Capping pens and sorting chicks - let's play Work Time Fun!

Developed by D3 and Sony and originally released in Japan under the name Baito Hell 2000, Work Time Fun is a PSP title that was ported to the PSN in October 2008. WTF is a minigame collection, at heart. You are given a choice of four menial tasks to perform, and awared money with which to buy more mingames, along with tools and useless trinkets.

WTF doesn't have the same narrative structure I'm used to following, but it's a refreshing change of pace. My comrades, Lobst and DemoWeasel, and I will be commenting on this one live and largely unedited, and we'll be playing it at random intervals until the game has been thoroughly exhausted.

CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE: Each video will end at the Job Placement Office, such as the one pictured below, and it will be up to you Tyrants to decide which of the four games listed we play next. First suggestion wins. In the event that your suggestion is a game we've already seen, you are additionally tasked with devising a challenge condition for the game you suggest. We'll figure out what that means as the game progresses.

I am Phenwah, and I'll catch a big fish one day. Let's play Work Time Fun!

That... I'm honestly not sure what that was, but I'm going to keep watching and find out.

Let's go with the bottom right game for next time.

Chick Sorting! Someone's gotta sort out those chickens.

Huh, that game looks...different. Really digging the aesthetic choices though. I'll pick the bottom right one too, just to see what the hell it is.

Are you going to be posting more screenshots or is this going to be mostly video?

I like me some screenshots

I don't think a minigame collection like this would work particularly well in screenshot format. Besides, you know, the unlockable stuff.

Mostly video! This is all coming out of a video feed directly from my PSP, so any images I posted would just be screencaps from that.

An important lesson is learned: jobs have to be started to repopulate the list of available jobs, but filler jobs should not necessarily be completed, or else we'll end up with 25 minutes of unskippable footage and a dwindling list of yet-to-be-experienced jobs to choose from.

Today's video shows off three new games. I actually couldn't tell whether you guys meant the bottom-right game at the end of the first video, which was Pendemonium, or the bottom-right game in the screenshot in the first post, which was also Pendemonium. Besides, Little_Sampson technically beat you all to making a suggestion when he voiced his support in the Claims & Rules thread.

BRING IT.

Chick Sorting looks incredibly mind-numbing.

Hm... how about Lumberjack?

Shinji's pun made me laugh out loud.

I remember hearing about this game, but never learned much of it. As it so happens, I read a couple of academic articles today by Dan Ariely that are perhaps relevant to this thread. Fortunately, he has copies on his website; if you have some time, give them a read. They're not too hard to get into.

“Man’s Search for Meaning: The Case of Legos.”; “Tom Sawyer and the Construction of Value.”

I wonder what happens if you actually manage to cap an undecillion pens. Will the counter roll over to 0, or does it not actually track even close to that many digits? The world may never know...

I don't know. I don't think we saw enough Chick Sorting.

That said, you should be a lumberjack, and that's ok.

I want those ten minutes of my life back, and to see you promise never to sort chicks again.

Lumberjack!

i reviewed this game for egm! i gave it a 4.

Out of?

Outta ten.

Three

It strikes me that, since capsules don't refresh the list, you really should be spending all money as soon as it becomes available to minimize the time spent reshuffling the job list.

We've consistently been playing three new games per update, but we're going to reach a point where we're unlocking longer games with bigger rewards but spaced farther apart. When that happens, I suspect there'll be a lot more write-in challenges for us to fulfill, which should have the added benefit of earning us some cash for new games. Today's video actually ends with a selection of four three games we've already played. I didn't bother reshuffling, and I think I'm okay with that.

Again, the first reply with a challenge condition is the one that actually counts!

Assuming a rate of 2 pens per second, it'd take roughly 158,548,959,918,822,932,521,562,658,549 years of constant play to reach the theoretical maximum (at a rate of about 63,072,000 pens a year). So yeah, the heat death of the universe will probably come first.

Get to 100 on 4 Fingers without stabbing the same location twice on the same pass. This does count the turn points as being part of the fore and back pass.

YESSSS

I love/hate Work Time Fun. It's got such an oddball sense of humor and unusual aesthetic. Chick Sorting is just so surreal, but it gets even crazier. I liked the waitress game, but it got really hard. My best moneymaker was the spore solar jet man moon lander game, oddly enough.

All of the weird incidental voice acting in the game is some of the best too.

We hit a couple of snags in today's video.

First, we tried to play Ready To Order, a game that requires the PSP to be tilted sideways. Unfortunately, YouTube doesn't seem to know what to do with a portrait-oriented video, and rotating just the Ready To Order clip sideways would cut the resolution in half. When we inevitably play Ready To Order, I might just run the video as it's presented and invite viewers to either cock their heads sideways or scrub past it.

Second, we ran out of money and games. My comrades have suggested I grind off-camera until I've gained a few new games, since neither grinding nor vending makes for particularly good video. I'll cap some pens between now and the next video and see how it turns out.

That said, I can at least say today's video has a strong start, thanks to Umbaglo's challenge. Today's video also ends with four games we've seen before, so I'm looking forward to my next task.

I say just play the sideways game already. We can all tilt our heads for a minute or so.

Ooh, I've got a challenge! See if you can cut 50 logs in Lumberjack.

It's hard to come up with proper challenges for such simple games...

I suppose you could strive for epic failure. Like intentionally mis-capping 100 pens in Pendemonium or sorting every chick into the wrong box in Chick Sorting. Purposefully playing poorly is more the Freelance Astronauts' territory, though.

I took my own advice and did a bunch of off-camera grinding, so now we have some cash, which means we have some new jobs. I've actually unlocked all of the Bronze jobs at this point, and as of the end of today's video we'll have shown all but one of them. I'm missing four of the Silver jobs, and I haven't even touched the other vending machines.

Don't limit yourselves strictly to challenges that require me to perform well. For example, trying to chop 20 logs with DemoWeasel yelling into my ear is arguably harder than trying to chop 50 logs on my own time. Just don't ask me to eat a bunch of Saltines or rattle off the names and weaknesses of Dr. Wily's Robot Masters.

I don't think I need to strive for epic failure.

OK.

OK!

Ramen Timer is... much creepier than I thought something like that would be.

Hm... how about playing Karate Superstar next?

Boy, that sure was a thing. Yep.

Dare you to go for the male version, just so we can compare the two for creepiness.

Here's some extra creepy for you, just in case you wanted more: all of the faces in Eye Spy are actually just one half of someone's face with the other side of their face being a mirrored image... except for the eye itself (that remains un-mirrored). The preview image of the cat face there is the easiest to notice this on, since it has the telltale mirror effect right in the middle.

Of course we'll be checking out Karate Superstar next time. As for a new challenge, how about trying to play one of the normal games sideways ala Ready to Order and see how well you do?