Over the weekend, I finished my first desktop gaming PC build, complete with an RTX 3080, a wicked-fast hard drive, and more RGB than is fully necessary. Once I was fully set up, I didn’t push Cyberpunk 2077‘s ray-tracing capabilities to the max. I didn’t delve into the world of overclocking. I didn’t even mine a single Satoshi. Rather, I mined Sit Points in Chair Simulator, a free Steam game that lives up to its name.
Chair Simulator is the latest drop from MSCHF, the viral pranksters known for such memes as the Jesus shoes (and subsequent Satan shoes), Finger on the App, and mounting a paintball gun on a Boston Dynamics Spot robot. The game is silly, senseless, and weirdly enjoyable—an embodiment of that specific sort of slap-happy, late-night sleepover energy.
Everyone has heard of farming and immersive life simulators, but there are tons of strange sim games available on Steam. Goat Simulator and Microsoft Flight Simulator are two of the more well-known options, but players can also simulate obscure, often mundane tasks like building a PC, power washing, and winemaking. Chair Simulator definitely falls into the latter category.
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Don’t Just Sit There
Starting a new game loads hilariously low-poly playable characters to choose from. The names are notable—choose from Dillion Francis, FaZe Jarvis, Corinna Kopf, Mr. Beast, and other MSCHF associates. (I played as Neekolul, who cheerily called me a boomer each time I sat.) Your goal is to sit, earn Sit Points, and purchase all 100 of the chairs. That’s it. That’s your only objective. Part relaxing, part aggravating, this game is exactly as weird as it sounds.
You earn Sit Points (SP) by—you guessed it—sitting. You’ll need to keep an eye on your discomfort meter, though. If it gets too high, you’ll earn points slower. Ignore it for much longer and you’ll die. Permanently. There are no save states. It’s like a lower-stakes Dark Souls.
After sitting and standing and sitting again for more than half an hour of my actual lifespan on this planet, I navigated Neekolul to the only other environment in the game: an IKEA-esque storefront offering labyrinthian showrooms full of chairs. I passed a beanbag (50 SP), a piano bench (200 SP), and dozens of other seating options. Then I stumbled upon the Iron Throne, priced at a whopping 800 SP. I knew what I had to do.
I walked back to my starter folding chair, and I sat, and I stood, and I let my discomfort meter reset, and I sat again. I upgraded to a slightly less uncomfortable chair—an Orgone option worth 450 SP—and started earning points faster. Finally, I accumulated enough to unlock the Iron Throne, and despite the lack of any tangible achievement, taking a seat made me feel like Daenerys. I actually exclaimed, “I got the Iron Throne!” in my living room at 3 AM. Nobody was around to celebrate with me, to care. Nobody was around to witness the madness in my eyes as I decided to complete the rest of my meaningless furniture Pokédex.
I kept sitting and standing, eventually purchasing a costly Eames lounge that earned 6 SP per second. I was on top of the world low-poly world. A quick search lent me a cheat code and I WASD’d my way through the store, purchasing with abandon. After 90 minutes and a near-miss with a lethal chair, I reached the absurd ending. It was funny, but bittersweet. I wanted to keep sitting.
Have Several Seats
Unsurprisingly, there are already YouTube videos of people speedrunning Chair Simulator. It has very positive reviews on Steam, where it’s been trending off and on since it was first available to download. The game’s cheeky item descriptions and bizarre self-awareness made me laugh, but what I found most delightful were the parallels. There’s something unexpectedly funny about spending hours sitting in real life while playing a game where sitting is both the journey and the destination.
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My brother texted me upon seeing my Steam activity. “Louryn, what the heck is ‘Chair Simulator’?” I told him, “it’s exactly what it sounds like.”
Despite the lack of Steam achievements, storyline, depth, and nearly every other hallmark of what makes a game good, I had a ton of fun playing Chair Simulator. Somehow, it’s the perfect distillation of gaming—it’s an obvious waste of time, and it isn’t disguised as anything other than that…which is exactly why it’s worth installing.
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