Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Y’know that Game of Life, the board game where you have to get a degree, get a job,
get married, hemorrhage money, buy insurance, get mangled in car accidents, and mostly just
try to get the stupid wheel to spin correctly? This isn’t that game. (Thankfully.) No,
this is even weirder. You micromanage your life, down to which club you join at school,
as you progress through your education, maybe get thrown in the slammer... awright, so it’s
largely the same thing, except focused on middle and high school, and significantly
less linear! And occasionally God comes down in a lightning bolt like he really wishes
he’d ended up in ActRaiser just to jaw at you for a while. It’s all the tedium of
a roll-move board game, with the crushing uncertainty of growing up. But hey, at least
you get to pick up chicks at the beach.
Y’know, it’s all about the hair. Seriously, that’s one of the most important aspects
of the game. You never know when you’re going to ask your barber for the usual and
you end up looking like something that just had a horrible haircut happen to it. Sure,
there are other decisions to make, like whether or not to lie to your judo instructor about
why you’re late, or if you want to work in the back at the fast food joint so as to
save yourself the unbearable disgrace of being seen working at a fast food joint... but how
else are you going to restock your cash so you can go take a cooking class? Yes, that’s
actually a thing that happens. It’s one way to boost your stats: intellect, strength,
guts (because every game’s gotta have some sort of guts stat), coolness, morality, kindness,
and inspiration. Oh, and of course, stress. Because what’s life without stress?
If you can stick it out through all six years (at about one month per turn), you’ll eventually
graduate and leave that little chapter of hell behind you. That said, one playthrough
- at a reasonable pace of about a year every 30 to 40 minutes - will take several hours
at a shot. And there’s no way to save your game. Sure, it’s entertaining, as you meet
idol singers and get the crap beaten out of you by dogs and try your best not to puke
on your opponents... oh, damn, well forget about that... but unless you’ve got a particularly
boring stretch of day lined up ahead of you (and no huge, interesting releases on the
horizon like, oh, I don’t know, Ni no Kuni), chances are it’ll be an interesting distraction
at best, and a question of your sanity at worst. It’s an fascinating genre to look
in on - these extra-intricate life-sim games - and one that we don’t really have an analog
to here in the west. Ultimately, though, it’s not a question of who made out with whom on
the roof, it’s about life experience, rather conveniently distilled down into victory points
obtained by winning footraces or being the class safety officer or other seemingly irrelevant
things. All the rest of life just fills the time between. How many points do you have?