Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, that’s why I poop on company time. This statement has become a well-worn mantra of the working man, but a recent indie game challenges its wisdom. Please Leave Me Alone, I Need to Poop is a game about balancing biological needs with the demands of the workplace, but it takes a quick hand at some WarioWare-style minigames to meet both urgent needs.
Please Leave Me Alone, I Need to Poop starts with the player character’s boss calling and giving them notes for an important presentation. Unfortunately, this coincides with the protagonist’s need to take a dump. This introduces a very important question: Do you hear your boss out, thus arriving to the presentation well-prepared and ready to go (in more ways than one, unfortunately)? Or do you hang up and sprint directly toward the can?
In order to make it to the presentation without pooping your entire pants, the player has to navigate some minigames. Cleaning up the toilet seat, poking the eye of local perverts who peer between the cracks in the stall, and smacking co-workers who dare block your path to the bathroom are some of the minigames on the menu.
Image: CoproTech Enterprise Solutions
Just vacating your bowels isn’t enough to win this game — you also have to remember all the important data from your boss’s phone call in order to ace the presentation. If you want to sell everyone on the merits of collecting the town’s baby teeth for your boss’s cool uncle Steve (one of many possible presentation topics), you’ll need to pick the right conversation options.
Please Leave Me Alone, I Need to Poop has Kendrick Reinsch, who worked on Red Dead Redemption 2, voicing the protagonist. Luke Humphrey, who recently worked on Priscilla, brings a certain gravitas to the boss character.
This is one of those games that is incredibly silly, and every single frame or line is stuffed with at least one joke. References to anime, internet culture, and more are included in each playthrough. One run only takes a few minutes, but in order to unlock all the minigames and master all of the presentations, it takes multiple playthroughs. Please Leave is a ridiculous visual novel punctuated by silly minigames, but it also captures the modern struggle of work/life balance in a very evocative way. Is it particularly highbrow? No, absolutely not — but with a title like Please Leave Me Alone, I Need to Poop, it’s unlikely anyone expected that.
