Introduction
The Good Life is a new game by SWERY and Yukio Futatsugi. It was developed by White Owls and G-rounding. It was also self published and released in October 2021.
Review
Can you imagine if you had 30 Million Pounds of debt? Well for Naomi Hayward this is life. She works for Morning Bell News, and is sent to Rainy Woods, a small town in Britain, that’s so cute off from society, that everyone knows everyone. There’s a secret here that Morning Bell wants, and it’s Naomi’s job to figure it out. If not? That 30 Million £ debt will never go away!
The story starts off all witty and cute, until before you know it, there’s been a grizzly murder! This kicks off what would be a high octane journalist adventure! Except what we got instead was a full and boring snore fest. Half of the game is voiced, while the other half, while the text is scrolling on the screen, the characters seem to say their “catchphrase”. The amount of times I heard Naomi say “Goddamn Hellhole!” when referring to the town was more than I think I’ve ever said in my life. Or she’d say “Yea baby!!!!”. Along with those annoying two word sentences, you had the arch enemy of Naomi, Daniel, say “LOBSTAHHHH!” so many times I wanted to drown him in a tank of lobsters.
My biggest issue with the game is that it goes from murder mystery to something else just like that. To the point where nothing is even properly concluded. So throughout the story, you look into three big clues that you found at the crime scene. These play out into the most ridiculous stories, but by the end of the game, it’s all just forgotten. Why care about a grizzly murder, when people are now trying to get money from people by commiting fraud basically! By the time the credits rolled, I was asking myself questions that the game never bothered to answer. Hell it tries to give you a weird payoff with zero explanation! It’s like halfway through the writing process, someone decided to try some psychedelics, then write something that didn’t fit, but they stuck it into the game anyways. Then it just ended abruptly!
The game itself is such a lackluster experience as well. As everything is just a fetch quests of bullshit. Oh sure you get to transform into a cat or dog at the touch of a button, and ride a sheep, which is admittedly hilarious, but even that wears thin! Anytime you talk to someone, they don’t want to do anything interesting. If they have a quest it’s “Hey, go get me this item. Or take a picture of these obscure things. Where are they? Find them yourself!”. The game also has some weird mechanics in it. Like you have to keep yourself healthy, or you’ll get sick, which reduces things like stamina, or attack power. Even though reduced attack power felt useless, because you never truly fight things! Once or twice you bite things as a dog. That’s it. You also have to keep yourself fed. Which you do by either making your own food, or buying some at one of the two restaurants.
The game has a money system of course. You either complete these myriad of fetch quests to get sparse amounts of money, or take pictures of items that fit the popular hashtags, which earn you a penny for every like you get on the social media platform. I was literally always running low on cash. At one point for the story, I HAD to buy a new item for my camera. I didn’t have money. I also didn’t realize I could sell items. So I was scrounging the whole game. Then I found out the few ores I had on me were worth a lot of money. So I farmed a bit of minerals and suddenly had a ton of cash. Which I wish would’ve been told to me before.
Now with the game mostly being composed of fetch quests, this means that there’s also everyone’s favourite thing. RNG! There were a few times in the story, where I’d need a specific item, which you would get from looting areas. But the first time I had to do this, it took me literally 2 hours to get the 3 items I needed! I wanted to put my fist through the wall.
Rating
Pros:
- Playing As A Cat And Dog
- Riding A Sheep
Cons:
- Terribly Inconsistent Story
- Abrupt Ending
- All Fetch Quests!
Summary
I love SWERY’s weird mind. His games have always kept me entertained with how weird they are. But this is a big miss. It’s bland, the story is so inconsistent it forgets the story it’s even trying to tell, to the point nothing gets wrapped up. Every quest is a fetch quest. The two big characters aren’t likable. The best parts were being the animals and riding a goat. That’s it. Just avoid this game. I’m not happy to say that, but it’s for the best.
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Game & Developer Information
Developer Website: White Owls
Developer Socials: Twitter
Publisher Website: G-rounding
Publisher Socials: Twitter
PSN Store Links: £26.99/€32.99 Europe / $39.99 North America
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