Minimum Effort
Minimum Effort: Office Sim
Office Simulator Game for iPhone
A satirical workplace strategy game. You get one workday, 480 minutes long, a boss who patrols the floor and colleagues who talk. The goal is not to be good at your job. It is to find the least amount of work that survives.
Free. Optional in app purchases. iOS 17.0 or later.
- 5 career tracks
- 56 ways to spend a workday
- 35 office events
- 10 languages
The loop
Do the work, fake the work, or avoid it
Every one of the 56 things you can do with a workday is priced in three currencies at once. Real work fills the deliverables the boss checks at 17:00. Perceived work fills the impression he carries around. Heat is how interesting you look to a man walking past.
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Real work is the only thing that files the report
Writing the report, building the model, answering real customers. It costs the most minutes and produces the only output the office can verify.
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Theatre buys time and never buys delivery
Sitting in a meeting, sending a pointless status email, reorganising a folder nobody opens. Looking busy can cover at most 40 percent of a shortfall when the deliverables are checked. The rest of the gap stays a gap.
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Repeating an act costs more every time
The fourth bathroom break is not the first bathroom break. Each repeat inside one day multiplies the heat it generates, so the day has to be varied rather than efficient.
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The patrol gives you about two seconds
When the boss walks past in the middle of something, the window to look busy runs from 2.6 seconds down to 1.2 seconds, and it is the short end when you are already hot. A successful save still leaves a trace: he noticed something.
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Nothing you get away with is forgotten cleanly
What the boss saw with his own eyes stays in the file. What somebody told him fades. At the end of a career, the file is read out.
Eight hours. One boss. Whatever you can get away with.
In the game
A drawn office, a real floor plan, and a boss with a route
The office is not a backdrop. Every desk, corridor and coffee machine is a node the boss walks between, and the walls between them are what you hide behind.
Five careers
Every promotion pays more and expects more
Each track is a different game, not a reskin: its own ladder, its own colleagues, its own events and its own ways to be found out. Every rung raises the salary and the daily quota together, which is why getting promoted is easy and staying one rung higher on the same amount of effort is the actual puzzle.
| Track | Difficulty | First rung | Top rung | Quota, first to top | Patrols per day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Corporate | Easy | 52,000 | 148,000 | 80 to 180 | 4 |
| Startup | Chaotic | 55,000 | 175,000 | 85 to 220 | 5 |
| Consulting | Medium | 78,000 | 285,000 | 95 to 240 | 3 |
| Investment banking | Extreme | 98,000 | 480,000 | 110 to 275 | 6 |
| Home office | Medium | 52,000 | 148,000 | 70 to 188 | 0 |
Included
Corporate and Startup. Twenty five rungs exist across all five tracks, from Junior Associate to Director, from Generalist to Almost a Founder.
The two packs
The Career Pack adds Consulting and Investment Banking. The Home Office Pack adds the remote career. One purchase each, neither is a subscription, and either one removes the advertising.
How the promotion trap works, rung by rung
Corporate and Startup are in the free download. Pick one and clock in.
The floor
Colleagues talk, and a rumour only needs two hops
Twenty two colleagues across the five tracks, each with their own trust in you and their own doubts. A rumour grows every time it is retold, and one that has been repeated twice reaches the boss no matter who is holding it. That is why you can be invisible to him all day and still be finished by 17:00.
Five things to do to a person
Have a quick chat, ask them to cover for you, delegate your work, actually help them, or take credit for their work. The last one produces enormous output and they never forget it.
The betrayal market
Everybody on the floor is running their own small fraud. Standing in the right place with a clear line of sight is how you find out. Hold it and they cover for you for free, report it and the boss thinks better of you while the floor thinks worse.
Twelve excuses, and a file
The printer again. Third time today. IT had my machine. Dentist, I did put it in the calendar. Excuses buy you the moment. The file remembers the pattern.
Plainly
What it does and does not do
No account, no server of ours
There is no sign in and nothing to register. Your careers, your record board and your settings are written to a file inside the app's own container on your iPhone. Deleting the app deletes it, and an in-game button erases it without removing the app.
The free version shows advertising
Google's ad kit loads it over the network. Buying either pack removes it permanently. That is the only reason the game touches the internet at all, apart from the purchase itself, which Apple handles.
Total money earned, divided by the hours you actually worked. That is the only score that matters.
Questions
Frequently asked
What kind of game is Minimum Effort?
A satirical workplace strategy game for iPhone. One workday runs from 09:00 to 17:00, which is 480 minutes, and every act you spend those minutes on trades three things against each other: the time it saves you, the output it actually produces, and how conspicuous it makes you.
Is Minimum Effort free?
The game is free to download and the Corporate and Startup careers are included. Two optional in app purchases exist: the Career Pack adds Consulting and Investment Banking, and the Home Office Pack adds the remote career. Both are one time purchases rather than subscriptions, and either one removes the advertising.
Does Minimum Effort show ads?
Yes. The free version shows advertising, which Google's ad kit loads over the network. Buying either the Career Pack or the Home Office Pack removes it permanently.
Does the game need an account or an internet connection?
There is no account and no sign in, and the game talks to no server of ours. Your careers and your record board are written to a file inside the app's own container on your iPhone. The advertising and the App Store purchase do use the network.
Which iPhone do I need?
Any iPhone running iOS 17.0 or later. The download is around 7 MB.
What language is the game in?
All 653 lines of text are fully translated into ten languages: English, German, French, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Japanese, Spanish for Spain, Spanish for Mexico, and Brazilian Portuguese.
How do you win?
The score is total money earned divided by the hours you actually worked. Retiring at the top of a ladder having been paid for years and worked for weeks is the highest form of the game. Being fired ends the career and stays on the record board.
Nothing to sign up for. It is 7 MB and it starts on Monday morning.
More about the game