A New Life is AWESOME! GO DOWNLOAD IT! End of the review. Thank you and goodnight.
Ok, my editor told me I need to give you guys more information. Even though I know you all believed me when I said this game is worth every penny, I guess I will tell you a bit more about the fun adventure I had since I installed this game on my iPhone.
The game starts by generating a child of random gender and birthplace, along with 10 different traits such as beauty, craftiness, intelligence, and sense of humour. The player is asked to make choices through the life of their character. You may kiss a girl and like it, throw your life at the chance of being a millionaire, or becoming a single mother at the age of 16 to later become president. Yeah, it is a bit like raising your very own Oprah. Pretty inspiration for a mobile game, if you ask me.
Since A New Life is about ‘making a choice to generate an outcome’. You may think it is like Reigns, which, by the way, we did a review on earlier last month. However, A New Life has more of a ‘randomized’ result on the choices that the player makes where as Reigns gives more clear-cut and immediate result after your make a choice. This way, the players have more freedom in making their own choices instead of worrying about being penalized for each decisions. In fact, I will even argue that this game has no definite goal, just like real life. You might say having the high score would be the goal of the game but that is only half true. Since the game rewards you for both gaining happiness and experience the player is rewarded the most when they have a certain goal of their own in mind. That’s why, if I have to make a choice, I would call A New Life a ‘story-telling game’.
Speaking of choices, the ones you make will affect the character differently based on their stats and their situation and it may trigger random events down the road. At the age of 78, (unless you kill the character somehow, which can happen rather often if you don’t take good care!) the character will look back at his life and reward you with some karma points that you can spend on your next life; either to reroll or modify your stats to your liking. Even though I am calling them ‘characters’, those people whose life your are influencing will quickly feel like your own children, because you will be so emotionally attached to them.
The beauty of this game lies, in my opinion, in the subtle humour tied with the choices that the players are asked to make. For example, you can either get a video game or a girlfriend at one point. The game cut me pretty deep there! Of course, the choices can be pretty random like bananas vs. pistons, but the game often generates pretty good self-writing stories (and jokes) about the character’s life if you have some imagination (or a very dirty mind like myself).
Sure, A New Life is not beautifully drawn however. In fact, its artwork often seem out of place or even ripped from stock file archives. I would say that the game has a unique feel, hard to describe. It just works. You get engrossed in the life story of your characters, and you forget about the subpar graphics. Either way, this game is as amazing as the miracle of childbirth, and as fun as the process of making that miracle to happen.
Puzzle games are usually my favourite and this particular one is extremely exceptional and splendid because you are opportuned in making your own choices using human knowledge. I love its uniqueness for the fact that you don’t get penalized for each decisions you make.