The best office simulators

Key conclusions

• Simulation games offer a calm, cozy respite from action games with meditative tasks that repeat to progress.
• Popular sims like Death And Taxes offer a unique perspective on daily tasks.
• Office Management 101 challenges players to design and manage a gritty office environment for a strategic and sneaky experience.

Simulation games turn them into meditative, calm, and cozy tasks that can be repeated to progress. While the most popular simulators allow players to see their progress as in Power Wash simulatormany other games bring the everyday to fans' fingertips and allow them to work menial jobs in new environments, different from their desk jobs and mocking the typical office job.

While some of these games tackle more serious issues, others are lighthearted and relaxing and fit perfectly into the best simulation games lineup. These are some of the best office simulators that gamers should try.

1 Documents, please

A dystopian border checkpoint

Documents, please may be the game that popularized the data validation formula. Released in 2013, the game puts fans behind the morally questionable desk of a checkpoint official in an authoritarian country where a mistake can mean more discord at the border. Players are paid based on how many people they accurately check and must make sure their family has enough to live on. The game offers players decisions that will make them wonder how much the ruling government really knows and how much they can accept with evil overlords if their loyalty is not rewarded.

As the job becomes more and more difficult, there is a need to triple-check immigrants to avoid freedom fighters or spies, so that the player bosses don't come down on them brutally.

2 Death and taxes

Reaper Desk work simulator

• Platforms: PC, Nintendo Switch
• Released: February 2020
• Developers: Gameworks placeholder

Another desk job in an unusual setting, Death and taxes sees players take on a bunch of unfinished destinies in a behind-the-scenes look at our mortal coil. Playing as the customizable Grim Reaper, players will be given vague instructions like, “Two people must die, spare those with catering experience.” A stack of IDs will then appear on the table, each with a pair of ticks at the bottom, where players will have to stamp each entry with a “LIVE” or “DEAD” stamp. It's pretty grim and dark, but the humor comes from the nonchalance with which these choices are treated.

Players can break the guidelines, with a bit of leeway before they upset the big boss, so if pitying someone is part of the rules, but the player thinks they deserve to be one of the daily deaths, they can make an exception. The whimsical text goes well with the ominous office and the boring repetition of routine work, making for a great addition to the genre.

3 Orwell

Desk research and observation

• Platforms: PC, Android, iOS
• Released: October 20, 2016
• Developers: Osmotic Studios

Fully realizing George Orwell's vision 1984 year, Orwell allows players to be investigators, skimming through the posts and searches of people from “The Nation”. As part of Big Brother, players will create profiles of citizens to investigate a series of terrorist attacks, passing on information to law enforcement. The game acts as a desktop that the player can use and browse to view data and learn more and more about the people they are looking for.

Although the game seems simple at first, the game turns into a question as the player can choose which information is relevant and can help frame the evidence in the right way to achieve the desired outcome. Orwell is the management of data and its delivery into a world of political dystopia and seems important and insightful.

4 Not for broadcast

Telemontage concert of the 80s

• Platforms: PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
• Released: December 11, 2019
• Developers: NotGames

The old editor of a huge news station has left, and now the janitor has to step in and sit in the editing booth to work on the broadcasts before they go on the air. Not for broadcast it's an experience like no other, where the player controls public perception, able to censor viewpoints they don't think should be aired, and change minds on a massive scale.

As the government pushes for more questionable actions, fans control whether to show the good or the bad. Collecting ads and selecting programs that will bring immediate benefits, players will get a taste of the potentially corrupt and inevitably powerful position of a public television editor. Sitting at your desk and controlling what's on the screen has never been so stressful and important!

5 Work simulator

Experience virtual reality in a world without work

For all VR lovers, Work simulator presents another amazing reality to make players work on the table where they can realize their wildest and childish fantasies. With the joyous digital disregard of a more realistic simulator, the player will step into the artificial intelligence idea of ​​what work was like before robots took over all the jobs in the world. While there are options to cook, work in a retail store, or work as a mechanic, the most relevant job that players will find is that of an office worker.

In this segment of the game, players can photocopy a stapler, throw an entire computer from their cockpit into a shredder, and even throw stacks of papers at their boss. The game's boundless sense of humor allows for an exciting escape from office life and to find pleasure in a difficult workplace.

6 Record keeping 101

A survival sandbox that rewards hard business

• Platforms: PC
• Released: March 16, 2022
• Developers: tulevik.EU

Currently in Early Access and running well on Steam, Record keeping 101 allows players to create their own office from scratch. With randomly generated characters that can be hired and the ability to work these employees to the bone, the game serves as an impressive insight into corporate culture, but also creates complexity.

Forcing workers back behind their desks to enable tactical backstabbing by other corporate allies means there is strategy and underhand planning for those who want to succeed. The constant crunch of the office environment is the perfect platform to see a performance in the brutal and almighty genre of tycoon games.