The Last Worker review: warehouse-sized political rebellion

What if you were the last employee working in a massive warehouse for an Amazon-like megacorporation, competing against robots to keep your job? That’s the initial premise of The Last Worker, in which we play as Kurt (voiced by Olafur Darri Olafsson), a rotund bearded lackey with an uncanny resemblance to Nick Offerman. Our job is to whiz around on a flying machine called a JünglePod, picking up packages and dropping them off in the appropriate chutes. These packages vary in shape, weight and condition, and should be checked for any discrepancies or damages. Damaged or incorrect items can be marked using a labeling machine.

If all this sounds about as exciting as rearranging your sock draw, the gameplay is surprisingly zippy—although clearly not enough to sustain a multi-hour experience. Understanding this, The Last Worker’s writer and director, Jörg Tittel, does a bit of a bait-and-switch: the aforementioned activities essentially form a prologue, establishing Kurt’s daily grind working for the Man—a Jeff Bezos look figure who delivers lame inspirational lines such as “be the kitten that gets the milk, be the sperm that gets the egg.”

Once the game has established the humdrum nature of Kurt’s repetitive existence, the real premise is unveiled, transforming the protagonist into an anti-hero enticed by activists to sabotage the company from the inside. This adds a satirical anti-corporation element and changes the environments as well as the narrative. Our key activist ally, taking the form of a bird-like drone (voiced by Clare-Hope Ashitey), leads Kurt to various unsightly places including an abattoir-like area and junkyard-esque settings deep in the bowels of the building.

The Last Worker cleverly integrates an early tutorial sequence without taking us out of the narrative world. A little bug-eyed flying robot called Skew (Jason Isaacs)—Kurt’s best and only friend—badly glitches, making him default to the “day one” spiel he gives new employees. “Since this is your first day here at Jüngle, I’m here to teach you all the basics,” he says. Kurt rebuffs: “I’ve been here for 25 years, bud.” But the feisty robot won’t or can’t listen and insists that training is mandatory. Kurt grudgingly obliges, and in the subsequent training sequence the game—via Skew’s tutelage—teaches us the necessary maneuvers.

Prior to that, before the game begins, there’s a more explicit context-setting introduction. In VR experiences (although this game was also released in flat screen versions) I usually turn my nose up at bursts of backstory delivered in the form of cutscene-esque presentations on flat screens. But this one I’m quite fond of. It begins surreally, with Kurt opening a small cardboard box containing personal items; the next thing we know we’re inside the box. A short film is projected on the (now massive) cardboard wall before us.

It depicts humans walking in a line like Lemmings, towards a factory that seems to gobble them up, like a scene from Pink Floyd’s The Wall. We see a male (Kurt) and female unite; love is in the air. But a robot comes and selects her, for some unknown purpose, and she leaves. Kurt falls, literally and symbolically, downwards, deep into the building. His heart has been broken, his spirit smashed. He doesn’t walk now: he sits like an invalid on his flying pallet jack, reminiscent of the fat schleps in Pixar’s movie WALL-E.

This pallet jack is a good fit for VR, giving structure to our immediate space and limiting exploration of environments in ways that feel germane to the narrative world. It functions similarly to spaces in mech games and cockpit experiences, juxtaposing a contained environment with vision of the wider reality—implying vastness while stage managing our presence.

As The Last Worker’s story progresses (it lasts about four hours, give or take) we’re afforded some additional abilities, including being able to zap hostile entities using a gun-like weapon. Narratively speaking the stakes get higher, building towards a forked ending in which we’re asked whether to continue towards what felt like an inexorable conclusion, involving rebellion, or take a different path. 

The experience doesn’t quite scale up the way it wants to, doesn’t reach that acme of personal and political consequence that makes you think: holy crap, this is a big decision. But nor does it fall over. The story resonates more as a tale of personal redemption rather than political rebellion.