Has that SOVL even with how juvenile it can sometimes be.

This particular game really stood out to me when I saw it on the steam front page since it had that aesthetic and vibe I’m super into, though I’m sure in this current age most adults should be able to painfully relate to being a slave wagie. I’ll be honest though, what I assumed this game was and what I actually experienced was completely different to the point it left some level of disappointment in me. Granted for what it is, it’s still pretty engaging and relatable though painfully juvenile at times.

One thing that got me to buy the game in the first place were those visuals. I love that sort of mix of anime waifus in a pixel style that has MS paint child-like wonder to it. It's a good contrast between the gray mundanity of an office life to the wonders of a spark-eyed employee who still hasn’t been crushed by reality. Surprisingly, the setting of the game isn’t exactly like that with how the story is to be described, Penny doesn’t actually get pressured all that much from work with most of her problems coming internally with her procrastination. And that’s essentially the premise of the game, trying to manage said procrastination to finish the project over the weekend at the office. Aesthetically, I think every part of the presentation really brings that to life which I have to praise the artists for in this endeavor.

This is the part where it starts to lose me though. Although yes it's cool to see Penny’s antiques and monologues of how she should improve herself and all the typical mid-20s adult struggles with, it's a shame that there’s really not much substance to the actual narrative with how it affects her or the people she knows. At most it's the usual shallow attempt of relatability which disappoints me when I guess I wrongly expected for something more insightful. However it does try to be a commentary on a certain topic. I can’t really say how well it's executed without spoilers, but essentially the game is very keen on its anti-AI stance as its true point of the true ending if you do unlock it. The foreshadowing to the twist is actually pretty cool with one of the tasks you have to do and your adventures of wandering around the office slowly building up to it, but the actual climax itself I can only describe as cringey preaching. How they wrote the villain for this climax feels like such a lame strawman argument that just comes off as whoever writing wanted to pat themselves on the back. I get it, capitalism is bad, stolen art sucks and a machine could never replicate the authenticity of a human, but it just feels incredibly childish in how comically evil it's all presented as.

A lot of the other endings sometimes just feel kinda random with trying to reference other media or cliches, but there are some funny ones in there which feels rewarding when you do the steps to accomplish them especially if they relate to other characters. Said characters are easily the strongest part of the game and makes it so fun to interact with. Skye being this ex-coworker your friends with is the closest to anything meaningful about work culture, Hana being this grouchy coworker from the other department is just point-blank in how well they created a character to capture that specific relatable thing one might have in your own workplace, and Miss Whiskey is a pretty cool boss when you learn more about her and in the endings. I can’t say I do care for the more fantasy characters like Penny’s OC or the alien since it just takes out of the experience of what I appreciated out of this game in the first place but i don’t really mind in the long run. Wish the game was a lot longer so we could even see more of them but for now I do like them a lot in how Penny interacts with them.

Of course, a lot of these interactions are how the game plays and I do appreciate its non-linearity in how the game approaches the story. It gives you a lot of freedom to go to other rooms and find out what Penny can do and what she can interact with which helps immerse you in her worklife. Her phone letting you contact other characters is also really fun to use as there’s surprisingly a lot of dialogue that makes just calling people over and over quite interesting. The To-Do list also really helps in accomplishing the projects so it's very unlikely that you’d fail in the first playthrough unless you're looking for other endings. Lumber Lass honestly kinda sucks as a mini-game but it serves its purpose well-enough in the meta-narrative and only gets annoying if you try to 100% the game with all achievements. I’d love to see another game with a similar structure to this, but I also feel like this would shine a lot more as an even bigger scale with more days and more projects to do as finding out how to get that inspiration to start on a file is satisfying and the player feels just as accomplished as Penny when you do get a project drawn.

If you like how the game looks then you should definitely buy and play it, at least for the devs who worked hard on this which is structurally sound for the most part. I do have some issues with its writing and certain characters, but it ultimately doesn’t take away from the mostly good time I had playing this. If the creators ever make another game, I might even buy it on day 1 of its release just because I’m very keen to see their potential from here. The game looks great and plays great if you’re willing to overlook some glaring flaws which I did to 100% complete it. Endless Monday was surprisingly short but satisfying.