The Good Life

I genuinely thought this game was going to be a "yeeah, babyy", but it turned out to be a "♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hellhole". My shteemed reader, I’ll let you know that I’m a genuine freak when it comes to my taste in games. I love the metanarratives, the horribleness and the jank. I’m a lover of all that is unpolished and pain inducing. I’m a real masochistic player, the likes Georges Bataille would’ve been. I'm a sick ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ who gets off on ludic suffering. And, let me tell you what, The Good Life is exactly the kind of game that titillates my pain and pleasure receptors, this is why I can’t recommend this game to you. The Good Life is a mix of ideas that are either unfinished, unpolished, forgotten or exist only to spite you. Every design decision seems to have been made with the express purpose of testing new torture mechanisms through play. Stupidly large, complicated and boring fetch quests comprise about 60% of total playtime with the in-betweens of obnoxious catchphrases (like the “yeeeaah, baby”) that made me wish for a bottle of ethanol. Money and items are stupidly difficult to get, some requiring resources that are dependant on RNG and get depleted after you extract them (and have to wait some in-game days to get). The story never seems to make up its mind when it comes to its subject matter and tone. Sometimes it's cosy, other times dark and, somehow, even profound, but its good parts tend to be overshadowed by the stupidness of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sheep-riding music and cringy dialogue. Still, through all the horribleness of this thing, I can't help to find it extremely charming. I can't lie to you; I really liked this hellhole of a game. There’s so much charm and love in this work, the stupid jokes always work on me and the ass gameplay moments make go “oh you” instead of screaming. The game just wants to poke fun at you and make you feel miserable through its mishmash of design decisions, but it does this because... Look, I don’t know, but I just can’t hate it. I can't recommend this game, because I genuinely experienced the worst kinds of boredom and misery, but I also can't tell you to dismiss it. Yes, the game is a janky mess that's not fun to play, but it still manages to capture your heart in that weird way that SWERY seems to always pull off. If you have the time, just play the side-quests until they become boring and rush through the main story. If you want to know more, but the game is asking way too much of your time and patience, search on YouTube for a freak that played through the whole game. I hate this game, I love this game, I want to go home. Anyways, lobstaaaah la vista, babies... I think trepanation is the only solution for me right now. PS: I love the music of this game (except for the sheep music).

Haven't heard a character say "YEAH BABY" this much since Austin Powers

Update (OG below): So I beat the game out of pure spite as I said I would and my thoughts have not changed. There's just so much lost potential with this game. I continue to play a bit cause I'm somewhat of an achievement hunter (insufferable, I know, but I can't help it), but I probably won't stick with the game much longer. The game decided making 100% as miserable as possible to the point it's not something you look back at as an achievement but as a slog. One achievement requires you to spend a year in the game I think? I just passed a month. Another one you need to have a stupid amount of money and if you have read the OG review I did you can see how that's an issue - money is absolutely difficult to make and even when you can have daily methods of making money it's just like 450, and I think the achievement needs 500k earned? Something like that. Hell naw. Other games with grindy achievements I have at least found fun to come back to here and there to chip away at them while multitasking with videos or a podcast or something, but this? It's just not good enough even for that. Hell I platinumed Valkyria Revolution on PS4, the spinoff Valkyria game, out of spite but at least that game while being awful was short and had some redeeming qualities. I just can't get behind this game. The main character, the other NPCs, the mechanics... Nothing had charm and they're all so dislikeable. This is the first Swery game that is truly not a recommend from me. A lot of his games have jank but are enjoyable so I can give a 'hear me out' review to friends. I'll never recommend this game to everyone and if this is someone's first Swery experience that makes me rather sad for them. OG Review: As Swery fan i kept trying to wait, give this game the benefit of the doubt, and give a cautious reccomend rather than a full one. I cannot. This game makes me want to KMS. Don't waste your time. I will keep playing it out of spite at this point, but it sucks full on sucks. I don't expect a game to ever fully hold my hand, I like to learn things and not be forced though a 6 hour tutorial, but this game leaves you in the dark a lot. You'll be scratching your head about making money cause EVERYTHING costs money but you barely make it even through your 'instagram' thing until you learn other ways - and money is needed for everything and not a paltry amount. Other systems such as your health, energy, etc all rely on money and doing certain things and that can truly drag you down too unless you read some guides about it - and I shouldn't need to read a guide from other players that brute forced theirselves through something to be able to play it and teach others. My game bricked at 15 hours in due to a bug with a sheep and in hours of searching online I found 1 solution to the issue while seeing other posts about people experiencing the same issue I was (crashing as soon as they left their home) but not knowing why. I was fortunate enough that it was such a recent thing after seeing that forum post I was able to be like 'OH! I was the sheep!" I found another forum post, just one, where someone fixed it with a hex editor. Didn't work for me cause even that is convoluted AF so I was fortunate that I had some saves on the cloud that were before the error. I lost an hour of game time but whatever. This game is also miserable in travel. Map is huge and while there is 'fast travel' you need to unlock shrines first and then pay money to travel each time which would not be an issue if money weren't such a problem in the game until you learn good ways to make a buck which are not at all told to you. There's just so much more miserable about this game than fun. Stick with Deadly Premonition, game is jank but enjoyable. This one feels like a slog and I hate that so much cause I had looked forward to it for so long and only recently gotten around to it. This is just misery the game. There is so much i could say about the systems, like how it's dumb you cannot just hop between cat and dog form but instead have to return to human first, inert unlit dynamite exploding cause I touched a wall or a cardboardboax (no flames to be seen), and so on but I won't. Just know there are so many missing quality of life mechanics in this game where there is no reason for it, and I say this as someone that has been working in the game industry for over 10 years. I expect a bit of jank with Swery games, but this is just awful and I cannot reccomend.

Majora's Mask, but it's just the sidequests. Obviously, there's a lot of Deadly Premonition in here, too, but mostly the part where you're retrieving Arnold for George, or helping Emily with her cooking. The mystery angle is [i]present,[/i] but it very much takes a backseat to running errands for the quirky townsfolk and trying not to get killed by badgers and foxes in the process. To clarify my Majora's Mask comparison, The Good Life features days of the week, moon phases, a day/night cycle, and NPCs that operate on strict schedules. Depending on these factors, you may only have a short, hours-long window each in-game week to progress some of your quests, and if you miss it? Well, better luck next time, find something else to do. [i]Fortunately,[/i] there's quite a lot else to do. Every time I've run into a dead end on a quest, it's pretty easy to just shift gears and focus on doing something else for a while. Much like Pathologic (a comparison I didn't expect to make), you'll spend a lot of your time raiding trash cans, boxes, bushes, and generally just picking up items off the ground as you go about your business. On this point, I'd like to clarify the frustration some other reviews have expressed around how "grindy" the item gathering and quests are. The upgrades and quests in question are clearly intended to be long-term goals. House and clothing upgrades are [i]significant,[/i] as they drastically improve your quality of life, and understandably, they're [i]meant[/i] to be difficult to acquire. The materials in question will simply accumulate over time if you're diligent, and given that collecting trash is an entire third of the gameplay, I can't imagine why you wouldn't be doing it. While I could see people with a low tolerance for frustration and repetition bouncing off of this pretty quickly, those people probably shouldn't be playing SWERY's games to begin with, as copious jank is simply part of the package. To that end, The Good Life feels very much like a PS2 game, from the clunky combat, bad camera, and awkward controls to the frustratingly inadequate inventory management, poor quest tracking, and long delays between switching animal forms, so... ... [b]be aware, this is absolutely a niche recommendation, this game simply will not be to everyone's tastes, and that's fine. The gameplay here primarily consists of talking to NPCs, picking up trash, and exploring the open world.[/b] I'm going to narrow the criteria for recommendation down a bit more than other reviews and say that if you were very specifically into the side missions and open world of Deadly Premonition, you should check this out. If you feel like you could've enjoyed Majora's Mask doing only the various mask sidequests, with none of the combat or dungeons, I'd also say you should check this out. And of course, if you found some kind of sick thrill in participating in the hobo economy of Pathologic 1/2, you, too, will likely find something to love here.

its Barbie meets deadly premonition meets stardew valley

Numerous disparate disconnected systems, the player has no motivation to engage in them. Empty space, empty time, a hollow mindless experience.

Whatever problem I have with this game can be found in a lot of other reviews, so let's focus on the positives: Despite its shortcomings, after 30+ hours this game somehow makeup for all of that and as the credit rolls, I- an avid lover of cozy life sim/RPGs like the Story of Seasons series, Rune Factory and Stardew Valley- have to begrudgingly admit that this game is one of the most fun and unique cozy life sim I have ever played. The dev created a vibrant, charming English countryside with some quirky, edgy creative spices. I love that I can go into the pubs and order English food/drinks, and learn to cook all of them after a while.. I love that I can challenge the local vicar to a drinking game. I love that there's a homeless violinist who talks with his violin. I love running around the country roads with the open sky all around me. Things I hate, hate, HATE and WANT TO BURN IN A FIRE: -I almost refunded the game solely because of how annoying the protagonist and some side characters was. The writing trope of repeating a catchphrase for comedic effect is one that I hope Japanese game devs never go back to again. I feel like I was playing Pokemon Sword & Shield again, having to listen to Leon talk about his Charizard. -I sincerely believe this game would be more fun if we remove the shapeshifting animation. having to wait 3 secs just to jump a wall, then another 3 sec to turn back to human, and another 3 sec to use another digging ability is just...annoying. -A huge map that doesn't allow you to zoom in, doesn't mark resources for you, or let you mark it yourself. Didn't expect this from a game released in 2021. -Does not warn player about locking out questlines if they progress with the endgame. Sigh. Overall, very fun game that make you frustrated and want to refund, but in the end you will go 'one more side quest and i'll sleep'. Edit: after spending more than 40+ hours in postgame, and reading more into the kickstarter, my conclusion is that the game is a textbook case of wasted potential. Beginning with a fun and unique premise, but was badly implemented, lacking lots of QoL that throw the entire gameplay loop out of balance, and a lot of things in the kickstarter couldn't be added or was modified, and the story don't even have a good payoff. It's still pretty fun to me, but I mourn what it could have been, a British countryside life sim that have a murder mystery theme sounds right up my alley...

I really wanted to like The Good Life. The premise sounded quirky and charming, and at first it gives off that cozy, small-town mystery vibe. But the more I played, the more it started to feel… shallow. The gameplay loop is extremely repetitive. Most of what you do boils down to simple fetch quests, basic errands, and surface-level tasks that never really evolve into anything deeper. There’s no real challenge, no layered mechanics, no sense of meaningful progression. It feels like it’s constantly on the verge of becoming something interesting — and then just doesn’t. The story tries to be quirky and offbeat, but instead of feeling clever, it often feels childish. Characters are exaggerated to the point of being flat, and emotional moments don’t land because nothing has enough depth to make you care. It’s colorful and playful, yes — but in a way that feels designed for children rather than for players looking for substance. Even the mystery elements lack tension. Everything is presented in such a light, low-stakes way that it never truly pulls you in. There’s no emotional weight, no complexity, no real narrative payoff. It’s more like a collection of cute ideas loosely stitched together than a fully realized experience. To be fair, it can be fun in short bursts. It’s easy, silly, and visually charming at times. But overall, it feels shallow — a game that’s pleasant enough for younger players or anyone looking for something extremely light and simple, but disappointing if you were hoping for depth, complexity, or meaningful storytelling. In the end, The Good Life feels less like a rich RPG and more like a children’s sandbox dressed up as one.

This is one of my favorite games! I feel like the atypical gamer who hates any sort of combat or challenge. I hate getting stuck and frustrating tasks that I find in so many games even on story or easy modes. This game is very enjoyable, it's easy and relaxing but I find the world beautiful, the characters interesting. The quests are fun and I like the story!

When you sit there thinking "how many hours do I have to play to feel like I got my money's worth" you know you don't like a game. I looked at this game initially because it had a farming tag on it. The farming is crap. The game is designed to fade out while your character plants the seed. You don't water. You don't tend the plant. Just stumble by any time later and discover you can harvest. No satisfaction at all. I hate fetch quest games. This is a fetch quest game, and the character actually jokes about it over and over in the game. Thanks a lot! The movements/control feels clunky. The 45 thousand ways you have to monitor your character's health, thirst, hunger, stress, stamina drives your anxiety through the roof and chips away at the fun. I like how simple the camera is and taking pics in general. I like the idea of uploading the pics on the fake internet and getting hearts that earn you money, but it is all so nickel and dimed that it also drives you nuts. Someone said you could sell a diamond for good money. I had dollar signs in my eyes (finally a break from the penny grind) until I found out the amount it would sell for. An insult! I don't know if it's in the game somewhere and I missed it, but I don't see where I can click a button and see my debt and how much I've paid on it. I like the idea of working hard in a game and seeing that debt go down. But not the lame amounts of money versus work in this game! I can't possibly recommend this game, and I have to think hard whether I will try to play more to get my money's worth or write it off and find something else.