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If you’re working or have already joined, there’s no doubt you’ll hear some horror stories. Whether it’s about offensive colleagues or bad office policies, what we do know is that in our good minds we wouldn’t want to deal with them IRL.
But what if you got a little taste through a game in the name of good fun?
Yee I-Van (Ivan) came up with such an idea, inspired by his 16 years of experience as an employee and entrepreneur. Being the same director, he has faced many strange personalities.
“I also have an aunt who was the first HR CEO, so I have a lot of‘ resources ’to get out of it,” she told the Vulcan Post in an interview.
Combine these experiences with a self-proclaimed humor and a tendency to see stupidity in inappropriate situations, and you will succeed. Alchemist’s Laboratorythe first card game developed within it, HR: The Toxic Workplace Game (HR).
Your main goal as a player? Sabotage your colleagues and release them. That yes, you it can be evil now.
Some well-known and related characters
Oddly enough, despite being “HR” in its name, the gameplay is like anything you don’t want to see from a real HR department. Instead, they are running HR SOP with any malicious intent.
HR is a 2-4 player game where you and your enemies are the managers who climb the wild ladder of companies. To win, you must complete the entire project cycle by collecting and playing all four Project Management cards before your opponents do.
And since the workplace is not coming without its competition, other Managers will try to stop you from achieving your goal by firing staff from your team. This is another way to earn HR by providing warning letters to other Manager staff through Misconduct cards.
Misbehavior can be common misconduct in the office, such as getting drunk at work, breaking an NDA, or having an office romance. When an employee receives 3 warning letters, they are released and included in the Restricted Pile.
Of course, you can block your opponent’s Misconduct attacks by using some Instant or Action cards that act in a workplace that is like turning a blind eye to an employee’s misconduct.
In HR, you will work in a fast and dynamic environment, but hopefully the job is easy. Ivan intended to make HR easy to play, while at the same time providing enough depth to create strategies so that players could balance their luck and “git gud” plans, as he said.
When I tried one hand myself, I was able to complete a 2-player round in 45 minutes. Although the cards are based on the scenarios and characters you will find at work, it was fairly easy to understand that even those who have not yet entered the workplace could relate to certain behaviors.
For example, they are characters you will find not only in The Tai Chi Master or The Overachiever, but also in school group projects. The former will usually find ways to pass on any work to other team members, while the latter will absorb your regular KPI meeting, straight-A team member, absorbing principals or teachers.
And because art mimics life, HR has a rule where the manager who draws The Overachiever employee in hand has gone first.
On the other hand, there are some weird scenarios, such as a Misconduct card, where an employee has a collection of dead birds under the table. (If you ever get a real co-worker like this, I think misbehaving would be your least concern. My thoughts and prayers will be with you.)
6 month project
The real inspiration for HR’s “take that” mechanics came from another game in which Ivan wanted to make some technical improvements.
You know: You can do an action game that fucks your opponent with the “take that” mechanism of the game.
After restructuring and redesigning, HR tested them several times with friends who could meet Ivan.
“I had an office issue in my head, where I imagined a big dysfunctional company, where they were all mixed up with everyone else and released to each other. I usually saw the power of humor in a dry subject, ”Ivan said.
It took Ivan about 4 months to complete the project, and as a result he spent most of his time writing and securing all the letters related to the subject.
Adding humor was quite difficult for Ivan, who had to try his jokes with a new eye on each rewrite. “After a while, your writing starts to read like the mouth of a madman and it’s not as fun to read as it was the first time,” he added.
The final phase of the project was to find the right printers and do production testing before proceeding with the full production of the game. Overall, the entire HR life-giving process was a rough 6 months.
At least no one tried to sabotage the project cycle …
The back burner of creativity
The Alchymyst’s Lab itself is a smooth company, made up only of Ivan, another designer, and a fellow. For the most part, it is offering outsourced services for animated content, digital video games, social media, and graphic design.
“It’s a personal experimental playground for back projects I’ve piled up over the years, going to do things that someone could say but not forget in the years to come,” Ivan told the Vulcan Post.
His experience has been commissioned as an artist for a local card game. Kuih Muih, and has also been a college educator in the development of the art of gaming for the past 15 years.
Primarily working as an artist for other titles, this is HR’s first time writing and publishing a game for The Alchymyst’s Lab.
Do it yourself
Launched in June 2021, Ivan reported that HR is receiving significant support from local communities, friends and family.
“Nowadays, as a business, I want to break even on a system that would be a clear indicator if I have my system right,” Ivan said. “I think I have 30% of the way now and some initiatives that I will still be launching gradually to keep the interest of the game alive.”
One of them is the game’s bonus for users to design their own white card printing.
This would give users the freedom to expand their range of cards by paying RM50 in advance for the set. By making their own cards, users can create more meaningful and personalized scenarios related to their office cultures, and also by adding jokes among their colleagues.
HR is mostly aimed at an adult audience that is part of the working class, and has so far received customers that match this demographic.
Ivan hopes to continue to create more board games that match this market. At the same time, his team is testing another game with a younger market, which aims to be a diversified product catalog in the future.
While not the main business of The Alchymyst’s Lab, the team hopes to explore more gaming ideas in its repository while exploring the possibility of publishing deals abroad.
For my part, HR will probably be my company’s next encounter game. After all, nothing suggests a healthy company culture after working together for a long time to get together and sabotage each other as best you can!
- Learn more about The Alchymyst’s Lab here, and check out HR: The Toxic Workplace Game here.
- Read more articles related to games here.
Featured Image Credit: Yee I-Van (Ivan), Founder of The Alchymyst’s Lab
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