A PSP-based collection of largely unrelated games with a hint of classic gaming flavor and some fun jabs at gaming standards, Work Time Fun was passed up for a US release initially when Sony published it as Baito Hell in Japan (which means Part-Time Hell in a German/Japanese/English play on words). We eventually got it outside of Japan when D3 released it in the US on UMD, and later on the PlayStation Store.
Gameplay consists of selecting one of four available "jobs" (unlocked minigames) and being paid in-game money based on performance. The paychecks can then be spent at the various capsule machines to try to unlock more jobs, trinkets (useless collectibles), and tools, utilities built into the game like a calculator or a ramen timer. The player will also occasionally receive messages providing tips, titles, or just bizarre flavor.
Work Time Fun provides examples of the following tropes:
- Button Mashing: Surprisingly few of the games resort to this, though there are a few exceptions.
- Cosmetic Award: The various trinkets you can get from the capsule machines. Titles also serve this purpose, being akin to achievements.
- Demonic Possession: The child in The Elf King is possessed by a demon. Your goal is to get help before it takes control of him.
- Endless Game: A few of the games (ex. Lumberjack) simply go on until you fail.
- Five-Finger Fillet: In "4 Fingers", you stab between your fingers with an ice pick, earning 1 point per poke.
- Fun with Acronyms: The game's title, obviously.
- Game of Chicken: "Cliff Race 2000" has two moose driving towards the edge of a cliff. You have to brake and stop closer to the edge than your opponent, but if you wait too long, you'll plummet to your doom. Your car also has poor traction, so even if you brake second, you can still lose if your car skids off the cliff.
- Ironic Hell: The game could be considered a case of this for the player.
- Luck-Based Mission: You unlock things via capsule machines. There will almost certainly come a point when you need just a handful of unlocks from a particular rank of machine and it just won't get coughed up.
- Minigame Game
- Nightmare Face: The child in The Elf King can put on some rather ghoulish faces as his health drops.
- Mundane Utility: You can unlock tools from the capsule machines. These are usually vary spartan, such as using your PSP as a flashlight, but the ramen timer stands out for being both functional and consisting of clips of a man or woman in a swimsuit doing calesthenics.
- Press X to Not Die: Wrestling Superstar, Cliff Racer 2000, and several others work on this premise.
- Retraux: Most of the games fall into this category, especially Baseball Superstar.
- Stylistic Suck: Pendemonium is designed to be intentionally dull, consisting of nothing but putting caps on pens.
- Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: The only difference between the male and female chicks in the Chick Sorting minigame is that the female chicks have pink bows on their head and longer eyelashes.
- Unwinnable by Design: Some of the jobs have outrageous target goals, but most of them are ostensibly reachable. The most notable exception is Pendemonium, which has a counter that goes up to 999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999. It would take several magnitudes longer than the universe has existed to reach that score.
