I must admit, when I was considering buying One Hour One Life, I umm-ed and ahh-ed for a while: would I enjoy this game? What about the multiplayer elements? Still, I decided to go for it and I'm glad I did.

The basic principle of One Hour One Life is pretty simple: you're born as a child of another player and then live your life over the course of 60 years or 60 minutes irl. If you're female, you can also 'give birth' to other players and so continue your lineage. If you're male, you're free from the shackles of parenthood. All the while, your aim is to work with other players to keep your village alive.

Despite it's simply concept, to me, One Hour One Life is a pretty compelling game. As you are just one member of a village, and the tech tree is so complex, your role is essentially that of a little cog in the machine that is your village. You can try your hand at different activities or focus on one to contribute to your village, for example growing crops, raising animals, making clothes and all sorts. There is something satisfying about contributing in your small way to the continued existence of your village, for the greater good. In addition, when your character dies you can view their family tree and any subsequent generations will be added to it when they die. It's nice to see your daughters giving birth to granddaughters and then great granddaughters and so on. My record is giving birth to 27 generations.

Interestingly, there's no way of knowing who the players are behind each character which gives your relationship with them a sort of transitory feel: you just happen to be born and live in the same moment as someone else but there's no way of knowing if you might end up in the same village of them in one of your subsequent lives. This makes any relationship you might form a temporary blip in the history of the world in which the years pass by the minute. This I feel is kind of a metaphor for life I guess, we're all just passing by, forming temporary relationships.

One of the good things about the game is that to paraphrase a certain well known film quote: "One Hour One LIfe is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you're gonna get". In all seriousness though, when you're born, you don't know exactly what your life will be like. Some villages might be quite young, some villages might be quite old and developed, some might be in the midst of a water or food crisis, your village might be attacked by a bear, someone from another village may steal stuff from yours, you may end up going on salvaging trip to an abandoned village, or some other random or unexpected situation, which helps keep the game fresh.

The music is not overpowering, is a gentle, peaceful sort of vibe that I think fits in well with the game. Particularly in the twilight years of your life, and the soft piano reflects that time in your life when you know you're coming to the end of your days, you can reflect upon your life and feel hope for the generation to follow.

The game does however have quite a steep learning curve. Even something as simple as making a pie has a lot of steps which can be a bit daunting for a new player. In my experience though, people are helpful if you let them know you're new or if you ask to be taught how to do or make something. This can be hard when you're a child as initially you can only write one letter at a time, then two letters and so on, but you can still communicate a letter at a time to say you're new.

Also when you're a baby, you're dependant on the care from your mother or other female relative. Even if your mother is neglectful, usually another female relative will look after you but sometimes you can die from lack of care. Which isn't great, but I guess that's another metaphor for the genetic lottery of life.

tldr

+ Compelling gameplay
+ Satisfying feeling of helping to contribute to your village
+ While lives tend to be similar, you never know exactly what you're going to get when you're born
+ Nice music
+ a metaphor for life?

- Steep learning curve and lots of recipes and steps to remember
- You may end up doing the same activities in each life (e.g. farming) which you could see as a negative, but you can always mix it up with different activities
- You do get the odd weird player who seems to think it's some kind of hentai game