There’s a Gun in the Office Review (Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 & PC)

There’s a Gun in the Office is just as much about learning from your past mistakes as it is about taking the time to internalize every single object in the room to establish your future. As the victim in a kidnapper’s cruel mind game, it isn’t as if you have anything better to do. Five days — that’s all you get to memorize the layout of the penthouse, to chronicle the items, and to orchestrate a foolproof exit strategy that will pull the wool over your perpetrator’s eyes. Death lingers, but hope is all but a stone’s throw away.

True to its word, the brief thirty-minute escape room experience tells you of a secret gun in the office—a last-minute lifeline that can, in theory, bring you one step closer to your final destination. The problem is, it doesn’t tell you that, between the cell and the gun, you have a lot of roadblocks that prevent you from finding an escape. The villain is, to your knowledge, always watching, keeping an eye on your surroundings and the little things you do each day. But of course, it isn’t your job to play the victim and to lean into their dark fantasies. Rather, it’s your job to ensure that no stone is left unturned, and that those same stones are then turned over a second time.

There’s a Gun in the Office builds on a simple routine—a process that primarily involves eliminating objects in a timely fashion before returning to the “safety” of a cell. With five days on the clock, the game invites you to take matters into your own hands and to memorize the nooks and crannies of the penthouse. If, say, you inspect an object in the room, then you must put it back in the same way that you found it. Failing to do so will cause a ripple effect, given that the kidnapper returns to the apartment each day to mull things over. It’s your job to ensure that, if you are going to touch something, then it won’t leave any breadcrumbs. That, in short is, is what There’s a Gun in the Office is.

It goes without saying at this point, but There’s a Gun in the Office isn’t a game that relies on jump scares or cheap tricks to convey its message. Instead, it looks to elevate tension through psychological manipulation, with orbital audio cues—the pattering of footsteps, for example—and frequent attacks on your senses. As you only have a small pocket of time each day to explore the world and connect the dots, you never truly know how much time you have to obscure your path. And, to be honest, There’s a Gun in the Office does a great job of building on that unsuspecting feeling of being on the receiving end of a dismal climax.

If there’s one thing that makes There’s a Gun in the Office disturbing, it’s the fact that it chooses to ignore the conventional slasher tropes and, in an effort to normalize the perpetrator, underscore ordinary, eerily familiar settings. Unlike your typical dungeon or trap-filled basement, it opts to present you with a radiant high-rise apartment, an interwoven environment of modern spaces, and a trove of seemingly innocent objects. There are no skeletons in the closet for you to accidentally bump into, and there are definitely no cheap jump scares to rewire your senses. If anything, you have a lavish home, a collection of rooms, and, of course, a gun in the office.

The first day starts out with a simple question: can you curb your appetite before the kidnapper returns in the evening? The short answer is, yes, you can. To reach the snack, you must unveil your hidden cell key, dig through the clutter in the adjacent room, and find the key to the kitchen. After that, you must return the key, re-shuffle the clutter, and then return to your cell. Naturally, this opening portion sets the tone for the week, as well as shows you how each in-game day will pan out as you progress through the week. With several minutes on the clock, you must memorize the layout of each room, retrace your steps, and gradually carve a little deeper into the apartment, all with the intention of finding a way into the office. It’s a simple setup, but one that also comes with some surprisingly weighty baggage and a lot of traumatic moments.

For a game that doesn’t stick around all that long and dispels the need to draw out its campaign, There’s a Gun in the Office does provide a good deal for you to work through. Aside from the stress-inducing routines and the light puzzle-solving sequences, you also have multiple endings, several collectibles, and various achievements to unlock. Granted, it is still a rather short experience that doesn’t divulge much more than the bare minimum of an escape room-based horror. That being said, it does make for an unsettling affair, as does it make for a confusing puzzler that can leave you feeling psychologically vulnerable.

As with most games of its kind, There’s a Gun in the Office becomes a lot easier to navigate as you spend more time with it. While the fifth day can feel like an overwhelming rush, what with its drawn-out cycle and copious amounts of fetch-related tasks, I wouldn’t class it as a painfully difficult game. Stressful, sure, but not impossible. Though, it mostly boils down to a simple question: how much can you remember under pressure? If, say, you’re the sort of person who places a bunch of keys on the kitchen table and then forgets about them thirty seconds later, then you’ll probably struggle to cover your tracks here. Unfortunately, I fall into that category.

As I said, there is a simple game here that doesn’t go above and beyond to deliver a meaty experience. As it is disappointingly short and severely lacking in puzzle pieces and interactive elements, it seems that there’s a good chance that just as many people will give a game like this the cold shoulder rather than embrace it with an open mind. For me, personally, I enjoyed the time I spent with it. Call it Stockholm Syndrome, I guess.

Verdict

There’s a Gun in the Office confines you to a perfectly ordinary, seemingly harmless workspace in the hopes that you’ll stick around long enough to scrub through its every crag and crevice for a viable escape route. To that end, it does what it says on the box, as it does it deliver on its promise to provide a psychologically daunting escape room-like experience that can make you question your own insecurities and leave you feeling woefully anxious. It’s just a shame that it doesn’t stick around that long to elevate the tension and build on its greatest strengths.