When I first told people I had this idea for an Office based game centered on Stanley’s character, everybody asked me if pretzels were to be included. Of course! Pretzels are the main collectable items in the game, and in this post I’ll discuss the famous Pretzel Day episode and how it ties into the game. If you haven’t watched it yet, better skip to next post.

***SPOILER ALERT*** The Office S03E05 - Initiation

This episode’s main storyline revolves around Pam taking notes on everything Michael Scott is doing during the day, as per Jan’s request. Michael, of course, procrastinates all day long. At some point, it is announced that the Scraton Business Park will be giving away complimentary free pretzels, to which Stanley reacts immediately.

Episode vs game parallels

While Stanley stands in line for a pretzel, we see his most memorable talking head in the entire series.

I wake up every morning in a bed that’s too small, drive my daughter to a school that’s too expensive, and then I go to work to a job for which I get paid too little. But on pretzel day? Well, I like pretzel day.

– Stanley Hudson

Pretzel Day is such a big deal to Stanley that he puts away his differences with Michael and high fives him when they prevent Phyllis from cutting the line.

Pretzels as collectable items

In Stanley’s Day At The Office, pretzels are the most prominent collectable items. There’s a fixed quantity of pretzels per level, and, as they are collected, they add to the total score. Pretzels are distributed randomly through each level, so every gameplay will be always unique. Sometimes you will be lucky and it will be easy to collect all of them; sometimes it will be impossible to pick up a pretzel without colliding with a co-worker.

When the player picks up all of the pretzels in a certain level, there will be a bonus. As of today, this bonus has not been implemented yet, but it’s already in the backlog for a future improvement.

Episode plot

Michael Scott is not exactly the world’s best boss (despite what his mug says), but he is an excellent salesman. We have seen this before in episodes such as The Client, and in Initiation he comes to show his ability again. Despite Pam’s worries about his lack of productivity through the day, he ends up making a huge sale and everything turns out fine.

The other plots in this episode (Ryan’s initiation, which gives the episode its title, and Karen’s squeaky chair) are also funny. I did not go too much into them because they are not related to Stanley’s Day At The Office, but I’ll finish the post with a reference to Jim and Karen’s little fight over the chair.

Whatever happened to those guys?