Job Simulator Oculus Quest Review

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Fast Facts

Title: Job Simulator
Developer: Owlchemy Labs
Publisher: Owlchemy Labs
Website: https://jobsimulatorgame.com/
Genre: Casual, Food, Simulation
Platform: Oculus Quest
Audience: PEGI 3
Release Date: 21/05/2019
Price: £14.99 – Rapid Reviews UK team member, Jonathan bought this game with his own money to review it for our community.

Work work work

VR Simulation games, and simulation games in general, have covered a gamut of real world jobs and situations and in recent years they have delved into some bizarre areas from Forklift operators and managing a graveyard. Job Simulator aims to marry the concept of job simulation game types and bizarre antics and create a unique bit of fun along the way.

In Job Simulator, you take on a job in one of four jobs: Gourmet Chef, Office Worker, Convenience Store Clerk, and an Automotive Mechanic. Each job has a variety of mission based tasks and once you complete the main missions you unlock an infinite mode where you can just play and do whatever you want within the job space.

I’m going to need you to come in on Saturday

Office Worker takes a boring job of being a worker in an office cubicle tasked with a variety of mundane tasks in unique interactive ways. Your office space has a computer, printer/copier, file cabinet, coffee maker, trash, doughnuts, and more. In your first day at the office, you move through jobs that include hiring and firing employees, making a presentation, making copies and other office tasks.

During your office work other employees will drop in on you to give you your jobs, see how your day is going, and the memorable employee that was mad at you for firing him. The office cubicle has a lot of interactive things to play with like throwing paper aeroplanes at people, shaking a magic 8 ball and making copies of every object possible on your printer.

What’s Cookin’ Good Lookin’?

As a Gourmet Chef, you will take food orders from patrons and make food items like sandwiches, shakes, cakes, and put out fires. At one point a special guest comes in desiring a song to be played on the boombox as you prepare an engagement meal where you will hide a ring in. There are a lot of interactive elements within your kitchen such as a revolving refrigerator/pantry where you will find cold drinks and dry goods, respectively. The sink, microwave, blender area is also unique in how you can switch between the different kitchen appliances to complete the various meals you need to make.

Robot patrons will walk through the restaurant cheering and jeering your service, completed meals, and timeliness when it comes to your service. Just like in Office Worker you can cause trouble within your kitchen by creating meals made of odd food collaborations like cookies, broccoli, and a slice of bread.

Run a Chop Shop

The Automotive Mechanic drops you into a shop where you are tasked with fixing vehicles for town residents. You interact with the garage door chain to open up the shop and wait for a resident to bring their car or truck in so that you can assess the needs and get to work. The wall in your shop has a lever that allows you to switch between various items like Tires, Fluids, Decorations, and Gifts. You can also paint the vehicles that come into your shop to fix them up for their owners.

You can open up the hood of the vehicles, pour in fluids from off the shelf, replace batteries, and switch out air filters. There are neat interactions like shaking an air filter to clean it out, or placing pine tree air fresheners on the rearview mirror to enhance a cars ‘smell’ and clean it out for the driver. The characters you run into are colourful and have a variety of personalities and desires when it comes to fixing up their autos.

Inconvenient Store Operator

I found the fourth job simulation, the Convenience Store Clerk to be somewhat shallow and also short in terms of the actual gameplay that was asked of me in regards to interacting with the store patrons. There are two areas that can be changed via a dial, such as the fridge, freezer, safe, and snack and a second dial that operates the hot dogs, display case, jump sizing items, and the slushie machine. These added enough difference to the tasks you needed to complete, but ultimately weren’t used to their fullest, in my opinion, in comparison to the other jobs.

The humour is plentiful though from a coworker needing to use a newspaper or magazine because the restroom is out of toilet paper to being held at ‘banana point’ by Bandit Bot that wants all the cheddar from the safe…literally. These interactions are humorous though they fall a little flat. It would have been neat to see the bot characters used more fully in other jobs and neat callbacks to how you do your job location to location, but maybe the nature of Job Simulator doesn’t allow for that in depth crossover.

Fun being silly

The real fun from Job Simulator is completing the tasks in the most insane and creative ways possible. When I watched my daughters play the game they had fun throwing food and items at restaurant goers and office employees and making items jumbo size before handing them off to store patrons. Some interactions were janky, like items on the floor would magically zip up to your hand if you got close to them, which was nice since you don’t really want to be banging into the floor with your Touch Controllers.

Minimum Wage, Grandiose Stage

Job Simulator is surely a game to be played within groups of friends watching each other interact, casting to a tv, tablet, or phone and just plain having fun watching how different people solve different tasks. Some of the work that needs to be done is linear in fashion and the initial ‘mission’ structure does beg to be played through at least once.

After you complete the missions you have the option to play in Overtime mode where your tasks are limitless and you can truly work a 24 hour shift, if you want to. Ultimately though, Job Simulator does seem like a pricier tech demo showcasing interactions in VR and ‘dumb fun’. Your mileage with the game will vary as well as your fun.

Rapid Reviews Rating

You can purchase Job Simulator from the Oculus Store on the following link, https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/3235570703151406