gobacktowork | My Site 1

GO BACK
TO WORK

Genre: 3D First-Person Walking Simulator

Engine: Unity (using Visual Script)

Role in Team: I was responsible for level design (Level 3), key mechanic proposals, narrative design,

and UI/environment integration.

Click to see the playable page

Game Overview

Go Back to Work is a surreal first-person experience about the emotional weight of modern work culture. You play as an overworked office employee trapped in a dream—but even in dreams, your boss is calling and the doors never really lead to freedom. The only interaction is to open and close doors, making this game about more than exploration—it's about choice, repetition, and helplessness.

Way to play:

Explore the area → Press E to open the door → Find the exit

My Contributions

1. Mechanic Proposal: Minimal Input, Maximum Symbolism

I proposed that the core interaction of the game should be simply: open or close doors. This constraint allowed us to build a game that feels symbolically heavy—one where every “choice” you make seems to lead back to the same place. The mechanic supports the narrative theme of burnout and inescapable labor cycles.

3. Level 3 – Spatial Maze of Meaning

2. Theme Development: Real-World Emotional Anchors

Early in development, our team explored abstract or meme-like directions. I helped push the narrative toward a socially grounded theme: the silent suffering of workers in high-pressure jobs. I collected real-life questions from people struggling with work-life balance, which we embedded into the dream sequences:

“Am I working just to survive?”
“What if I quit and never find anything better?”
“Is there an end to overtime?”
“Will I ever be free from this job?”

These quotes appear throughout the levels, deepening emotional impact and personal reflection.

I fully designed and built Level 3, which represents the player's ultimate loss of control: a looping office space with no escape. My focus was on creating a claustrophobic experience through:

Invisible teleport triggers that disorient the player
Psychological texts that appear mid-hallway (“You can’t leave.” “This is your fate.”)
Surreal transitions and 180 degree camera angle changes (create dreamy feeling)
A false exit that always brings you back, with the only way out being the ESC key, which returns you to the main menu—and there's also a "Go back to work" in the menu.

This reinforces the game's ironic twist: no matter how you try to escape, you're always sent back to work.

4. Menu & UI Symbolism

I also contributed to the visual direction of the title screen.

The "Start Game" button was renamed to “Work” to align with the game’s central theme. The interface reinforces the player’s loss of autonomy from the beginning.