For the most part we play video games to escape the stress and boredom that everyday life brings, and because of that they usually have fantastical locales. This is a bit of a shame though, because there’s a lot of charm to be had from a workplace setting. Office hijinks can be fun and silly, and the familiarity for those who have to cope with the daily grind doesn’t have to be miserable. Take Last Man Sitting for example, an office Roguelike where you take on waves of android office equipment from the comfort of your chair on wheels.
When desks and other furnishings come to life, there’s only one thing that these office workers can do: grab some firearms and start shooting. Last Man Sitting is essentially the third-person shooter version of Vampire Survivors, except instead of fighting bats and mummies you’re fighting desks with an attitude. It’s immediately a hell of a lot of fun, with plenty to manage as you play.
In your first run you’ll be handed a minigun to hold back the waves of enemies, and alongside this you’ve got a dash ability to escape sticky situations and a spin attack to deal with crowds more aggressively. There’s a lot of that classic running backwards and shooting madly here, and it feels like a real throwback. There’s more going on than meets the eye though.
Despite being a Roguelike, Last Man Sitting is split into individual stages. Each of these has a different layout, but regardless of this you’ll still need to kill waves of foes and level up. By collecting the orbs the aggressive furnishings drop you’ll level up, and can pick between three different powerups that’ll make you stronger. Some of these are basic power boosts, others will cause spikes to explode out when you spin or turrets to float around you. On the very best runs you’ll find powerups that work well together, evolve them into their final forms, and delete screens of baddies before they even get close to you.
It’s not all just shooting and spinning in Last Man Sitting though, sometimes you’ll have little quests to do. These side objectives tasks you with things like breaking boxes or gathering litter, and reward you with even more power boosts. There are also other events that are less rewarding, like Termination Time which causes a ring of death to close in and forces you to defend yourself in a tiny area.
I had a blast taking on the first few stages of Last Man Sitting, but found myself wanting to shake things up a bit. Thankfully there are different weapons to unlock that do just this, like the ever satisfying shotgun or my personal favourite the katana. You can also unlock different special and ultimate attacks as you progress, and experimenting with the different options until you find your preferred method of destruction is rather enjoyable.
There are also some more incremental upgrades to unlock between office battles, which you can attach to your chair to gain new stats. These come in a selection of different rarities, and the harder the difficulty you complete a stage on the better the reward. It’s a nice way to incentivise taking on tougher challenges, and before you know it you’ll have lots of builds to use for your shooting pleasure.
I had a great time with Last Man Sitting in the early hours, but I have to admit that as time went on it started to lose my attention. Despite different unlocks you ultimately just continue the same shooting and levelling loop, and it starts to get rather repetitive. It’s just not a game that has the same infinite hooks as something like Vampire Survivors or Ball x Pit, and that’s a real shame.
There are also some mechanics that never quite reach their full potential, or require friends to help do so. One of these is the chair grinding, which feels like a fun way to slide around stages but ultimately isn’t really used enough for this lapsed Tony Hawk fan. There’s also a mode centred around PvP where between waves you have to fight it out with your temporary co-op allies, which seems really cool but isn’t accessible without a group of like-minded office drones.
Last Man Sitting has all the makings of a fantastic Roguelike, but a lack of variety and a struggling single-player experience hold it back. This noughties shooting throwback will hit some hard in the nostalgia, but in 2026 there are so many Roguelikes and Survivor games I’d rather spend my precious free time.
