The Good Life has been in development for a long time – it failed due to its initial funding campaign in 2017. But after several development pauses, funding attempts, and visual changes, its bumpy development resulted in a bumpy gaming experience. Even so, The Good Life contains funny flashes in the more absurd moments, and its aspects of life are unexpectedly captivating. However, these do not make up for the overall outdated design.
Journalist Naomi Hayward’s goal is clear: pay off an astronomical debt to Morning Bell News by uncovering the secrets beneath the surface of what was once England’s happiest city. At the end of every major quest, part of Naomi’s debt is canceled, which motivated me to delve into the city’s absurdly diverse secrets. On a mission, I crashed a centuries-old party; in another I was digging for secret documents in a secret military base. These surreal assignments put together a plot so exaggerated and playful that I found it hard not to smile, even though I shook my head in disbelief.
However, the writing sometimes crosses the line from wonderfully strange to youthful. City dweller Naomi, for example, takes almost every opportunity to refer to Rainy Woods as a “goddamn hellhole”. The relentless use of this phrase makes the character feel like a scared teenager trying to sound more adult by swearing. There are also some stark narrative hand movements. If you dig even a little into the game’s setup, it crashes. Why does a New York journalist owe a British news agency debt and how did she enter into what is essentially contracted servitude? Questions like these are not addressed in a meaningful way, which disappointed me in accepting the incoherent backstory.
Narrative elements that initially seem important also get this confused treatment. I learned early on that the people of Rainy Woods have mysterious shape-changing abilities associated with the lunar cycle. Confusingly, when I gain my own transformative powers, inexplicably, it works differently than the heavenly influenced townspeople. My abnormal skin lesion becomes another weird plot point that I shouldn’t think too much about. But the talent comes in handy when tracking down smells or climbing buildings to uncover these debt settlement secrets.
The gameplay is puzzling too, as it randomly mixes up genres and mechanics. The good life is a thriller. It’s also a life simulator with collectable resources for preparing meals, making clothes, making potions, and upgrading your home. Sometimes it’s an action game with cute battles, a survival game that challenges you to consume food or starve to death, and a photo game with camera-based challenges to make money. I’ve enjoyed some of these elements, but they don’t build on or support each other very well. For example, at first I was excited to learn different recipes that Naomi collects by buying the same food multiple times in a restaurant. Money can be tight though, so I felt like I had to stop to spend money on more important things, like fixing my camera when it inevitably breaks.
This problem sometimes upsets the story as well. In one case, I was just steps away from the last confrontation on a search, but found I was sleeping dangerously little and had no supplies to keep me awake. This enabled me to either risk exhaustion or cut short my urgent task of getting back to bed. A breakdown from fatigue would stop the sequence anyway and leave me with a small medical bill, so I offered money to a nearby shrine to bring myself back.
Returning home to rest and even save feels shockingly dated, and it’s not the only questionable design choice. The look is nondescript, with stone walls that are completely smooth up close and characters that have no life behind their eyes. Abrupt changes in the music surprised me several times. Sometimes a stroll from a shop to the main city square causes the background music to noticeably wobble. The narrative also played with outdated stereotypes; Naomi, for example, is characterized as a sloppy blonde by characters who sometimes seem unjustified. There isIntrusive walls that line the landscape make it almost impossible to take shortcuts across fields. Fast travel costs hard earned money and can only be initiated from certain areas.
Despite its lack of polish, I enjoyed The Good Life. It has some rough edges, but those can add to its charm, and it’s undeniably entertaining when the story is intentionally silly or when I’ve had time to breathe the world. The Good Life has a heart, even if its features do not always harmonize and its design holds it back.
