Ripped Pants at Work

Check out the Steam Page!

Project Length: 10 months
Engine: Unity
Code: C# in Visual Studio
Art: MagicaVoxel, Photoshop
Audio: ProTools
Units: ~4k sold on Steam, ~10.9k downloads on Itch

Ripped Pants at Work is a frantic stealth game about searching for new pants. Players control an ordinary office worker on their first day of work. After an unfortunate incident involving a pencil on the floor and pants that were way too tight, the player must venture out of the office and into the city on a hunt for new pants.

While out in the city, the player can explore a small open world hiding several pairs of pants. Each pair of pants is behind its own “level” of sorts, featuring stealth and navigation challenges. The goal is to get one pair of pants, but players who like a challenge can see how many pairs they can get in the same run and how quickly they can do it.

The city houses many different people going about their business; working, shopping, walking around. If an onlooker sees the player, they get surprised and stare. As onlookers stare, the player gets embarrassed, filling an Embarrassment Meter. The meter fills steadily as long as at least one NPC is watching, but will fill faster based on how many onlookers there are. When the Embarrassment Meter is full, that means Game Over. The player is then able to quickly restart and try getting more pants.

Designing the Speed Boost System

In Ripped Pants at Work, one mechanic the player can utilize in sticky situations is the Speed Boost.

As the Embarrassment Meter fills, the player’s speed becomes BaseSpeed + (EmbarrassmentLevel x 6). When the Embarrassment Meter reaches 80% the Speed Boost automatically kicks in changing the equation to BaseSpeed + (EmbarrassmentLevel x 9).

The Speed Boost turns off if the player manages to hide and the Embarrassment Meter drops below 60%.

Originally, the speed increase was more gradual, without the sudden boost. After testing, I realized that player's weren't noticing the speed increase, and so couldn't utilize it. As a response, I decided to add the sudden and noticable boost.

The Speed Boost has a few uses. The big one is that it gives the player an aid when they’re in a tight spot. When the Embarrassment Meter is close to being full, the game reflects the panic that the player (and player character) might feel and allows them the chance to make a speedy getaway.

The other use is for players who are more experienced. If the player masters the Speed Boost, they can use it as a tool for speedrunning. The player can weave in front of NPCs and into hiding places as a way of feathering the Speed Boost, keeping it active while also ensuring the Embarrassment Meter doesn’t fill entirely. This is difficult to do, but feels very rewarding when done effectively (Seen in Gif above).