Office Fight is a physics-based puzzle game I had the opportunity to work on as a main Game Designer and Technical Animator. My job on this was being across a bit of everything which includes animations, rigging, physics, level design, overall Game Design and UX.

Animations was mostly quick and short fight animations, supplemented with Unreal Engine physics. Physical animation being laid on top of short attacks and ending in ragdoll meant for quick results.

Physics mostly utilised Unreal Engine’s Fracture system. While the tool is easy to generate quick and simple results, it also allows for more detail oriented destruction to generate different shaped debris which fits different materials while still maintaining an acceptable resource cost. E.g. Wood, Rubble, Metal Plates, Bricks, etc.

Game Design was one of the biggest hurdles. The idea actually originated from an old concept we had which was originally going to be a VR game with an office setting and brawls. However, at the time the VR market was dwindling so we felt like it was too risky.

However, we knew we wanted fights in an office setting with puzzle-like gameplay. We also decided that environment destruction would add some extra “oompf” to the fights. At some point we came to a “fork in the road”. The game was lacking identity as we were too perfectly split between being a destruction sim and a puzzle game. We ultimately made the choice to lean more towards destruction and kept the puzzles as light as possible. Ironically, reviewers praised my puzzle creations. Funny how that works out!

I made an assessment of our team’s strengths and weaknesses at the time to bring out the best with what we have. We didn’t have an in-house puzzle master nor did anyone feel confident enough about making puzzles. However, we have tech wizards and I knew a bit of Unreal physics already, so leaning towards the destruction seemed to be the obvious path.

I did my best with the puzzles with what I knew and what I felt worked with what we had created.

You can check out the gameplay trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtftJ78oUgM

Steam Free Demo is here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2831210/Office_Fight_Demo/