Video Game / Accounting

It's the newest craze in accounting! Virtual reality accounting!

HEY! HEY FUCK YOU!

—Tree Ghost

Accounting is a surrealist comedy VR game developed by Crows Crows Crows (a studio headed by William Pugh) and Squanch Games (a studio headed by Justin Roiland, and Tanya Watson.

In it, you play... yourself, a new employee of the Smith & Smitherson accounting firm. After being yelled at by two gentlemen over the phone, you put on a VR headset and attempt to do some VR accounting. Things go rapidly downhill from there. You end up in a scenic forest rather than the accounting world you were supposed to be in. The tranquility is shattered by a very vulgar and very angry tree ghost... thing. He keeps swearing at you for no apparent reason other than "THIS IS MY PLACE". Then the guys call you on a random phone and... Well, if you've ever tried to listen to someone in real life and someone on the phone at the same time, you know how this goes.

From there, it gets weirder and even more insane.

It later received an Updated Re-release for PlayStation 4, named Accounting+.

In severe need of Wiki Magic love. And some bleach for our eyeballs.

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Accounting includes examples of:

• Acquitted Too Late: After you kill the morbidly obese guy in the dungeon, the phone guys show up, having "triangulated your position inside Virtual Reality", and inform you that the guy you just killed was the King of VR. A.K.A. the only guy that could've helped you out of the mess you're currently in.
• Anti-Frustration Features: Appears in the PS4 version.
  • At the very beginning, failing to do the basket shot enough times will eventually make the voice have pity for you and give you the basket-related trophy anyway.
  • To enter the first secret level from the stomach level, you must either find and use a coin... or talk with the door guard enough times that he becomes your friends, allowing you access.
• Boom, Headshot!: This can happen to Ging during the car chase in Plus.
  • The player exits the game entirely by shooting themselves in the head.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: The ritual to summon Satan has a few very simple steps: Do nothing. Pick up the Necronomicon. Pick up the french fry. Pick up the medkit. Eat a literal plate of shit.
• Bureaucracy Simulator: How it's initially presented, but soon things go way, way off the rails.
• The Cameo: Arin Hanson as the Bomb.
• Chewbacca Defense: The first of the public defenders attempts to do this with the judge. It works.
• Clingy Macguffin: Once you pick up Tree Ghost's bomb in the forest fire stage, you can't put it down.
• Cluster F-Bomb: It's pretty rare to hear the F-bomb only get dropped once in a scene.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: The PC version was clearly built for the HTC Vive wands. It can be played with other controllers, but in-game prompts will only display controls for the Vive. This wouldn't be so bad except that the Vive and the Windows Mixed Reality controllers are the only VR controllers that uses track pads instead of control sticks (the Index also has trackpads, albeit smaller ones), meaning that most options in-game are accomplished by holding a stick in a particular direction and clicking down on it.
• Developer's Foresight: The game is developed by the same people who did The Stanley Parable, so this is pretty much a given.
  • If you choose to take your time with finding the VHS tape in the office, the phone guys will grow increasingly aggravated with you, cussing you out at pretty much every opportunity they can.
  • If you choose to throw the VR headset out of reach in the office, the phone guys quickly supply you with another one after giving you a quick warning about how these headsets are expensive, and that they only have two, so for the love of God, don't throw the next one. If you do throw that one, expect to be treated to a brief What the Hell, Hero? rant ending with a Cluster F-Bomb telling you to restart the game.
    • This is averted entirely in the PS4 version, as important items simply respawn in a puff of smoke.
  • In the courtroom, you can throw your Little Public Defender at either the Judge or the Jury, prompting two separate monologues from the Judge for each occurance.
• Disproportionate Retribution: In the PS4 version, you throw a brick at a window. This results in the police chasing the gang and opening fire, attempting to kill all five of you.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The little lawyers' responses to being picked up sound an awful lot like someone backing away from sexual advances.
  • The two-headed bone xylophone makes some... interesting noises if you play on it.
• Driven to Suicide: You, in order to exit whatever level of VR you're in.
• Easter Egg: If you spin the whiteboard at the end enough times rapidly (againist the advice of the writing on it) a face will appear and ramble about how VR Porn would be better if it was made with posable 3D models as opposed to just being a first person movie.
  • Holding a stapler near your ear will cause it to sing a song.
• Establishing Character Moment: The Tree Ghost introduces himself by dropping several Cluster F-Bombs towards the player and telling you not to touch his stuff because "it's important" and "you don't know how to use [them]".
• Evil Is Petty: The gang in the PS4 version claims to be the thoughest of them all, doing stuff like: illegally downloading Garfield, drinking beer, writing graffiti, and reading parodies of porno magazines. They're however shocked if the player throws a brick at a window. Given how the police reacts to it, they had good reason to get shocked.
• Fantastic Arousal: The skeletal xylophone really likes being played.
• For Want Of A Nail: Taking the battery out of the machine in the first layer of VR is what causes the forest fire there.
• Gratuitous Latin: If you complete the level where you summon Satan, you get the achievement "MANDVCARE STERCORE", vulgar latin for "Eat Shit".
• Hollywood Acid: To be fair, it is stomach acid.
  • To elaborate: You have to pour stomach acid onto yourself in order to exit the King of VR's stomach.
• Jerkass: The Tree Ghost.
• Kangaroo Court: Your trial has a fair chance of ending in a spontaneous execution by guillotine.
• Lean and Mean: The character named "The Biggest Fan" is an example of this.
• McDonald's: "Warzorth's Fries" in the level "Warzorth's domain" is a parody of McDonald's. Motto: "Fry or Die".
• Mission Control: The two employees that talk with you over the phone at various parts of the game.
• Motor Mouth: The two guys on the phone, trying to induct you. Also the foul mouthed tree ghost. Also the King of VR. Also the skeletal xylophone.
• Nice Guy: The King of VR. Too bad you have to stab him.
• Off with His Head!: How to exit the second layer of VR.
• Recursive Reality: You put on a VR helmet to play this game, where you find a VR helmet that you're instructed to put on to enter a virtual world. In the virtual world, there's another VR helmet. You end up in a virtual world inside a virtual world inside a virtual world inside...
  • Exaggerated in the PS4 version, thanks to a secret level. In the forest level, you can plant the seed in the pot; when you return in that level from the police chase level, it'll have sprouted an apple that acts as VR goggles. They lead you into the "Biggest Fan" level, where the titular Fan is playing Accounting; you can then take his goggles and put them on yourself, which essentially leads you to restarting the game from the accounting office... aside from the Fan calling you several times in place of your employers.
• Shout-Out: In the PS4 version, there's an achievement for landing a three-pointer with a basketball: "COME ON AND SLAM".
  • To exit the Water Park level, you need to open a cabinet and take one of the pills inside. There's two - one blue, one red.
  • The space level's AI has the appearance of HAL 9000. He also likes Star Trek.
• Surreal Humor: It's Justin Roiland. The game is pretty much made of this.
  • Being trapped in increasingly weird and absurdist levels of "VR"
  • Having a ghost show up out of trees that just keeps telling you to fuck off.
• Take Your Time: In the PS4 version, you can stay in the alley for how long you want: the police won't ever come in. Averted once you come back to the gang after the trial level: if you wait too long to shoot the police, they'll eventually kill the driver, causing the van to crash and shoving you into the next level. This screws you out of an achievement.
• Urban Legend of Zelda: Fans spent weeks trying to find a mysterious "Zoo Level" that the developers mentioned after the game's reveal at TGA. After the addition of the Water Park level, where a Conspiracy Theorist clown explains his wacky theory about how to access the Zoo Level, most people dismissed the whole thing as a prank by a Trolling Creator who knew that a certain subset of gamers would go nuts trying to solve the "mystery".
• Wham Line:
  • After you meet, and murder the King of VR:
    Phone Guy 1: Alright... Good news. We've triangulated your position inside Virtual Reality, and you're literally standing right next to the King of VR.
    Shortly after...
    Phone Guy 1: His heart is a pair of VR goggles, literally!
  • At the end of your trial:
    The Judge: It's time to put it- put- put your whole- life to an end. Here we go. S- uhh... Bring in the guillotine, Michael!
  • In the forest fire level:
    Tree Ghost: You can't throw the bomb, it's- it's the special kind that stays attached to your hand!
• Wham Shot: After dying in the courtroom, you go back to Tree Ghost's forest, where a fire has started to rage out of control.
  • In Plus, after the courtroom scene, you're put directly in the middle of a heated car chase between the Gang and the police.
• What the Hell, Player?: The court scene in a nutshell, when it's not being a Kangaroo Court.
  • Tree Ghost is essentially made of this trope, criticizing the player for invading "[his] place" and eventually destroying it.
  • The PS4 version adds a moment near the end, where one of the guys on the phone will chew you out for every life you ruined during the game.