Little Lives

I really wanted to like this game. I thought the concept of a single character Sims with grindy mechanics sounded cool, and it still does. But overall, the game feels disjointed and unpolished. Yeah, the game is grindy, which is fine, but it doesn't feel "good." And that's not the money like other people say, but why would I hang out with other people or get married if it just leads to random requests that hinder my character's life? Like, there is no incentive for anything in the social life except to keep you from being depressed. So that part just feels bad; not just unfinished. Going to college and spending a ton of money to get a raise that ended up only being $1/hour was genius, though. I think the money mechanics work exactly as the developer intended and that was great. I loved the grind there. But I feel like other things are taking me away from it like the social mechanics. And again, not for good reason. And I don't think that's a good problem to have. All these systems the game has are cool in theory and separately. They work somewhat as intended, but they all kinda hinder each other. Like, they don't play well together. And there's two main things. 1) There simply isn't enough time in the day to do everything. From travel time to how long it takes to make a Jam sandwich, everything takes longer than it should. And given that you can finish an entire year of college in two weeks, that just doesn't feel balanced in a way that makes sense. I don't think it takes anyone an hour to make a sandwich, that's kinda why they choose to make a sandwich. 2) You don't gain skill diegetically. Surprisingly, it's one of the things the Sims does right. As you express a skill, you get better at it, just like real life. It doesn't require reading a book and nothing else to learn a skill. It requires practice, so reward me for that practice. Let my guy level up when they exercise a skill. Having to take so much time away from the rest of the game to learn a skill any player can learn by just winging it is frustrating. It takes the game away from the things it does well. In all, I really think that this game has potential, but things feel slapped on. Like, at its core as a moreso realistic life sim where money doesn't come easy and you have to balance income with health, social life, and all other things is really cool. But I don't get to interact with all of that stuff because I require 13 hours of sleep every day and any social interaction boils down to giving some one something at the cost of time and money with nothing but the random $100 in a random location in return. It feels so close. Like sooo close. But it feels like the core concept was formed and then all these other things were slapped on top of it to make that core concept harder.

Don't bother you'll thank me later With the rise of games like The Sims, life sims have become more and more popular, and with the rising cost of EA milking gamers for basic things such as adding pets, it's clear it was indie developers' time to shine. Along comes Little Lives. A cute and surprisingly warm entry to the life sim genre, it looks beautiful, easy to understand, and I had some fun with it. People were very vocal about things such as a lack of content, which, of course, was fine because the game at this point was in EARLY ACCESS! However, bizarrely, the devs decided to release the game out of early access, fixing a couple of bugs and adding a GYM, and have left the game entirely—no new additions in months: no cars, apartments, or JOBS! Nothing whatsoever. Now, I understand that devs need time to ''cook,'' but devs also need to be vocal to avoid potentially tanking reviews and being called ''abandonware.'' Since the game has had no updates or dev updates in 3 months, this game was backed, had hyped-up fans ready to play, and so far, all is quiet on the western front with nothing but tumbleweeds from the devs. Again, if this game is still being worked on, this needs to be addressed as I've personally seen games get tanked in reviews because the game has had no updates, only to find out that the devs were on holiday. Nobody cares to check back, leading to permanent negative reviews. Overall, you're better off getting a nice, juicy burger, and you'll get much more satisfaction than paying £11 for a game that may or may not still be worked on. This is a shame, as the devs definitely had something here. Whether it's financial difficulties, strains, lack of employees, and such, it's better to be open and honest than just go dark on people that spent their hard-earned wages on a game only for it to be seemingly abandoned.

I am really on the fence about this game. The first few hours that I played it I really enjoyed it. Exploring the map, random events, and even doing the pyramid scheme questline was very entertaining. Then it turned into a grind-fest. I found myself just doing the same thing again and again trying to max my mechanical and cooking skills for the remaining 2 hours so I can progress up the career ladder. I think the problem is that the game is lacking variety and numbers, especially in regards to late game. There needs to be more content added with learning skills, and not just courses in university/college. Maybe not just mass XP drops after completing education, but some form of skill multipliers; similar way that Project Zomboid did it. More career options, more skills even. Onto another positive- I am very impressed with the map- it is a good strong start, and there are plenty of buildings currently not used for anything, so map content shouldn't be too difficult to add. There also needs to be more variety of random and social events, and over-all just more content in general to keep a player entertained throughout the entire playthrough. Maybe more questlines added as well. At the time of the review, I've played the game for 8 hours but it feels much longer than that. I think this game has a lot of potential as long as development is continued. I would love to see where this game ends up. If I could pick a neutral option, I would, but for now I guess heed caution that this game becomes grindy later on, or at least for now.

[b]Edit:[/b] Added a section about sickness, one of the games debuffs, and the character creation menu. Also some grammatical fixes. Releasing in February 2021 and coming out of Early Access in March 2024, Little Lives has been in development by a solo developer for at least 4 years. Personally I have enjoyed the game, but there is a lot of room for improvement. I'll leave a TL;DR at the end of my review, but if you'd like my full opinions feel free to read on :) [h2]1. Price[/h2] At £10.99, the price point isn't terrible. Some might argue it's a touch high for the current content, but I have clocked 14.6 hours - more than £1/hour - so it feels reasonable to me. [h2]2. Character Creation[/h2] I really enjoy creating my own character in games, but I was sorely disappointed with Little Lives take on this. While there are quite a large amount of scaling options for various features (Weight, height, head size, mouth, eyes, etc.) the character creation menu is very bare. There are some options for skin colour and hair colour, but these are very limited. As for the actual character art style, I don't mind it but it's very basic and I don't believe it will be many people's cups of tea. Some additional options for skin colour, hair colour, hair styles, mouth types, nose types and possibly even default accessories (earrings, necklaces, watches, etc.) - or at least an option to purchase and wear during gameplay - would be nice. [h2]3. Tutorial[/h2] First of all, the tutorial is skippable which is great if you have already played and are starting a new save file. The tutorial and objectives introduce the main game mechanics well and guide you through the early game. There is an in-game guide available if you ever get stuck, which too is useful. [h2]4. Gameplay[/h2] Gameplay is split into [list] [*]Education (Skills) [*]Work [*]Social [*]Home Decoration [/list] [h3]Education (Skills)[/h3] Community College offers affordable early-game skills boosts, with costs increasing as you progress. University provides five different degrees, also boosting skills, and some are crucial for career progression. Skills can also be practised at home (requiring the skill-specific items) or through reading books (purchasable). Skill development is a serious time sink, balancing sleep, working, and skill development all while factoring in lengthy travel times between your apartment/home, university, community college, various shops, and social events. [h3]Work[/h3] There are nine different career paths available, each with unique locations and promotion requirements. Career progression hinges on job performance, days in your current role, reaching specific skill levels, and completing certain degree levels. Early-game is a constant struggle to afford the necessary education (Degrees/Community College Courses/Books/Skill-specific items) fir promotions, and investing significant sums of your cash for minimal wage increases can be frustrating. Skill levelling and career progression is less about difficulty and more about sheer time commitment. [h3]Social[/h3] This is where I was most disappointed in Little Lives. The game uses a card-based social interaction system which provides very dull dialogue and relationship development offers very little reward. While romance and having a child are options, they feel more like chores than anything else. Daily daycare/school runs for your child become tedious. Occasional "treasure spot" side quests offers a monetary reward, but most other social interactions/side quests are pointless and annoying, like driving a neighbour a short distance or going to their apartment to fix their toilet. [h3]Home Decoration[/h3] Decorating your home boosts its stats, which in turn enhances various multipliers for some activities and sleeping. Customising your apartment/home is fun, but very costly early-game. Object placement is limited (one object per tile, excluding floor/wall items on the same tile). There are shelves you can place on walls, but objects cannot be placed on the shelves, which is a bit disappointing. It is a small feature which I have suggested to the developer on Discord. Items are purchased from various shops, which can be a hassle to navigate if you are looking for a specific item. Colour variations are a nice addition, but the item preview spinning makes some items (Such as artwork) annoying/time consuming to look through its variants. Home decoration also boosts social interaction at home, although, as mentioned, this is quite shallow. [h2]5. Sickness (Debuff)[/h2] Occasionally, your character will get sick. While your are sick, all skill progression is minimised, meaning you [b]must[/b] seek medical advice. To cure your sickness, you need to drive to the Hospital and pay a varying amount of money (In my experience it varies around $25-$75) and are given some type of medication to cure you. That is it. This features seems a bit useless, in my opinion. Sickness also seems to happen quite frequently, which causes frustration with having to stop what you're doing, travel to the hospital, pay for the cure, and travel back. Another reviewer thought the way to completely cure sickness would be to live in a higher-tier apartment, but this is not the case. My character currently owns and lives in the most expensive lot of the town and still regularly gets sick. [h2]6. Bugs[/h2] While I have encountered [i]some[/i] bugs, they are not game breaking. They are also not very common. Not much else to say here. [h2]Overall Conclusion / TL;DR[/h2] Little Lives [i]can be[/i] enjoyable, but it has significant room for improvement. For a solo developer, it is impressive, but more features and polish are needed. [b]Would I recommend it?[/b] Sadly, no. I'd suggest keeping an eye on future updates. Perhaps then I may change my recommendation to yes.

This is completely unrealistic and annoying that the furniture and items I don't even use decay. I was not able to ever stop repairing anymore while playing. Every time I was done with any item a new one popped up and allthough I did not even use my computer, because I was too busy with repairs it decayed. I stopped playing this game, because of this really annoying mechanic. What a bad idea to code it like that, it ruins the whole game! You need to understand that this game gives you very few time each day to go working, eat, shower and sleep and if you want to learn any new skill it needs time that you will only have if you don't cook for yourself, don't go shopping in a supermarket before and do not even go meet people for a social life asides. If you then need to constantly also repair the few items in your apartment you will really start hating this game! I am done with it, it is complete garbage! And I never called any game garbage yet!

SAVE Your MONEY!!!!!! The concepts of the game is good. The graphics are ok... pretty, but the constant rain pour starts to get depressing and annoying. GRIND GRIND GRIND for very little return on skills. VERY Little is explained on how to raise a skill, in theory: go to school/university, read a book, practice practice but what to practice isn't stated. need an hour to feed my pet, in why normal world that take.. takes less than 5 minutes to feed it. Make food like a sandwich.. and hour yeah right not happeing. socializing with your "friends" does nada except to keep you from being depressed. Romance/dating is a joke. if you want to romance more than one character you get the "you cheating on me ... how could you" bs. Find another game. If I could refund this one game, I would - but I have to many hours invested in hoping it would get better with more play time ; it only got worse and annoying.

You can keep your shallow cat graphics, because for me this game is twice as much fun as InZOI for about a third of the price. This review is long overdue, but as soon as I played that other game, I knew it was time to come here and sing this one’s praises. Throughout its development, Little Lives has filled out to become a lot less little. Get a job, education, housing, furniture, some drinksmates, and a bang-mate! Comparing this $13 indie gem to a game like The Sims is only fair due to its genre, and still only to a point. It’s not as deep, intimate, or as immersive as The Sims. You don’t come to know your character’s salad-making style and you can’t lock it in a basement to eternally churn out masterpieces of misery. It’s much less of a lawless sandbox, it’s much more zoomed-out, but it’s still a fun life/time/money management game with lots of satisfying life upgrades and progress to be made. Like many games, this game gets better after a couple attempts. Playing more, learning what’s possible, and learning what choices are huge mistakes is quite enjoyable. As previously mentioned, updates throughout development have done a lot to add to the game, and I still feel that I’m finding new things all the time after over 100 hours. There are career paths, skills, investments, dilemmas, dramas, and there are lots of skill checks. I didn’t start out loving the social interaction mini game. It’s a little card game with single-use conversation topics. I wasn’t always stocked with great conversation cards at first, and while I’m not sure if that was something they repaired in updates or if I became better at finding topics, I came to like it quite a lot. I really respect that it feels like a more genuine method of building relationships than the Sims’ way of spamming the same few social interactions, which are somehow universally seen as positive. I like that in Little Lives, people have their likes, their dislikes, and that they feel meaningful. Not everyone will like what you have to say. That’s neat. While we’re talking almost-negatives, the driving could disappear tomorrow and I wouldn’t shed a single tear. I like that drive time matters and that upgrading my car improves drive time. No, I wouldn’t want that stuff taken out. Once I learned about automatic driving, however, I almost never manually did it again. I don’t find it to be a very enjoyable or necessary part of the game beyond the first couple days (sometimes that road money feels like a miracle). With the automatic driving option available, it’s not exactly a bother that manual driving is still there. You are not forced to do it even one time if you don’t want to, so it’s hardly a negative at all. It’s clearly not a AAA game, and it doesn’t have AAA graphics, but the graphics do get the job done just fine and don’t make it any less fun to play. As far as indie life sims go, I think this is one of the greats, as well as a REALLY great bargain. I paid $13 and have so far gotten 100 hours out of it. I’m sure there will be more to come as well, especially since it plays great on my Steam Deck. The care that went into this game was tangible with each new update, and that kind of thing doesn’t go unappreciated in my house. If you like the genre, you’d be doing yourself a disservice to dismiss this one just because it doesn’t wow you with cat fur.

Not a terrible game, but its not a good game either. Not a lot of interaction with the world around you. You cant have children and the ability to socialize with NPCs around the world is very limited, which is very difficult to comprehend when playing a LIFE sim. If you're into life simulators, this is not exactly satisfying. You live to work and buy items.

I was kinda worried when i bought this game, once i started it up right away i thought "oh why did I buy this game?" the character creation isn't the best but once i actually got into the game,. i was like "maybe this won't be so bad" the first time i played it i didn't do to well so I started over, once i knew what I was doing I ended up staying up really late playing the game LoL!. I just wish that after you get married in the game that you could have the option have a baby

This is a fun game, essentially The Sims (somewhere between 2 and 3) with lower-res graphics and much lower price. The tutorial could be better, meaning there's a lot of stuff you'll only find out if you actually read all the tips and F1 help menu (which isn't mentioned). One recent negative review here, for instance, says there's no pause key - try 'P'. Another says "returned because it's impossible to drive" (and one 'minimap is useless') - a) it's not, perhaps it was recently improved, b) press 'space' to switch to overhead view and just click where you want to go. (You can even press '1' to go home and '2' for work). Also note that the mini-games (like matching quotes) can be turned off in the settings. All that said, it can be grindy, just as the sims is. I don't mind that too much because I'm not desperate to achieve anything and can enjoy it as a relaxed game. More seriously, it does crash after a few hours play, so I have to keep saving and, if I remember, exit and reload. Failing to do that can result in a crash so severe my whole PC needs a reboot. Overall, for a better Sims 2, this is a great effort that needs improvement but seems to be getting it.