Enter into a world of madness and the mundane, monotony and the macabre. Nothing makes sense, and everything is hidden. Will you survive long enough to uncover the mystery? Or will you survive at all?
Story
In a dystopian future where the poverty level is split into classes and everything is influenced by Big Corporations, you are Brian, a low class nobody who's received a letter calling him to the famous Sintracorp. Once there, he discovers that nothing is as it seems. People behave in strange ways, parts of the building are barricaded off, and strange shadows lurk just out of sight. It's not long before he's fighting for his life, trying to survive in a world of insanity.
Gameplay
Yuppie Psycho is a walk around puzzle survival game. I'm not normally that interested in puzzle/walking simulators, but this game is intriguing despite my disinterest with the genre. You walk around, pick up items, bring needed items to the required location and progress through the story. However there are several things that make this style of gameplay unique and work for the settings.
First would be the inclusion of a health bar. While this is standard in a survival game, in a puzzle sense, it's somewhat rare and actually brilliant. Any number of things can hurt you; stepping on glass, touching something that has bad wiring, being clawed by monsters, you name it. The more hurt you are, the harder it is to see, requiring you to use the ambrosia of the gods of corporate life to restore health and clear your vision, aka coffee. You have to hunt down water and coffee grounds in order to brew a single cup, and resources are limited. You can also find bits and odds and ends to make a sandwich in the cafeteria.
Your inventory system is just a briefcase that you carry with you, and you can combine items or use them on the environment to see what they do. There's also a unique saving system that involves witch paper. These elusive and mysterious slips of parchment are the only means to save your game and you can only do so by scanning your face at a photocopier, which consumes the aforementioned witch papers. So you'll have to check every drawer and get as many as you can, but then use them judiciously, since you'll never know when you'l get your hands on another one.
Graphics & Sound
Yuppie Psycho is brilliantly portrayed in a pixelated art style that ranges from super minimalistic to surprisingly well animated pixel frames. Character models are clean and well designed. The world has a dull gray pallet that makes blood and monsters really stand out when they appear on screen.
The music in this game is amazing. Sound design is top notch, with music fading in and disappearing when appropriate, and little clips of audio flicker in and out to really crank up the tension. I heavily recommend playing this game with headphones, otherwise you might miss out on the experience.
