This minimalist thriller locks you in a beige prison of ambient dread, where the main goal is to sneak around your captor’s flat, try not to knock over any furniture, and inch your way, one day at a time, towards a gun someone has inexplicably left in a filing cabinet. Yes, this is Home Alone for depressed adults, minus the fun traps and with roughly the same level of gun safety as a Quentin Tarantino script.
Gaming Heaven
To its credit, the atmosphere is tense. There’s something genuinely unsettling about hearing a door creak when you know you didn’t touch it. The sound design is subtle and clever, and the absence of your captor is more nerve-racking than their presence would’ve been. There’s a grainy, oppressive quiet that sort of makes you feel like you’re being haunted by IKEA.
And the game does respect your time. In just 30 minutes, you’ll experience all the creeping dread of a full psychological horror title without losing your entire evening or your will to live. Small victories.
Gaming Hell
Unfortunately, the puzzles are about as complex as finding your socks in a dimly lit drawer. The whole thing boils down to: “Did I put the key back where the scary invisible man left it?” The map system hand-holds you through what should be moments of white-knuckle paranoia, and there’s no real consequence to failure beyond the emotional toll of realising you’ve spent good money to virtually rifle through a stranger’s cutlery drawer.
Final Judgement
There’s a Gun in the Office is a well-intentioned anxiety simulator disguised as a puzzle game. Moody, yes. Clever in parts, certainly. But mostly it feels like a stress dream wrapped in laminate flooring. Play it if you enjoy second-guessing yourself and fear success.
