CorpoNation: The Sorting Process Preview: Working Hard
Imagine a world where you literally eat, sleep, and dream about your job. Every moment revolves around the corporation. Perceived “free time” circles back to the big corpo and how you can help its profits. Sounds a bit dystopian, right? Well CorpoNation: The Sorting Process seeks to creatively shine a light into the monotony of a corporate job that seems to have infiltrated every aspect of your life.
In CorpoNation, you play as a new employee to the company. Your job is to simply sort various genomes into the correct buckets. At first, this seemed a bit too easy, but after a few in-game days, the complexity, variety, and modifiers quickly emerged. For instance, one day the “Beta” genomes were processed incorrectly, so instead, you have to discard them. This one slight change totally impeded my speed since it was a small, but impactful inconvenience. A daily grade is also given to you, based on your speed and accuracy sorting all the items for the day.
With those funds securely obtained, you take the elevator down to your living quarters (living in the building that you work at…). The space is very baron, but you can use your hard earned credits to spruce up the place. However, you can’t forget to pay all your bills, otherwise you’ll quickly go into debt. I haven't experienced that yet in my gameplay, so I can only imagine what could happen…
With all this, CorpoNation also features an emphasis on the “post-work” day as much as the grind of the work. During your “free time” you can read the heavily spun news from the corporation, play several state-approved games, complete satisfaction surveys, and even message various other workers about their day. These mini-activities, though largely straightforward, added a fantastic level of appeal to the game. I found myself sucked into the two state-approved games (one is a simple brawler and the other is largely solitaire). In the brawler, I got sucked into the standard free-to-play design of throwing money to the game to play longer. Before I knew it, I spent all my money and had to stop for the in-game night. I guess tomorrow, I’ll just have to work harder to play the game longer! Wait a minute, this cycle almost sounds devious on purpose…hmm.
Even the messages with other workers were very appealing to engage with. Though I really didn’t have options to change the conversation or offer branching paths, I found these moments to be very revealing. Albeit, revealing because the messages ended up being very cryptic. The ominous tones of the game started to emerge in the 90 minutes that I played. There’s more than meets the eye in CorpoNation, and I think I’ve only hit the tip of the corporate iceberg.
With just an hour and a half under my belt, I am absolutely intrigued by what the team at Canteen has created. CorpoNation has captured my attention, not only with its beautifully artistic-pixel design and catchy music, but also with the multiple layers of the story that are just waiting to be found out. I can’t wait to jump back in and see if I’m just a cog in the machine or the one to bring it all down…
Preview by Harry Loizides
