Dungeons & Deadlines
An Epic Game of Work-Life-Balance
Imagine a world where you sell your labour power for less than the value produced by your labour, and your company profits from this surplus value. Welcome to Dungeons & Deadlines, a card game where you have to balance work and life, success and sanity, career and family to survive the probation period. How long will you last? Will you burn out or fade away?
"Acerbic wit and rockin' chiptunes" – Boing Boing
"Sounds like a soul-crushingly awful way to pour salt in your corporate wounds? Don’t worry! There’s cheery polyphonic jingles and quotes from such beloved entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, John McAfee, and Pablo Escobar to encourage you along the way." – AV Club
"Brave The Worst Dungeon Of All" – Popgeeks
Also featured in Nat Torkington's 4 Short Links
Created by ODD PIZZA! (under the moniker Miles Matrix) during an extreme bout of depression as a means to a voice, Dungeons & Deadlines is a satirical look at daily work place horror and the meaningless emptiness of capitalism played out via cards. The aim of the game is to survive the probation period of 62 days – but at what cost?
- Over 40 Work and Life cards respectively
- A dozen Go To Work Early / Later and Work Overtime / Go Home cards respectively
- 5 different outcomes based on your balance – if you survive the probation period
- With an original 5-song chiptune soundtrack by game creator ODD PIZZA! under the moniker Miles Matrix (available on Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp and many more) – including the bonus track "Capitalism Stole My Virginity", a cover of The (International) Noise Conspiracy.
Also playable at textadventures.co.uk where it has garnered over 25k plays!
v1.3.0
Development log
- Update v1.1.0Jan 23, 2020
Comments
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Lasted 24 days before my wife shot me to death in my own house.
I enjoyed the game, the style, and the music but was mostly bored of the game after a short while. I didn't even read most of the cards or other text after about the 8th day. This is probably because I was more focused on the stats being gained or lost rather than the things that were happening.
Ok I love this very much
Thank you!
Cool concept, if a little bleak ;)
I was cruising along for a while until I crashed out (low esteem) at day 42. I found the randomness a little frustrating, as choosing a path that should help with esteem often backfired, but perhaps there's a lesson in that as well.
Sort of reminiscent of Reigns, I'd say. Love the music!
Thank you for your nice words! Appreciate the feedback. I understand the frustration but actually, while not intended as a lesson per se, the randomness and even backfiring is part of the concept, as is the bleakness. But it goes both ways: Some Life cards will "backfire" as well, in that they may increase Esteem. Thanks for giving it a try and 42 days is pretty good!
This game was pretty fun, I loved the adult aspect of it. Also did not expect the coke but 10/10 would play this again. Feel free to check out my video of it below:
So cool, thank you!
This is neat. An interesting approach to gameplay in adulthood. Nice title too.
Checkout my entry for a trip down memory lane.
nanoco.itch.io/smiley
Thank you! Will check out yours!
Amazing, loved the aesthetic and the text. I've found that if I just always get to work on time, never do overtime, and work, you can really glide it out once both esteem and family are hovering around 10. maybe that's the lesson here?
Interesting take! I like this. Thank you for your kind words!
I tried this strategy and was surprised that it works. However, my esteem was always around 3-4 while health and family were at 10 and stress at 1.
This makes a lot of sense in terms of game mechanics actually. Keeping stress low and health as well as family high will ultimately result in low or lower esteem, so your balance checks out. In the case of Tiago R2, I'm guessing they may have started with high esteem, then resorted to your approach. Their esteem couldn't increase, but neither did it decline much either.
I basically came in early every 5 days or something when esteem was low, but mostly arrived on time because I figured "no change" is the best play when so many variables are possible. Especially once I found that there are some really bad luck cards where "working" can give you stress and low health and no positives! but I never worked overtime or on weekends, initially as a role play thing since I'm absolutely against all that irl, but then I never needed to.