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Working Man Reviews
Author: Ice
Date: 2015
ADRIFT 5.0
What does AIF stand for? Adult Interactive Fiction. If you likely to be offended by games with sexual content, you are advised not to open these files.
Reviewed by
OveranalysingAIF
Working Man by
Ice was released on 3 August 2015. It was made with ADRIFT 5 and is the result
of two years of work by its first-time author. So how did it turn out?
Despite the title, the PC actually has a lot of time for living. In fact, the
scenes that occur at the PC's workplace are so brief that it's not even clear
what his job is. Instead, the majority of the game takes place at the PC's house
and focuses on his interactions with his family (wife, daughter, and
sister-in-law). On the face of it, the PC's life seems pretty good. He works
long hours, but his job doesn't seem stressful and it pays for a nice house. He
and his gorgeous younger wife seem to get on well, and have a pretty active sex
life given that she works even longer hours than he does. He clearly loves his
daughter since he plays along with her games even though he secretly hates them.
But despite all that, he's actively on the prowl for extra-curricular activity,
and when the opportunity arises he pursues it without a moment's hesitation or
guilt.
If you've read any of my other reviews you'll know how much
importance I place on motivation, so this was a problem for me. Why does the PC
choose to endanger his marriage with what is sometimes very risky behaviour?
There's no hint that he's unhappy or unsatisfied. He's not doing it for a bet.
He's not possessed by an alien. The only explanation I can come up with is that
he's a character in an AIF game and he knows what's expected of him.
He's
not the only one either. Despite the PC supposedly being out of shape and having
a receding hairline, women throw themselves at him with little to no
provocation. The most egregious example is the scene with Tiffany and Crystal.
The pretext is that they want the PC to act as a sperm donor, despite the fact
that they barely know him and realistically he wouldn't be a great donor due to
both his age and his recent sexual activity. Of course, because this is AIF, and
despite Crystal and Tiffany being both lesbians and in a committed relationship,
they're happy to throw themselves into a threesome (up to and including anal) if
the PC decides to make any sort of move.
I’d be happy with that kind of
scene in a light-hearted romp, but that's not really the type of game that
Working Man is. Tonally, it definitely isn't. The PC's actions have
consequences, putting his marriage in genuine jeopardy and potentially leaving
him broke and alone at the end of the game. But I get the sense that Working Man
can't decide what it really wants to be. This is most obvious with some of the
endings. For example, if the PC doesn't have sex with either Stephanie or
Sharon, you get an ending where he's blissfully in love with his wife and they
live happily ever after. Which is immediately followed by epilogues about all
the sex the PC is still having with any of the secondary characters he might
have slept with. To make things even more confusing, that happily ever after
ending occurs even if the PC knows his wife was cheating on him (and is
continuing to do so judging by all the little hints). The implication seems to
be that the PC is a fool for not cheating on his wife, since she's cheating on
him. Except that he did, just not with any of the characters who actually
matter.
This reflects the schizophrenic nature of Working Man. On one
side you have the characters like Anna and Maya, who are in the game only to
provide the PC with an opportunity to have sex and don’t exist outside of their
cut scenes. On the other are the characters the story is actually about, such as
Stephanie or Sharon. The player is able to interact with them and they are
outfitted with a broad range of conversation responses, which makes them much
more lifelike. The development of the PC's relationships with these major
characters happens in several stages and requires active intervention from the
player, so it’s both believable and involving. Some implausibilities remain, but
there is an effort to overcome them. For example, Stephanie has a boyfriend
she's apparently crazy about, so it's a little odd that she would want to lose
her virginity to the PC. However, her boyfriend is portrayed as being more
sexually aggressive than she's comfortable with (he's kind of a douche
actually), so the idea that she would choose a 'safer' option for her first time
becomes more believable. The fact that this difficulty is acknowledged, rather
than simply being ignored, makes it easier to swallow. While I have misgivings
about the minor characters, I think that the major characters of Working Man are
some of the best NPCs in recent memory.
Unfortunately, the game’s puzzles
don’t live up to the same standard, particularly in terms of their
believability. For example, the PC is meant to buy some extra time for his
dalliance with Stephanie by locking the front door with the spare key that's
kept under the doormat. The fact that in this day and age no sane person would
use such an obvious hiding place is the least of the problems here. A much
bigger issue is that the PC has to use the spare key because he doesn't have a
key to his own house. In other words, the believable solution is arbitrarily
rejected in order to make it more of a puzzle. As if to emphasise this, the PC's
wife *does* have her own key. Moreover, she seems to magically know if the spare
key is or isn't under the mat where it's supposed to be. But while she's vitally
concerned that the spare key always be in place, she's somehow not worried about
the front door being left wide open. So, while the basic idea of the puzzle is
fine, the way it's implemented involves implausibility on top of implausibility.
The writing doesn't help matters a great deal either. Room descriptions
seldom rise above an inventory of their contents, and object descriptions are
even more basic. Important facts, such as the PC apparently having an ongoing
affair with his daughter's ballet teacher, are never mentioned (I could be
misreading that, but if so Anna's scene becomes even more implausible). The text
also has an unfortunate tendency to contradict both the gameworld and itself.
For example, the description of Laura's entrance into the house says that she
opens the door (even if it's already open) and closes it behind her (which she
doesn't). A painting is described as beautiful in the room description, but on
closer inspection the PC hates it for unspecified reasons. And so on.
The
upshot of all this is that I had difficulty suspending my disbelief for long
enough to become truly invested in any of the sex scenes. That's a shame because
objectively speaking they're very good. My only real criticism would be that
certain actions are repeatable even when it would make no sense (Tiffany losing
her anal virginity over and over, for example). That quibble aside, there's a
lot to like. The author certainly seems more interested in writing about sex
than he was in describing household objects, which translates to greater
enjoyment for the reader. There's also much greater use of graphics, which I'm
sure most people will appreciate. The character models are generally very good
(Maya, Laura, and Tiffany being my personal favourites), although I can't help
noting that the PC's six-pack and unruly mop of hair doesn't exactly match his
description.
I've seen a lot of comments likening Ice to the second
coming of GoblinBoy, which seems to be mainly based on Working Man being a large
game with a lot of graphics. That's not to say that it isn't an impressive game,
but despite its overall quality it’s still very much a *first* game, with the
occasional lack of polish and questionable design decisions that that implies.
For example, pretty much every object that could be openable is, even if it
never serves any purpose in the game. This means that the player has to waste
time opening and searching everything, on the off chance that something
important might be concealed. Conversely, some things are left unimplemented, to
the detriment of the player's experience. For example, if the PC tries to enter
his house without opening the front door first, he will be bluntly told that
there's nothing in that direction.
The game that Working Man actually
reminds me of is Peril in Pleasantville. Working Man is obviously a *lot* better
executed, but both are ambitious first-time games that offer a lot of content
and make heavy use of graphics. More importantly, both demonstrate the risks of
making such an ambitious project your first game (Pleasantville rather more
effectively, it has to be said). Pretty much every problem I had with Working
Man is the result of the author's inexperience rather than any lack of effort on
his part. If this had been the author's second or third game (or if it had been
released ten years ago), I think we’d be talking about it as one of best games
of all time. The ambition and dedication is certainly there, as demonstrated by
the size of the game and the amount of content concealed within it.
Unfortunately, that extra level of quality that only comes with experience is
not. Yet. Here’s hoping that Ice doesn’t decide to end his AIF career here.
Reviewed by
kkai
I confess I played this two to three years ago, so the specifics are all
very fuzzy, but this was a really good AIF game w/ quite good 3D images for the
time.
You have a wealth of options in how you proceed through the game
with numerous endings.
As long as you aren't averse to text-heavy games
(I love them) you should give this a shot.
Reviews should be considered copyrighted by their respective authors.
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