Whack Your Boss: How to Find All 20 Items (and Why You Need Cleaner)

Whack Your Boss looks like a game you finish in a minute: one room, one boss, click things. Then the clicks stop working, or you are stuck at 14 of 20 with no idea what is left. This guide covers how the game actually behaves, from the title card to the last item, without spoiling every animation.

The title card

The first screen is a memo from The Management. It sells the game as a public service, a place to manage your anger without harming a soul, and it sets the challenge: find all the items with which to whack the boss. The word "nineteen" is crossed out in red and 20 is scrawled above it, and that is the number the score counter uses. The disclaimer points anyone with serious angry thoughts to their overpaid Human Resource person. The big green Play button starts the game.

The room

You get one fixed view of a cubicle, drawn in grey pencil lines. The boss stands on the left with his papers. The worker sits at an L-shaped desk. At the top it says Score: 0 of 20. The objects to try are the ones any office has:

• On the desk: phone, flower pot, coffee mug, pencil cup with scissors, keyboard, monitor, ruler, envelope, a black stapler.
• Under and around it: the briefcase, the computer tower, the drawers, the bin.
• The walls and corners: the coat on its hook, the golf club and ball by the door, the umbrella, the vase at the end of the desk, the cabinets up top.

Not all of those count. Some clicks do nothing, and that is part of the hunt.

The rule nobody tells you: press Cleaner

When an object is one of the twenty, the worker gets up and a short cartoon plays out. Then the game stops. The boss stays on the floor, the red splashes stay on the carpet, and a grey Cleaner button appears near the bottom of the screen. Until you press it, clicks on the room do nothing, so it looks as if the game froze. Press Cleaner and the boss is back at his papers, ready for the next attempt. Your score is kept.

This is the most common reason players think the game is broken halfway through. If nothing reacts, look for Cleaner.

A method for all twenty

1. Take the easy two first. The golf club by the door and the stapler on the desk both count, and they show you how a hit looks.
2. Sweep the desk. Start at the phone on the left and work right: mug, pencils, keyboard, monitor, ruler, stapler. Press Cleaner after every hit.
3. Then the floor. Briefcase, tower, drawers, bin.
4. Then the edges. The coat, the umbrella, the vase, the wall cabinets and the ceiling. Players often miss what sits at the edge of the frame.
5. Write it down. The game tells you how many you have, not which. A list of what already worked saves time at 17, 18 and 19.

The Panic button

Along the bottom of the game are the Doodie.com links (on this site they do not open anything) and, at the right, panic. Press it and the office disappears. In its place is a plain grey page: "10 ways to be more productive around the office", from Set your intention to Brake for your superiors. A small arrow at the bottom leads back to the game. It is a boss key, and a joke about the boss at the same time.

When you are done

Twenty out of twenty is the end of this one. The Classic version has a different set of seven, and the Whack games guide covers the rest of the shelf: an ex, a computer, a cheater and, much darker, a serial killer.