I thought I'd talked about these already, but when looking at all my old stuff I don't see any reference to them in a title. I'm sure I've talked about what I think inside a topic, but I haven't really shared thoughts on them specifically as their own topic, so here we go.
Life Simulators are kind of strange games. As the name suggests, they're about simulating life. I haven't played many, and I'm not sure all that many exist, on the grounds that it's a big undertaking for a not particularly interesting concept. The only two I've played are Cursed and Girl Life, and Cursed was...not for very long. Despite only playing two though, I'm pretty confident in saying that any others out there (I haven't looked, it's not really my thing), and any others that will be made, will exhibit similar features. The two I have played both have a similar hook for their sex angle, which is you were a guy magically turned into a girl by some means or another. It's not exactly an unexpected angle, as it provides a good framing device as to why you have very little, and have to build up a life from nothing, since you're effectively an adult who's just been born into the world. Basically all the sex that comes up is as a sort of side effect of your own choices, and it's very possible to go for ages without getting into any sex at all, if that's your preference.
I played a LOT of Girl Life. I bounced off it several times, but finally I managed to pick up the rhythm of it, and there'd be weeks where I'd play a few hours every night, trying to reach some event I'd read about on the wiki. Long enough to know that I honestly fucking hate this type of game. There's a lot of issues I take with them, but I think they all really boil down to one core complaint. Life is complex as fuck, and thus simulating it is basically impossible. As such, the "life" in a life simulator is a surreal mirror of the world. Events repeat, and conversations happen again and again in identical fashion. That can be forgiven, obviously, it's still just a game. It's the smallest issue I take with it though. The world isn't the world as we know it, but the world as presented by the game's creator, and as such some things become strained. Moral compasses get skewed in favor of making sex more accessible, and people tend to be more uniform in their action. And finally, there's the issue of survival itself. It suffers from the same problem that every game that makes hunger/thirst/sleep things you need, where they're represented as simple numbers, with seemingly no tethering to real life. Girl Life, at least, tracks weight gain too, which makes things worse. The core problem of numbers for food is that it leads to odd eating times. You don't eat at meal times, you eat at the times you're hungry. Sleep behaves oddly too, and I often woke up at 4am and couldn't sleep more. But the BIGGEST problem of all, comes in the form of time management. Moving around the world takes time. This can cause some stupid issues where trips to places can take an amount of time that you simply didn't account for, in a way that would never happen in real life. Add to that the fact times are rather precise. X activity becomes available between 2 and 4. If you arrive at 1:59, you have to leave and come back to make it past 2. Some places have a wait option, but it's not consistent.
So, to sum up the point I was getting at there. They don't really give you LIFE, so much as a strange, game-y equivalent, filled with busy work. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Until you consider that these are, at least in part, porn games. Girl Life is indisputably a porn game, with how many porn images are in it, and how much casual sex you can witness for no reason other than having sex there. With the porn game nature in mind, it starts to just become an obstacle to the porn. And not a challenging obstacle either. I'm all for porn content being placed behind gameplay, but this isn't really that. It's padding to keep you spending more time doing things between the porn.
And all of this is a shame, because I think a life simulator porn game could be quite interesting. But without the busywork. By all means, keep the getting a job loop, hell, even keep in the paying bills angle, those I won't argue with as being essential. But removing the busywork of eating, managing when you sleep, getting ready in the morning, all of that stuff, could be very beneficial to the game. Boil it down to the meaningful choices, random encounters doing your job, pursuing relationships, and generally finding consequences for your actions.
Theorycrafting my ideal game from this idea, I'd want it to start off with a series of choices. What kind of career you have, how you got there (for instance, high performer, just an average performer there, slept your way into the job etc), what kinds of friends you have, if you have a partner, and how serious. So when you start the game, you have a basis from which to grow. And then it plays out similarly to other Life Simulators, with you being in a location, travelling around and interacting with the world, but with the boring stuff streamlined. Getting ready in the morning isn't a chore of remembering everything, you just hit the "Get ready for work" button, and then you're good. Another button press takes you to work, and then maybe an event comes up, maybe it doesn't. You could put your whole week on auto-pilot like that if you wanted, just waiting for something to come up, or you could be taking the initiative. Relationships wouldn't ever be given as numbers, just as a status, "Acquaintance", "Friend" etc. Obviously there'd be numbers involved, but by hiding it it can seem more believable. The only problem with this dream game is the sheer volume of writing that would go into it. It'd probably be a similar amount to how much I dream of having in Shield High. But I think that's the best way it could be done.
Anyway, just some thoughts. Sadly I don't have the time or money to take on such a project, so it's just theory. If I did have the time and money, I'd probably still take on something else. But if someone else wants to step up, there's an idea on how to do it.
Pudding Earl
