Office Chair Curling
Office Chair Curling is one of those Playdate games that I had been following the development of for so long, it almost felt like vaporware. It looked so cool, with its PS1-tier 3D graphics on our favorite little 1-bit black and white handheld. The concept was ridiculous (spin office workers in their chairs and hurl them down the hall toward a target?), and there were some Street Fighter-esque pre-match versus graphics to really ham it up. And it has arrived late enough in the Playdate’s lifecycle to benefit from things like cross-platform online play (does ANY other Playdate game have this?). It released on Steam, too, and you can play with PC gamers directly from your Playdate. That’s wild.
The actual gameplay is pretty straightforward, and if you know the rules of curling or horseshoes or bocce ball, you’ll be able to pick it up immediately. You pick an office worker (each with their own differing stats), and alternate turns vs. a local player, an online player, the CPU, or solo. No alternating solo, obviously, but it’s good for getting the hang of things, and solo mode has its own set of challenges. You aim your targeting reticle down the office hallway, avoiding or colliding with obstacles as you wish, then crank crank crank until you get to the desired speed, then you let go. The chair flies down the hall and you can re-grab the crank to sweep in front of the chair to turn it just a little bit, like aftertouch in Burnout 3. The closer you get to the target at the end of the hall, the more points you get.
Honestly, I did not expect the spin-and-release controls to feel nearly as good as they do. Once I understood the cranking speed that the game expects from me to get my chair to the end of the hall, it was a lot easier to control than it felt on my first few throws. After many games, I still can’t hit the target EVERY time, but then again, neither can the CPU opponent, so I don’t feel so bad. It has a difficulty that feels beatable, and the obstacles on the courses add intrigue to every match.
There is a bracket-style tournament mode, and pass-and-play, and a solo mode where you have a different amount of throws depending on the character you play as (helps you get the feel for which one is your favorite, too, for when you play online). That said, the Playdate (and even the audience of Playdate games on Steam) isn’t huge – I waited online in an open match for quite a while at different times of different days and never got a bite. I’d recommend getting a Discord or Bluesky friend to hop on and play with you if you want to find an online game to test the skills you’ve been honing against the computer.
The only real downside is that it’s a bit… sparse? It has a handful of characters and multiple modes, and there are various obstacles that will appear on the course like wet floor signs and puddles that affect your throw, but every course is a straight line, and there’s little beyond straight curling. It’s kind of a fantastical game; I’d like to see some, like… minigolf types of courses, with twists and turns and moving obstacles. And yes, I know that curling isn’t about twists and turns, but this game sets the office on fire each time there’s a final throw. We can get a little wacky. Didn’t expect to see the F-bomb dropped in a Playdate game, though! That felt a little jarring, and I don’t know if it was needed?
But! It looks cool and is so stylish, and the curling controls feel spot-on and really take advantage of the crank. If you have a friend to play with, or love its vibe, or even have a small interest in the very Minnesotan sport of curling, this will definitely give you some fun times. And the randomness of so many of the levels means that you’ll be able to have an interesting play session anytime you pick it up, no matter which over-the-top office character you relate with the most.
Imagine a game called Office Chair Curling. It’s that, to a T. Silly and fun, goes hard but in some ways could go just a bit harder. But at no point is it not a very worthy purchase, if just to pass around to your family at a 4th of July BBQ and show them what this tiny yellow machine can do.
(Released April 16, 2026, on Catalog, Itch, and Steam. Copy provided by developer.)