The best office simulators

Key things

• Simulator games offer a calm and cozy escape from action games with meditative tasks that repeat to progress.
• Popular simulator games like Death And Taxes provide a unique perspective on mundane tasks.
• Office Management 101 challenges players to design and manage an uncompromising office environment for a strategic and unpredictable environment.

Simulator games take a bit of escapism from larger-than-life action games and turn them into meditative, peaceful, and cozy tasks that can be repeated to progress. While the most popular simulator games allow players to see their progress, such as Power Wash Simulatormany other games bring the mundane to fans' fingertips, allowing them to work menial jobs in a new environment, break away from desk jobs, and poke fun at the typical office work life.

While some of these games tackle bigger challenges, others are fun and relaxing, making for a perfect entry into the best lineup of simulator games. These are some of the best office simulators that gamers should try.

1 Papers, please

A dystopian border checkpoint

Papers, please may be the game that popularized the data check formula. Released in 2013, the game puts fans behind the morally dubious desk of a checkpoint official in an authoritarian country where a slip-up could mean another disagreement at the border. Players are paid based on exactly how many people they check and must ensure that their family has enough to live on. The game presents players with choices that will force them to question how much the ruling government really knows and how far they can go after the evil overlords when their loyalty is not rewarded.

While the job gets more and more difficult, it is necessary to triple check the immigrants to avoid freedom fighters or spies so that the player bosses don't crack down on them.

2 Death and taxes

Reaper Desk Job Simulator

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

Other desk work in a special environment, Death and taxes a behind-the-scenes look at our mortal coil sees players take on a host of pending fates. Playing as the customizable Grim Reaper, players will be given vague instructions like, “Two people must die, rescue anyone with food service experience.” Then a bunch of identities will be placed on the table, each with a pair of check boxes on the bottom, where players will have to stamp each entry either “LIVE” or “DEAD”. It's pretty scary and dark, but the humor comes from the nonchalance with which these choices are handled.

Players can break the rules with some leeway before pissing off the big boss, so if it's in the rules to spare someone but the player thinks they deserve to be one of the daily deaths, they can make an exception. The quirky writing works well with the ominous office and the tedious repetition of a normal job, a great addition to the genre.

3 Orwell

Desktop investigation and observation

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

To fully realize George Orwell's vision 1984, Orwell allows players to be investigators who go through the news and internet searches of people from “The Nation”. When players become part of “Big Brother,” they create citizen profiles to get to the bottom of a string of terrorist attacks and pass on information to law enforcement. The game acts as a desktop that the player can use and view to go through the data and discover more and more about the people they are looking at.

Despite the game appearing to be simple at first, it becomes a challenge as the player can choose what information is relevant and can help assemble the evidence in the right way to achieve their own desired outcome. Orwell data management and archiving is transported into a world of political dystopia and feels important and prescient.

4 Not for broadcast

A concert for a television cut from the 80s

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

The old editor of a massive news station has left and now a janitor has to step in and sit in the newsroom to work on the broadcast before it airs. Not for broadcast is an experience unlike any other, where the player is in control of public perception, able to censor opinions they think shouldn't be broadcast, and change opinions on a massive scale.

As the government pushes further into questionable actions, the fans have control over whether to show the good or the bad. By collecting ads and selecting shows that will directly benefit them, players get a taste of the potentially corrupt and inevitably powerful position of public television editor. Sitting at your workstation and controlling what appears on the screen has never been so tense and important!

5 Work simulator

A VR experience in a world without work

For all VR fans, Work simulator presents another strange reality to put players to work at a desk where they can live out their wildest and most childish fantasies. With a cheerful digital disregard for a more realistic simulator, the player enters an artificial intelligence's idea of ​​what work was like before robots took over all the jobs in the world. While there are options to cook, work in retail, or work as a mechanic, the most relevant job players will find is the Office Worker role.

In this segment of the game, players can copy a stapler, throw an entire computer into the shredder at their cubicle, and even throw stacks of papers at their boss. The game's limitless sense of humor allows for an exciting escape from office life and finds fun in a dreary workplace.

6 Office Management 101

A survival sandbox that rewards reckless enterprise

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

Currently in Early Access and doing well on Steam, Office Management 101 allows players to design their office from the ground up. With randomly generated characters that can be hired and the ability to work these employees to the core, the game serves as an impressive spearheading of corporate culture as well as a challenge.

Forcing workers back to their desks in order to tactically defeat the company's other allies means that strategy and devious planning are involved for those who want to succeed. The constant grind of the office environment is the perfect platformer to see in the brutal and almighty genre of tycoon games.