The first couple of hours were fun, learning the mechanics and deciding on my Sims direction in life. But as with many of these minimalist life-sims it quickly turns into a mindless grind fest.

You spend most of your time studying and working, then the rest of your time eating and sleeping. Once I graduated from university I hoped things would become more interesting but even once I had more time and money available to me, there wasn't anything I really wanted to do with it. The social system is non-existent; you can't spend time with your friends, you just slowly gain friendship points with them over time. Engaging in your hobbies gives you happiness points but after a few years I already had more of those than I knew what to do with. I could buy a bigger house or a fancy car but I didn't really see the point. In real life people feel massively compelled to aim for these materialistic goals but I don't think the game did a good job of incentivising you to care. I liked the idea of having kids (who I would need to provide for) but the social system was so grindy and bland that I lost interest.

The game is also sorely lacking any kind of random events that keep you on your toes. These could make the world feel more lived in and make you encouraging you to change the way you are playing. E.g. you have a new boss at work and they are horrible so you enjoy work less - incentivising you to get a new job. There is a special event on at the university this month only - incentivising you to change up your routine to make time for this, etc.

The game has an interesting autoplay mechanic where your character will choose what to do themselves. You can set certain activities as higher priority to manipulate this, e.g. your character would always rather eat pizza and play video games so you have to set work as high priority to override this. My character would go to work first but then come home to fulfil their needs even though they were only half way down - it seemed much more efficient to do two shifts at work and then rest but when I set fulfilling needs as low priority they would just ignore their needs. The system needs a lot more customisation to be useful in my opinion - but even then when it works well you are just reminded of how shallow the game is when you can just keep it on a fast-forward loop for ages.

I definitely wouldn't recommend the game at the moment but it has a solid foundation so I'm keen to see it develop.

Spent $200 ordering Pizza and now I have high blood pressure.

Similar to what happened in this game. 10/10

Fun and relaxing game, perfect to wind down with after work