Rockstar Life

I really want to like this game. Rock band sims are my jam, and I've been waiting for this game to be released. Alas, I cannot recommend it, not in its current state. This feels like an unfinished game, or an early access one. It needs more depth. It has no tutorial and just throws you in, and feels like there's not much balance in the mechanics. It's difficult to keep your mood up, for example, and not in a "ooh, this is challenging!" fun kind of way. It just feels feels frustrating and repetitive to play. I'd like to see what QOL updates are implemented in the future to really round out the game, because it feels like it has promise. It's just not THERE yet.

[h1]TL;DR[/h1] 9/10: Needs fine-tuning, but [i]Rockstar Life[/i] is an even more enjoyable experience than [i]FTL: Faster Than Light[/i] on the most difficult setting for a game that kicks the player's butt. This is the best casual management game to feature the music industry from any perspective. Can be perfect with fine-tuning. [h1]Overview[/h1] Since nobody is supposed to mention "abandonware" on Steam, then there's a strong likelihood that nobody on Steam has ever heard of an old text-based shareware game called [i]Rockstar[/i]. Now [i]Rockstar[/i] was amazing fun for a text based game, but give [i]Rockstar[/i] some fine-tuning, fitting graphics, and fitting background music, and you have casual management game [i]Rockstar Life[/i]. The player starts a band, writes songs, performs shows, releases music, does drugs, and has all sorts of wild misadventures throughout their career. If the player is lucky, they'll live to tell about their wild life in the music industry. [h1]Graphics and Sound[/h1] While the graphics are far from the graphics of an AAA game, the graphics are an absolute perfect fit for [i]Rockstar Life[/i], be it the player is in their own home (or penthouse), performing in venues of various sizes, or on vacation. And if the player is either drunk and/or high, the graphics have the perfect filter! https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2934566888 The sound is limited to just music, so while ol' Il Pallino is a huge lover of the [i]Rockstar Life[/i] soundtrack and too biased in this case, the varying styles of Rock music does provide an mood-setter for the game. (At least when the player's band is of low and moderate fame.) [h1]Positives and Negatives[/h1] The player may or may not like the fact that concerts have ambiguous geographic locations, and especially if the player preferred [i]Rockstar[/i] which had specific locations to perform in "local" (Scotland), the UK, Europe, and America. Some of the vacation locations have changed, which may or may not bother players of [i]Rockstar[/i]. Fortunately, concert venues of all four sizes have their own graphic, and the size of the audience is reflected in the pictures depending on if the show is good or bad. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2934566899 This game is dang difficult, and that's where the game needs fine-tuning. Unlike [i]Rockstar[/i], the player can't cancel the rest of a tour to check into a rehab center if their drug habit is out of control. Also unlike [i]Rockstar[/i], if one of the meters (excluding marijuana) hits the max, the player dies and the game is over. (In [i]Rockstar[/i], if a drug meter stayed too high for too long, the player is taken to the hospital, and can potentially live if their health is high enough.) One of the problems with the difficulty is that after becoming successful enough, I had to deal with four divorce settlements in one year. I bet that there's billionaires in the Middle East who don't get married that many times in a single year! The game has the right attitude for something involving the Rock music lifestyle. (Especially the Punk Rock lifestyle... Only without any middle fingers.) One thing that [i]Rockstar Life[/i] got right compared to [i]Rockstar[/i], is that the player can now purchase their own band posters, t-shirts, and hoodies similar to [i]Rising Star 2[/i] for a cost. This is especially helpful if the player chooses to play in support of a larger band so they can at least sell merchandise to help make up for the lack of ticket sales. [h1]Conclusion[/h1] If the reader thinks that eight hours is a low amount of playing time to gather enough information to write a review, many more hours were put into playing [i]Rockstar[/i] which plays much like [i]Rockstar Life[/i]. The game is a strong buy for anyone who needs a casual game to play on the side, and can tolerate getting a bit butt-hurt from dying so many times from playing. [h1]The honest word of Il Pallino... OR ELSE![/h1] This review made possible through the generosity, consideration, and contribution of [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/rexcurse]REXCurse (REXnetwork)[/url] and the developer/publisher. Email contact@dnbmedia.co for requests & promotions.

I hope an update comes out and fixes this. The Happiness meter is ridiculous. It currently seems impossible for your career not to end in suicide.

''Your dad invites you to an orgy / Your mom invites you to take acid...'' It's actually very hard for me to decide if I would recommend the game, I don't hate it but I don't love it either. If the game hadn't gotten me hooked on heroin I would have been able to write a really good review, probably the best review I've ever written, and I would have finally become a rock star and had a steady stream of groupies until I'd had all the STDs multiple times. While I get the next shot ready, I can only give you the following advice: Try the demo first, only buy the game on sale but only if you have enough money to buy another game right after. I'll flip a coin now, heads for thumbs up, tails for down and here we go...hmm...lucky you bastard. And now leave me the F alone, I want to enjoy my shot and stop writing stuff about stupid games. Edit (04/14/2025) Since I recently started playing Rock God Tycoon, which I immediately liked much more than Rockstar Life, I wanted to return and clarify a few things because, in my opinion, this simulation really needs a lot of fine-tuning. Or I should say, in its current state, the game falls short and is difficult to recommend. Unfortunately, the negative aspects kinda overshadow the positive features, leaving a lot of room for significant improvement. Of course not everything always has to be super realistic and accurate, but in this game, I had a career with 247 bassists, got sued by 49 ex-wives, became famous 11 times through sex tapes, was publicly dissed by other musicians 866 times, and was repeatedly invited to an orgy by my parents. Instead of these absurd scenarios constantly repeating, so many beautiful moments could have been written. Want some examples? No problem: "Your bandmates want to play video games with you, it was a very fun evening. For your new album, you're looking for a talented artist to create the cover artwork, you couldn't find anyone, so you use a photo of your first tour van. You were gifted a custom guitar, and you're very happy about it..." Give me an hour, and I'll write you 1000 different scenarios that are believable, funny, or absurd. What's currently in the game is simply lacking and should be labeled as inadequate. And then there's the poorly balanced relationship between health and the difficulty level, which makes the game quickly either frustrating or boring. For those who can accept all of that, it might still provide some entertainment for a while.

I played a very similar game back in the 90s. This brings back great memories of simulating being a Rockstar. Great job recreating this!!! Please bare in mind there are some bugs which in time I hope will be resolved - A in-game bug reporter is present.

Played for half an hour without once saying yes to a 'take drugs' event. Died from a drug overdose. Apart from writing, touring and recording, all supplementary aspects are aimed at clawing your meters back from zero; so the whole essence of the game appears to be a click battle against your happiness and health meters. Not for me. The soundtrack is ace though.

Awesome game. Great in games graphics and music. Nice and easy to grasp game mechanic. High value for the price tag. One small decision on tour can change the whole outcome of your band. Allows high replay value since nothing evolves the same way :). Simply loving it. Highly recommended

This game is alright. It can be fun. However once you understand the mechanics you can basically beat the game in no time. Also it's weird to me that you can play gigs and get mad popular (national tours point) without having actually written any songs yet. If you dig band sim games, and we know we don't have that much of them out there, this is a fun couple hours you can spend.

I'm so happy this game came out . I have wanted a windows version of this game for YEARS. Love this game.

Un petit jeu indépendant plein de bonnes idées. La bande son Rock est vraiment sympa !