[i]OurLife[/i] is a text based life simulator where the player makes choices from a wealth of options to shape the life of their chosen character.
The game begins in a square windowed mode. The initial window is not ideal on a small laptop screen. There is a full screen option (recommended) along with the windowed one, which can be made full-screen by a double click on the toolbar. Other options include a full range of colour definition, audio settings (I'll revisit this shortly), UI size – the 150% is appreciated for clarity, a choice of four very distinguishable text fonts, and command key assignments.
The sheer range of options facing the player quickly becomes apparent.
A healthy variation of countries of birth to choose from, along with gender (including various non-standard alternatives), sexual orientation, family history, even connections to the occult are there to be considered after choosing your character's full name.
Once started, we get to the base meat of the game.
Your history log is displayed in the centre, sandwiched by action options on the right and personal stats to the left, as seen below:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3727831770
Each of the buttons in the right-hand menu takes you to more in-depth options, as can be seen here. This example is from the “Mind & Body” button:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3727838551
You can select as many options as you like during any gameplay year and be given a brief response as to the effect of that decision (which is also listed in the history log when you don't have one of the action options in operation) prior to selecting the Age Up +1 button to reach your character's next birthday. Some choices will impact your stats on the left, for example exercising will improve both health and looks, study will improve intelligence, and so on.
Upon completing a year, usually there will be between 1 and 3 events for you to respond to, as seen here, before returning to the same gameplay loop of selecting your actions for the following year:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3727831948
As per other decisions, selecting one of these options will provide a brief summary of the result, and may have a small overall impact upon your character's life. I'm fairly sure that your karma stat can be affected, although I struggled to spot any other impact of these moments.
[h1]Positives[/h1]
The sheer amount of available life options when you start digging down to submenus and then sub-submenus, is quite staggering. From royal lineage to a life of criminality, comfortable Western opportunity to difficult middle-Eastern military upbringing, the choice is yours.
The optional colour themes help, and while “Baby Girl Pink” may not be to everybody's tastes, it certainly provides a very reader-friendly colour display. And anyway, pink is cool! Deal with it.
[h1]Negatives[/h1]
The game sometimes momentarily freezes, but after a few seconds, it carries on. I should emphasise that it never crashed, but does suffer brief progress delays from time to time.
The store page gameplay video is accompanied by a musical score. There are sound options within the settings, but despite setting them all to high, I had silence throughout all of my play sessions. I do not know if there is something special which needs to be done to acquire sound in-game, and there is no instruction to aid the user to this end. I have raised this point to the developer.
[h1]Experience[/h1]
As someone generally without much free time to play games, it is notable that in the first 24 hours after installing, I clocked over 6 in-game. This clearly shows a level of addictiveness in bringing your character through their early and formative years as you get to shape their life to come.
However, once I reached early-30's, I'd done the hard work. My character had come through the care system and a mental health crisis to be a strong independent woman with a high paying job and internet fame as a beauty influencer.. and every year after achieving these goals simply felt the same. I aged a year, selected the same internet, health and fitness actions, spent time with husband, daughter and a friend or two, rinsed, and repeated. It got old. Admittedly, there are [i]many[/i] unused life options from my play through which could have significantly prolonged interest in the one life, but doing so would also remove the interest of those for any different replays where the character has a completely conflicting lifestyle.
[h1]Further development opportunity[/h1]
I did feel that some further balancing and expansion of interactivity could enhance a player's enjoyment of the game after their character's first couple of decades.
• Within the control settings are a number of shortcut buttons. Unsure what these were for, I tried them in game and discovered that they correspond to the action category menu on the right of the screen, with 1 selecting Health, 2 for Mind & Body, and so on. Which, effectively, renders them as alternatives to mouse clicking, and not actually a short cut at all. Such key usage would be far more useful if the player could define its purpose rather than just assigning the keys.
- for example, in my character's life, I trained her to play the violin. If I could have redefined one key to automatically action the command sequence to [i]Body & Mind – Arts – Violin[/i], then [b]that[/b] would have been a useful shortcut.
• After meeting my husband and dropping contraception, I got pregnant immediately, but throughout the game, I could never get naturally pregnant again. With a character suffering no fertility issues, this felt off. I also lost the first 3 pregnancies, which also felt extreme and left me frustrated with the game.
• Game responses to actions are uniformly brief and the same every time. What you see in the life summary log is exactly what you see initially. Added detail and some variety to these responses would help significantly.
• [i]Everything[/i] which happens in the game is in response to decisions you take. All non-player-characters, and what happens through the life itself, is exclusively reactive. Want to retain a friendship? It's 100% on you. Nobody else will ever be proactive, and nothing will randomly happen to make things more interesting. There is a huge opportunity to improve user experience here. Throw in some surprises, make the player respond for a change.
• The annual events all come at once after ageing, give very curt responses, and don't impact anything throughout the year. These could be so much better if they arrived as one-off events at random times which actually affect the player character's life.
• Relationship interactions don't take sufficient account of who you spend time with. I had time with my one year old daughter, to be told that we discussed old times and laughed. [i]Really[/i]?
[h1]Verdict[/h1]
Despite the need to address some little issues and the wide open space in which to develop the game further, [i]OurLife[/i] still successfully provides a decent immersive experience at a very low cost. For the price, the game is comfortably fair value, and if you're willing to play through several times over with wildly different characters, then it will likely become very good value indeed.
If it is within the talents and scope of the solo developer to push the current boundaries of this game, and to make responses to actions more rewarding, this could evolve from an engaging curio to a positively enticing “other life” experience.
Otome Lovers wishes to thank [i]WaveyGaming Productions[/i] for providing a free review copy for this game.
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