Chief Emoji Officer is a simulation game from Bodeville that puts you on an unusual challenge. You take on the role of a newly hired employee at a tech startup. You’re tasked with getting to the top, being the titular CEO without getting fired from the job. The challenge is that you must build relationships and navigate office politics with nothing but emojis.

With a compelling decision-driven story, plus a simple yet very corporate appeal, it’s easy to blur the line between the real world and the virtual office in Chief Emoji Officer. It’s on par with Papers, Please.

Get to the top of Redify

Chief Emoji Officer puts you in the shoes of a new hire at a tech startup called Redify. Like most companies at this scale, you get to meet enthusiastic co-workers and visionary leaders. This unique take on the visual novel subgenre will get you interacting with these characters. Of course, your responses can help you progress the story to achieve one of its multiple endings, or get you fired.

To make the experience more immersive, your mission is accomplished in stages. You get promoted to various positions until you reach the top as the Redify CEO. This lets you enjoy the office politics involved in various levels of the organization. As mentioned, your decisions are mostly restricted to different sets of emojis, letting you interpret and see how your responses will affect the game.

For everyone who worked in an office and gossiped with co-workers, this title is definitely relatable. It even has a couple of secrets for players willing to do a rerun of the game. The only issue with a game having this premise is that it lacks a couple of Quality-of-Life (QoL) features that make reruns difficult. You can’t skip previously experienced scenes or skip dialogues with fast-forward options.

An immersive commentary on office life

At its core, Chief Emoji Officer can be considered a satire of the office politics that exist virtually anywhere. Office relationships are just as important as an employee’s professional competency to make progress. Exaggerated for entertainment purposes, players will have to navigate this new labyrinth using only emojis. Despite this seemingly simple premise, though, it has a lot of story elements to uncover plus great replayability value.