Video Game / The Executive

The Executive is an Action Game for iOS devices by Riverman Media LLC in 2015.

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The Executive contains examples of:

• All There in the Manual: The plot. Without the app description, the plot appears to be that you run into hostile clothes-wearing werebeasts on the way to work and you beat them up.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • If attacks are blocked at the correct height, they will be successfully blocked regardless of which direction the player character faces. This is especially useful when there is an enemy on both sides of the player character.
  • If the Shield spell is active, but you would have blocked an enemy successfully if it wasn't; or the Pierce spell is active but you would have hit the enemy successfully without it anyways, you won't lose a use of the respective spell. The uses left only decrement if you would have needed the spell to successfully block or attack.
  • Cash bonuses are awarded for using only physical attacks, only special attacks, or a mix of the two. When fighting the boss of the level's last stage, the game won't take into account what kind of attacks were used, so one does not have to worry about limiting themselves to certain attacks against a very difficult boss enemy.
  • If the player character's SP is insufficient for the special attack you input, he will perform a strong kick in the same direction instead.^note A strong kick is the only kind of special attack you can perform that does not cost SP. Special attacks are the kind that interrupt unblockable attacks.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: The Pierce spell. You are expected to make use of it against some enemies who are always guarding both their top and bottom halves.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: For the majority of the game, the player character is an authority figure (40 stages as manager and 50 as executive, compared to 30 as an intern), and they undoubtedly kick ass.
• Attack Reflector: If the player casts the Reflect spell and block an enemy attack correctly, the enemy's attack will be reflected back at them.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: The player character.
• Blob Monster: The Oozes.
• Circling Birdies: Circling stars indicate that the player character is suffering from the dizzy status effect. Not accompanied by any sound effects.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Red text or numbers indicate a bad outcome. Otherwise, the same color may indicate a good outcome, a neutral outcome, or a bad outcome depending on its context.
  • Numbers that pop up during combat.
    • Flashing grayish-opalescent numbers tell how much damage the enemy took, and that the enemy was weak to that kind of attack.
    • Red numbers tell how much damage the enemy took, and the enemy wasn't weak or resistant to that kind of attack.
    • Grey numbers tell how much damage the enemy took, and the enemy was resistant to that kind of attack.
    • Green numbers tell how much HP the enemy healed.
  • Text that pops up after performing a stunt
    • Red for a complete failure ("MISS")
    • Yellow for barely succeeding ("OK")
    • Gold for doing well ("GOOD")
    • Platinum blue for "PERFECT"
  • Overall stage performance grades
    • Red for F^note You can only get a grade of D in specific category evaluations. Specific category evaluation grades do not get color-coded.
    • Green for C
    • Blue for B
    • Yellow for A and A+
  • When enemies use magical attacks, it is always indicated by blue, whether it is a blue aura or a blue laser. To block magic attacks, you must use the Shield spell, whose icon is blue. In general, any time the player character or an enemy successfully blocks an attack, you will see a blue circle indicating the successful block.
• Cutscene: When the player character watches a vending machine get broken apart in the prologue, when you beat a level and get promoted, and after you beat the last stage of the game.
• Damage Over Time: Some of the player character's kicks can set an enemy on fire, and they'll continue to take damage from the fire after his kick.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Averted. The player character gets in the newspaper for saving the city from werebeasts, and at least part of his promotion to executive has to do with him saving the city for the second time.

The Mayor: u saved us all again!

ill make sure u get that promotion u deserve!

• Equipment-Based Progression: Making yourself more powerful and earning money faster depends almost entirely on buying upgrades. You can sell back every upgrade. The only progress you make that you cannot sell back is the permanent increase to your max HP and SP that you get after a promotion.
• Excuse Plot: The app's description says werebeasts infiltrated your company and you need to save your company and city from their schemes.
• Expressive Health Bar: Not the player character's health bar itself, but the corners of the screen flash red if his health is low enough.
• Gameplay Grading: Grades are given at the end of a stage if you beat it. You will only ever see an F if you failed to beat the stage. You can receive anywhere from D to A+ on individual categories if you beat a stage, but your overall grade for a stage will never be below a C.
• Heroes Fight Barehanded: Downplayed. Out of 8 different attacks the protagonist has, only 2 of them involve weapons.
• Hit Points: Whenever an enemy gets hurt or heals themselves, the number of hit points they lost or gained pops up. The game never shows a numerical value for the player character's health, but he does have a Life Meter.
• Hit Spark: For the player character, enemies, and objects that get broken during stunts. The hit sparks applied to enemies differ based on what attack the player character used.
• Last Chance Hit Point: Applies to the player character.
• Life Meter: The player character's is always present during stages, in the left-hand corner of the screen. The enemies have one displayed under them after they're damaged once.
• Lightning Bruiser: Lots of the boss enemies, and the player character if you buy the right skill upgrades.
• Magic Pants: The werewolf from the opening cutscene. When he transforms, his shoes seem to disappear and his shirt sleeves rip off. The rest of his outfit remains intact.
• Mana: Referred to as SP in this game.
• Mana Meter: Displayed just under the player character's Life Meter.
• Master of All: The player character, if you buy all the skill upgrades.
• Monster Compendium: Referred to as the "Bestiary" in game. It tells you the name of an enemy, its degree of resistance to certain types of attacks, and some flavor text that often gives you tips on how to beat it. Every enemy's information is accessible from the very start of the game. However, to get a picture to accompany the enemy's information, you need to have attempted a stage they appear in.
• Over 100% Completion: Completion percentage is displayed on the upper right-hand side of the stage select screen.
• Percent Damage Attack: The Poison status effect.
• Player Character: The bespectacled guy in the nice suit beating up the werebeasts.
• Regenerating Mana: The player character gains some SP after successfully blocking an enemy's attack, successfully hitting an enemy, or getting a Great or better on stunts.
• Score Screen: If you beat a stage, you're graded on how long it took you to clear the stage, how accurate your attacks were, how accurate your stunts were, what kind of attacks you used (style), and how often you got hit. You are also given a kind of numerical score in how much money you get from each grading category. However, you can buy upgrades for your company, so you might get more money for the exact same level of performance. In this case, looking at the letter grade you got instead might prove helpful.
• Scratch Damage: Even fully upgraded, you will take some token damage from the weakest enemies. It might not be immediately apparent, but walk away from the game when you're about to fight a really weak enemy and come back in a minute or two, and there will be a noticeable change in your health bar.
• Silent Protagonist: Aside from grunts of effort, the player character only speaks in the final cutscene, and three words at that (at least, in the English version of the game).
• Situational Damage Attack: Most attacks in-game depend on what upgrades you bought, the identity of the enemy attacking (or that is being attacked), and resistances to the type of damage being dealt.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: The player character.
• Shows Damage: Numbers show up near an enemy when they are hit. When anyone or anything is hit, they also get a Hit Spark.
• Skill Point Reset: You can sell back both combat and company upgrades at full value in order to shift the player character's build towards fighting or earning money, and how exactly you want them to fight or earn money.
• Skill Scores and Perks: For combat, the skill scores are power, defense, and speed. Perks are the different spells the player character can cast. Employees are essentially the skill scores in moneymaking, and likewise, buildings are essentially skill perks for moneymaking.
• Status Effects:
  • Fire deals damage over time. This is the only status effect the player character can inflict. Fire takes away the same amount of HP per turn. The amount the player character inflicts differs based on the upgrades you bought and the enemy's degree of vulnerability to fire. The amount enemies inflict depends on which enemy it is, and the upgrades you bought.
  • Poison also deals damage over time. It reduces HP by a percentage.
  • "Lockout status" stops the player character from doing anything requiring SP.
  • Dizzy halves the damage the player character deals.
  • Slow makes the player character's attacks slower.
• Stealth Pun: The Werefrog Fencer. Fencing has heavy French influence, and "frog" is a pejorative term for French people.
• Teleport Spam: The Weretigers, who teleport to the other side of the player character after a certain number of successful hits. Especially Weretiger Assassins, who only need one successful hit to teleport.
• Unblockable Attack: When an enemy gets a red glow around them, that's an unblockable attack. Despite the name "unblockable attack," it can be blocked if one blocks while the fully-upgraded shield spell is active. This is a late-game spell, though, so the usual response to these attacks is interrupting them with a strong kick or special attack.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: In the prologue, the player character does nothing but sip coffee as he watches a coworker punch and kick a vending machine, shattering it in a few strikes. Downplayed in that he assumes a fighting stance once the vending machine is completely broken.
• Villain Teleportation: The Weretigers.
• Wall Jump: One of the stunts the player character performs.
• Workplace-Acquired Abilities: Working for a mining company might make someone familiar with fire and silver, two known werewolf deterrents. The protagonist can (and probably will) use a silver spike and fire to fight the werebeasts. While magic might explain this, since setting enemies on fire and transforming an arm into a silver spike takes SP, one could imagine the protagonist had to get the silver from somewhere in the first place, and where better than the mining company they work at (and eventually own)?