You awake to the sound of your phone ringing. You open your eyes, looking at the grey ceiling from your filthy bed. You get up, go down, and just miss picking up the phone before the call goes to voicemail.
You don’t remember ever owning a phone.
You play the voicemail. It congratulates you! The company has reviewed your application (which you don’t remember sending, by the way) and has decided to sign you on for the position of producer. A new job awaits you!
Despite all the strangeness, you resolve to go get this job. After finding your car keys, you go down the kitchen window and find your car. You shoo away the flies from your house, freeing them from the prison that is your house. You consider the compost, organic waste left to rot beside your house. You open your car and play your favorite track on the tapedeck. Turning the key into ignition, you drive away, leaving your house, the compost, and the large meaty mass that is your landlord sleeping by your door.
You are Toto Hammersmith. And you are about to become…
I discovered this game on Twitter. Someone from my feed retweeted that the music was made by ThorHighHeels, who also made the music for Umurangi Generation. And the music of that game was BOPPIN’, so I thought to get this game as well during a sale!
What’s it about? PRODUCER 2021 is a game about enthusiasm, productivity, and the end of it all. It is a dystopian visual novel with masses of meat replacing computers, people scrambling about trying to save the world, and you, the new producer, trying to make sense of everything. Just like me, who is now trying to make sense of this game! Let’s review.
STYLE (Gameplay, Graphics, Music)
The game is presented as a visual novel. Relevant graphics are displayed on the main screen. You click through dialogue and choose options to progress. Each dialogue line you read gives you one (1) experience point (EXP). A few actions require you to be of a certain level to do them. There’s a text log to the side of the screen that shows you previous text you’ve read up to a certain point in case you missed something, and you can adjust its visibility in the settings, as by default it’s rather faint. I don’t really have much comment on this system as it… really isn’t anything revolutionary. It is a serviceable way to show a visual novel: just some text and art. The game does do a few cute things with it though, in my opinion, but not really enough for me to treat it as notable.
The art is… I’d describe it as a JPEG collage that has too many artifacts. That’s not a criticism, mind you, it definitely is a deliberate style choice. I think it strangely works. But it does feel strange looking at the characters, not quite knowing where they start and where they end. It makes the game feel like a fever dream, gives it this strange… urgency? Like it tries to throw itself at you but fails because you can’t see it over the world ending.
The music is very good. Going into the car and listening to “Hoshino,” it felt like I’m about to explore a new chapter. Hearing “Makoro Plants” in the Factories area felt industrial and oppressive, as if you are slogging through the smokey pipe-laden grounds with the sun’s heat bearing down on you. A lot of the other music is also pretty good! If you want to listen, the whole game OST is on Spotify :)
Some concerns I do have though is that the game interface itself is not really ideal. I tried to play this game in windowed mode but it reverted to full screen midway. When I exit the game to the menu, my settings revert to the default, which means the in-game volume would suddenly increase. These are small QoL things that didn’t really hamper my enjoyment of the game, but I nonetheless think that I should state their existence for your awareness.
I think the overall style of the game is very love-it-or-hate-it. While the art is interesting in the context of the game, it isn’t really good enough to hold my interest. And while the music is cool, you wouldn’t really buy a visual novel for its music. You buy one for its story!
SUBSTANCE (Story, Characters, Impact)
PRODUCER 2021 is a dystopian visual novel and it wants you to know that. Its humor is sardonic. Its environments are oppressive. The sky is a permanent overcast red. There is barely anyone in the world aside from you and a few stragglers. And yet here you are, attempting to produce something that will stave off the world’s end.
You are to save the world with the promise of “Tubularity,” whatever that means. It’s an end-goal of sorts, believed to be unachievable. And yet someone has made an effort to commission freelancers to seek this ideal. They each have prototypes to present. And you are to pick them up.
This game has a lot of commentary. It talks about productivity, the creative process, and the state of the world. The way it doles out this commentary is rather heavy handed sometimes, in my opinion. Nonetheless, I still enjoyed the story and its humor. The rather pointed way it discusses EXP is pretty funny, I have to admit.
The world is very desolate. You can feel it in the art. And yet, the game still manages to find moments of sardonic levity throughout. A foreboding slab of meat is at your door, slowly waking up. It turns out to be a scary presence, not because of its nature being a sentient slab of meat, but because this is your landlord who has come to evict you! Reality is scarier than any monster we can make up.
I enjoyed the story and discussions that this game put forth. I think I like the anger that this game wears on its sleeve. I like that the different endings of this game made me think about the creative process and the sacrifices involved in the art of production. And I like that it gave me a new perspective on compost.
VERDICT
PRODUCER 2021 is definitely an interesting visual novel. A playthrough is roughly 2 hours, which is short and sweet. I ended up doing three just to explore all the options! Despite this though, I’m not sure I can wholeheartedly recommend this as it feels VERY experimental. I’m not a person who has played a lot of visual novels but it still doesn’t feel like your typical visual novel experience I think. I nonetheless recommend it if you’re looking for something refreshing story-wise. If nothing else, play it for the sick beats!!!
Door Rates PRODUCER 2021: 3.5/5!