to force us to solve some puzzles in the basement.) But it’s worth half an hour of your time when you’re playing Comp games on the clock in your own workplace. I like the game’s fundamental message to the powerful and proletariat alike: “Watch out / You might get what you’re after.”