Endless Monday: Dreams and Deadlines REVIEW - terrible bosses & tasty burgers
Rhianne Ward
I can’t remember where I heard about this game. I have to assume it crossed my path while I was scrolling Twitter, as I am perpetually cursed to do. I’m glad I did see it though, because Dreams and Deadlines is a real underrated treat that I’ve kinda fell in love with. It’s a short, silly and sweet visual novel about Penny, who has procrastinated an advertising project to the very last second and must try desperately to complete it in just two days. Hijinks ensue as her search for inspiration leads her to the heart of a sinister plot that could endanger the entire world. Wow!
In practice, the act of playing the game is pretty straightforward. Press A to advance text, directional pad to select dialogue, etc etc you’ve played a visual novel before. There’s not an awful lot of choices to be made throughout the story, although getting the true ending does require some light puzzling which, while achievable through trial and error if you weren’t interested in that, made me feel a little smart when I figured out what I was doing, so that’s not nothing. Beyond that, there’s a minigame in your character’s phone called Lumber Lass which is surprisingly addictive and I got unfortunately quite good at, which I’m not proud of given that it’s basically just marginally more engaging cookie clicker. Kinda fucked up, but I guess that’s the point!
What VNs live or die on is generally the quality of their writing and presentation, and Dreams and Deadlines succeeds in both. There’s a certain imperfect quality to the game’s pixel art that I find super charming; surfaces are never straight lines, and character models that feel closer to rough sketches than the super polished portraits you’d typically see in other VNs. The effect is a very endearing one, brimming with a distinctly human-made vibe that you can’t be matched. Every pixel feels deliberately placed, and thus full of personality. Dreams and Deadlines has an aesthetic all its own which I adore, and I wouldn’t want it any other way. As a side note, it also has an absolutely banging soundtrack that never got old. It has a surprising range of tracks to play, and a lot of variation on the same tracks using different tempos or changing the pitch, depending on the situation presented. A lot of effort went into making this game as memorable groovy as possible, and I appreciate it.
The writing is the other variable in the VN equation, and Dreams and Deadlines is wonderful for it. The characters aren’t terribly complex, but they are distinct and incredibly likeable. They each have a unique perspective on the main plot, and a story to inform it, and their presence enriches the main themes of the narrative. Furthermore, their respective relationships to this situation often tangles with the other characters in interesting ways, which makes for some fun drama. They’re not always approachable, and they’ll even seem actively rude to you, but for the most part they all have good, or at understandable, reasons to act and feel the way they do. Despite the often surreal and absurd logic of the reality they live in, they remain very human and their struggles are extremely relatable. They are all a wonderful foil to the awful corporation for whom most of them is working.
I think the overarching vibe Dreams and Deadlines tries to communicate is this understanding of art as something that can only ever be made by humans. Art is born from experience and a desire to capture a perspective or feeling. Machines, namely AI, cannot create art, because machines don’t think, nor do they have opinions other than the ones they are fed by humans. AI can only regurgitate and imitate, and never can it innovate or capture the human experience organically. Art is strange and oftentimes messy, but that’s what makes it so compelling; what makes studying it so enriching. Dreams and Deadlines wants you to know that all art, even something as seemingly vapid as a corporate advertisement, comes from a person with a full life informing the choices they made in conceptualising it.
Ultimately, I don’t have a lot of complex thoughts of Dreams and Deadlines. I beat it in just over 3 hours, and achieved three of its end points, the final being its true ending. I had a really lovely time with it, and I would love to see what developer hcnone manages to cook up next, because this game’s energy is just infectious. I’d really recommend giving this game a go if you’re interested in a pretty relaxed, low stakes experience that’ll fill a free evening. It’s a lovely way to spend your time.
