Indie Week 14 || Endless Monday: Dreams and Deadlines

„When I grow up, I definitely don’t want a boring office job!“
That might be a sentiment many of us share. I never knew what I want to do with my life. Heck, I still don’t. While looking for an educational workplace, I stumbled into the boring office job, I tried to avoid. Life can be funny like that. 8 years and a burnout later, I switched my job. Maybe I would have stayed if I were visited by aliens, cheered on by my favourite fictional character or had to save the world with a massive rail gun.
Penny is sitting at her desk; on a weekend. Why? Her lack of inspiration resulted in a project getting pushed back until the very end. She has to create 6 advertisement posters for a product she didn’t even got briefed in: The Zinebot 6000.
What a stupid name. Well, a job is a job. Her boss trusts her with the project and she won’t disappoint her. Thus we strive through different office rooms, hoping for a miracle. And a miracle happens. Just when Penny watched the buildings outside of the windows, an alien beams her into their ship. Is the alien friendly or dangerous?
Later on a cold coffee gives her insight into older memories, sort of like a flashback. Next time Penny blinks she is in the adventure of Tiger-Chan, the character of a comic she has been creating in her private time (and at work, but don’t let anyone know!).
The visual novel presents itself in a light soundtrack and hand drawn artwork. The latter is especially important to note as the game tackles a topic many creative people fear. The making of Generative Artificial Intelligence, GenAI for short.
Penny created ads for a machine that will eventually take away her job. Her project is actually just there to prove that a human can never work as efficient as a machine. That a machine doesn’t need vacation or sick days. That it will always work at 100% without writers block or fatigue. It took Penny the whole weekend to create 6 posters, while the Zinebot 6000 creates 200 in few minutes.
The vice president is leading the project and she is confident that Zinebot will do what most people can do. It can replace doctors, engineers, mechanics, writers… but it surely can’t replace leading roles. Her position won’t budge. Her position needs a human. Her position can’t be done by a machine.
I wish all of that was pure fiction, but it’s unfortunately all too real. There are already people who lost their job due to the AI craze. We already have art „created“ by machines, music tracks completely generated by something without a soul, flawed translations done by AI. Can we stop the heartless attack of GenAI in Endless Monday? There is only one way to find out: play this short and charming visual novel!