Yuppie Psycho: Executive Edition (Switch)

Yuppie Psycho is hoping to steal your Halloween attention on two fronts, adding an enhanced edition on Steam and dropping on the Nintendo Switch in time for some spooky behavior. Is it a terrifying experience or is this game truly shocking? Read on to find out.

Yuppie Psycho: Executive Edition sets out to mock and educate about the evils of Corporate Management and Office works. You’ll be assuming the unremarkable shoes of Brian Pasternack, in this corporate world, Brian is less than a nobody and then one day receives a job offer at Sitra Corp, the biggest and best around!. What could they need with little ol’ Brian? Well, they need him to KILL THE WITCH that has taken control over the company and turned it into a hellish landscape of the macabre, I hope the pay is good!. 

Yuppie Psycho has such a strong narrative and it’s executed in such a unique way giving it somewhat of a “horror-punk” feel like something knocked up from the mind of Swery or Suda themselves. You’ll find the narrative has this quirk of bouncing seamlessly between character and world-building with light-hearted goofiness to blood covering the walls and all kinds of nasty creatures looking for a nice Brian meal.

Graphically Yuppie Psycho nails the sprite look and manages to mix low detail but highly animated with some brilliantly drawn anime-styled cutscenes. The world of Sutra-Corp blends the boringly white world of office space with the darkness and red of blood permeating from horror. 

Lighting effects manage to keep you guessing what is in the dark as you slowly make your way through the various floors of the office. Playful animations for the characters give further insight into them and help set the scene be it a comedy or horror segment.

Yuppie Psycho does not have an audio dub for dialogue so you’ll be going old school on this one and reading!. The ambient sound on the other hand is top notch and really captures the horror aspect of this game well. 

Creeping through the halls, solving puzzles, and avoiding conflict is the key to the gameplay in Yuppie Psycho. This is very much a 2D sprite-based survival horror experience, you won’t be running around gunning down the denizens of hell, what weapons you do have will be purely contextual and very very limited. 

An example of this, very early game you’ll come across mines, now the only way to tackle these mines are by jamming a pencil into them. 

A lot of your time will be spent reading notes to solve the many many puzzles of Sitra-Corp, these gradually build in difficulty but never felt too obscure as long as you explored and looked at the notes for the hints. 

Your health and saves are managed by typical office stuff such as coffee and snacks which you craft along the way. Saves are managed by photocopiers which once loaded with ink are more than happy to copy your soul!. 

The Executive Edition comes with an alternative storyline and additional sections that have been seamlessly added to the main narrative. While the bulk of the DLC comes after a choice and is best saved for a second playthrough, there are several additions to extend the original story which is great for the lucky lot who experienced the game last year on Steam.

The main campaign lasted around 10 hours and the extra DLC easily added 3 or so more. The writing and aesthetic of the game is what brought it to my attention and stuck with me long after the credits rolled. The atmosphere and visual style really made an already interesting idea, bloom into my favourite horror experience of 2020. 

While its Pixel graphics and jarring comedy/horror switching won’t appeal to some, for those who like something a bit different will find themselves utterly enamored in Brian’s quest to KILL THE WITCH, Yuppie Psycho: Executive Edition is an essential horror purchase regardless of your social ranking!.