When a Childhood Game Gets a New Screen
GENERAL SANTOS CITY - The idea behind Langit Lupa: Office Wars is remarkably familiar: stay off the ground while avoiding the player assigned to tag everyone else. General Santos-based NinetySix Studios reimagined that childhood pastime as a multiplayer video game set inside a chaotic office environment. Instead of playground benches, walls, and railings, players navigate desks, office furniture, and other objects while trying to stay away from the tagger. The concept gives an everyday Filipino childhood memory a completely different setting without abandoning the basic game mechanic that makes Langit Lupa recognizable. It is an example of how a simple local experience can become material for contemporary game design.
A GenSan Team Behind the Digital Nostalgia
NinetySix Studios was established in General Santos City in 2024 by Kendrick Villaruel and his wife, Genevieve Miche Villaruel. The studio describes itself as an emerging game-development team focused on multiplayer titles, giving the project a distinctly local origin. The game also received recognition before reaching its wider audience: NinetySix Studios says Langit Lupa: Office Wars won the 2024 DOST Esports Game Development Challenge. That background makes the project particularly interesting for GenSan because its development demonstrates that locally based creators can work on commercially oriented digital entertainment rather than simply consuming games produced elsewhere. The result is a creative project carrying both local roots and Filipino cultural references.
Nostalgia Becomes Part of the Game Design
The project reportedly goes beyond Langit Lupa, incorporating more than 20 classic Filipino childhood games into its broader concept. That approach gives the title a cultural flavor that comes from experiences many Filipino players can immediately recognize. Its appeal is not necessarily about recreating the playground exactly; instead, the developers are taking familiar rules, memories, and social experiences and reshaping them for multiplayer gaming. For General Santos City, the project offers an encouraging example of creative work emerging from the city’s technology community. It also shows how local developers can draw inspiration from ordinary Filipino experiences and turn them into something that can be shared with players beyond the city.
