Submitted by Tiffany J. Kim on and last modified on 8 June, 2019
Category:
Description of App:
Life Simulator is a realistic life simulation game that is both fun and educational! Choose a starting life scenario and see if you can go from rags to riches! Start as an uneducated bum living on a park bench and end as a yacht driving CEO living in a mansion.
The game contains subtle lessons about financial investment, relationship, career, time management, and life philosophies. Life is a balancing act between health, happiness, mental sanity, and wealth constrained by our limited lifespan, you get to decide how you want to live your life. There are many ways to win!
Features includes:
- 15+ starting life scenarios (high school dropout, indebted college student, etc)
- 10+ unlockable perks
- Travel to 5 different countries
- Multiple achievable life goals
- Lease, buy and rent out 6 types of properties
- Buy a sports car, a private jet, a yacht and more
- Take a break, go camping, go to a concert, or go on an international vacation
- Meet, date, propose and marry partners with different personalities
- Have children and watch them grow to adulthood
- Earn degrees and learn life skills
- Spend time with family
- Get a job and climb your way to the top, or buy a car and drive for Uber
- Start a company, choose between a factory, software company, or a restaurant chain
- Produce YouTube videos, make apps, or release tracks as a DJ
- Choose the life of crime and work your way to a crime syndicate
- Treat your own illnesses or go see a doctor
- Eat unhealthy fast food or learn to cook and make healthier meals
- Save money, earn interest, or get bank loan
- Become a professional athlete and play basketball, football and baseball
- Invest your money and play the stock market
- Buy lottery tickets and pray for the jackpot
- Buy pets and feed them treats
- Check your weekly cash flow for a view of your finances
- More than 120 random events to make things interesting
Apple Watch Support:
Version:
Free or Paid:
Device(s) App Was Tested On:
iOS Version:
Accessibility Comments:
This app has proven to be very accessible. I am not certain if there are different scenarios to choose from when first starting out. I started out as a high school dropout and my gender and name were randomized. Once you start out, you will find that there are buttons (more like tabs) at the bottom of the screen going from left to right which enable you to get to different screens such as profile (to see your general statistics and purchase items, real estate, and vehicles), education, work, etc. You will be able to see what your health is (good, alright, declining, etc) which varies with your age. However, one thing that I haven't figured out is how to see those exact numbers as you have both physical health and mental health/happiness. However, if you do end up tanking your health to an unsafe level, you will get a warning pop-up which alerts you that you are severely depressed and/or unhealthy and will be dead in five weeks if you don't do something about it. This generally happens if you pull all-nighters all the time, as has happened to me, but good vacations, staying at the hospital, and schmoozing with family has helped with this. Every action in the game will affect your health and/or happiness in some way, and the game will let you know +12 +10 (which I think means mental/physical health, in that order), but sometimes you only have one value listed, and I think it will take some mental deduction to figure out if it will be mental or physical health being affected. You will be able to see your relationship values with family members and lovers, and you can see the personality traits of lovers, such as abusive, bookworm, and career-driven, and you will know how those personality traits will affect you should you decide to date the person. When/if you decide to marry, the values will be doubled, for better or for worse.
From time to time, you will be presented with the opportunity to boost your work income for a year by watching ads, get two years younger by watching ads, or double what you earned (for being inactive) by watching ads. My understanding is that you can watch up to 25 ads per day for various bonuses, but you can also decline when asked, to save your ad for a better bonus. I have found that after watching the ad, I have to disable VoiceOver, touch the top portion of the screen for a bit, and I usually will be able to then see (once re-enabling VoiceOver) the thank-you message confirming I've watched the ad and letting me know my award.
The game has in-app purchases to allow you to unlock sandbox mode. One thing that I have noticed when using this mode is that the gender/sexuality are not read properly. I believe the defaults are male and straight, but if you double tap, it will switch to female and gay, respectively, but if you double tap again, it doesn't seem to switch back, or if it does, it doesn't read properly. Therefore, if you do decide to use Sandbox mode for a custom game, you will need to know what you'd like to be before you switch the gender/sexuality. Other values such as starting money are activated via sliders and work fine, as well as enabling or disabling perks. Traits (randomly one good and one bad aspect) seem to be randomly assigned. Perks (all good), are unlockable via in-app purchases and special additional perks earned via specific in-game achievements are also unlockable.
VoiceOver Performance:
Button Labeling:
Usability:
Other Comments:
This game is a turn-based life simulation game. For simplicity's sake, you play out January-December each year and each month is made up of four weeks or turns, and each action is going to take up a week, except for when making withdrawals/deposits from the bank and purchasing items like cars, real estate, etc. You can lead a life of crime, play the stock market, become a family man, win the World Series, and eradicate disease, among other ambitious (or nefarious) goals. I have only played this game once because the game will award you with different goodies each time, one of which is a youth elixir (+100 health and -10 years off your age) for playing daily, so I was able to extend my life out quite a bit. I also ended up making enough money to buy my own youth elixirs (they go up in price starting from 20,000,000 dollars and doubling with each subsequent purchase), making for a long and illustrious life.
There are many different achievements you can aim for, so it does offer some replay value if you like trying out different strategies. However, there isn't much of a story to it in the sense that random events are mainly things which will add or subtract money, health, and happiness. There are instances where you're able to make selections, such as when you go camping and encounter a bear, and from what I have learned, it usually means that 2/3 of the choices will lead to undesirable outcomes so you will need to try and pick the best option.
If you want to improve your life, you will need to rely on the Education and Work sections, as Education is where you can go to school but also learn skills such as street-smarts for decreasing the likelihood of getting caught when committing crimes, home chef to unlock better diet options, etc, and Work is also where you will go for side hustles, crime, and starting a business. You will need to manually work and use a turn to earn money, unless you have money in the bank, are a landlord, playing the stock market, or have other forms of passive income, in which case, you will be earning residual income.
This is a lot to digest so please feel free to ask any questions, and I will do my best to answer them as soon as possible.
135 Comments
Misleading Rating
Submitted by Paul on
Based on the accessibility comments, I don’t believe the indicated VO performance is accurate. At the very least, it should be indicated as having minor issues.
Seems accessible enough, but
Submitted by DMNagel on
For the life of me, i can't figure out the ad reward thing. I wasted an ad without knowing what i got. Now it won't let me watch another ad.
I’ll stick to bitlife
Submitted by Joel on
I think I’ll stick to bitlife. It has a much smoother and polished interface and I enjoyed bitlife more than this game.
Ads
Submitted by Tiffany J. Kim on
As near as I can tell, ads random ad watching opportunities occur for:
* Doubling income of idleness but this seems to be random and there may be a cap as I was able to double 10K earnings, but if away for an extended period of time, I can't double a 100K idle bonus
* Doubling work income for a year (which tends to pop up in January and doubles any income for working, but will also double any income from side hustles e.g. Youtube star, as well as business income.)
* Becoming two years younger but I think this only hit me when I was past 60 years old
Ads can be watched via the Settings screen, and when activated, will ask you if you want to watch an ad for XXX, where XXX is the bonus they are offering you.
The Settings button is up at the top righthand corner of the screen. I usually just do a two-finger flick up then flick to the right till I am on the Settings button if I want to get to that screen because although the buttons are clearly labeled, I'm not one of those folks who memorizes where everything is located so don't navigate my apps in that manner. I also think that some app buttons are on the small side.
FYI, I haven't contacted the developer about the app or its accessibility. I don't think that it was made specifically for the BVI community, but seeing as how I was able to enjoy it, I decided to add an entry for this app so others could add one more playable game to their list of choices. It's definitely not for everyone and I think that its novelty will probably wear off for me eventually, too. I have tried and enjoyed BitLife but I got bored of the grinding aspect of interacting with my family, seeing the same events come up, etc, which is what spurred me to find something different to begin with, but this game is also a grinder in its own right, so I think I'll be on the hunt for something else soon enough. :)
Nice
Submitted by Sasha Stride on
I like this app but am not sure how to get the hang of things.
How does the spend time or high school and other things work? I hear popping and that is all. What does that mean?
This game seems very cool. I now have bitlife, this life and alter ego and I love these kinds of games.
BitLife
Submitted by Sasha Stride on
I love this game but I love BitLife too. And Alter Ego though bit life and lif simulator are better. I love bitlife. The sounds in this are really cool. Just need to get the hang of this. I will play all three of these games.
BitLife
Submitted by Sasha Stride on
Yeah BitLife is way more detailed.
Popping Noise
Submitted by Tiffany J. Kim on
The popping noise means that the action is taken and your life has advanced a week. In this game, each action equates to one turn and each turn equates to one week. With things such as high school, you will need to take the action multiple times to graduate. When you are on the action such as high school, college literature, etc, you will hear your progression such as: "25/40" meaning that you've made a progression of 25 and need 15 additional turns to complete the activity. There are random events which will either help or hinder your progress such as: "You were caught texting in class. -1 course progress."
In terms of spending time with your parents, you will be able to see that it added to your parental relationship but that info is shown as you look at your parent's names and are able to see something akin to: "Relationship, besties, 975."
1,000 is the maximum that the relationship bar will show, however what I have noticed is that if you go over that threshold, your relationship will fall much more gradually so the game does seem to keep track of that despite not showing you a number higher than 1,000. Taking actions towards improving your relationship will also consume a turn.
When you hear a chime, that typically means you're on the verge of suicide due to depression, you met a love interest, got a promotion at work, graduated high school or college, completed mastery of a skill, finished a side gig project, or you've just been presented with the opportunity to accept a bonus if you decide to watch an ad.
Sometimes, the popping noise will be accompanied with a dialogue box when a random event occurs that either adds/subtracts from health/mood, or you have a choice to make, but you will be able to know when this is the case because you will be in the dialogue box. A pop without a change in the screen means the action was taken but no special occurrence has taken place.
THis game
Submitted by Orinks on
This game seems better gameplay wise compared to Bitlife. It's also more serious, whereas Bitlife is more focused on very short games and injecting humor.
sticking ith bit life
Submitted by treky fan on
As a few people have said here, I'll be sticking with bit life. I tried this game before I even heard of bit life, and I was less than impressed with it.
perk?
Submitted by Sasha Stride on
What is a perk or whatever you spell that word?
Perks
Submitted by Tiffany J. Kim on
From what I've been able to gather, perks are benefits that can be unlocked to aid in future games, based on the types of achievements you were able to accomplish in prior games. I think a set of unrelated perks can be unlocked with in-app purchases. You can select which ones you'd like to use in a new game, so for example, I didn't bother unchecking any so for this game (despite starting out as a homeless man), I was a trust fund baby (had an initial bank account of $25,000), am diligent (have 50% additional work pay), growth mindset (50% faster towards promotions), fast learner (50% faster degree completion), good credit score (increased interest rate for the bank account), and real estate mogul (50% greater rental income). Traits, on the other hand, seem to get randomly assigned and are personality traits or physical attributes that can either be negative or positive. I ended up with one positive trait and one negative one for starters: apathetic (faster relationship deterioration) and optimistic (+0.5 per week, presumably to happiness). If you learn the self-help and self-improvement skills, you can unlock two additional positive traits which will be randomly selected.
I kind of like it
Submitted by Ornella on
I only spent 5 minutes on it so I can't really judge it as yet but some of the thing are really expensive. I will explore a bit more. And yes this game is on the serious side while bitlife has humour in it. Right now I'm renting an apartment and my job is a burger flipper.
Liking this
Submitted by Sasha Stride on
Just a question. Thinking of it. What is sandbox mode?
Sandbox Mode
Submitted by Tiffany J. Kim on
Sandbox mode allows you to customize your starting age, money, and education level. There are some limits, such as with money it will only go up to $250,000,000 if I remember correctly, and you can start out as early as 8 years old, and I suppose that if you wanted to have all college degrees completed, you could have those, too. Because it allows you to determine a lot of your starting values, you will not be able to earn any achievements or be considered on the leaderboards.
response based on post 15
Submitted by HarmonicaPlayer on
so in regards to post 15, so sandbox mode if one pays for that in an inapp purchase basically allows them to cheat lol
Yes mostly
Submitted by DMNagel on
There will still be locked things though. I find this game to be a little too restrictive, but nice to have choice i guess.
I'm keeping it
Submitted by Ornella on
I like that when you're away you could make money but my character started off as a high-school drop out and now working for oober lol. Let's see how this goes. This game will stay on my phone.
Gender issues
Submitted by DMNagel on
Gender selection is buggy and needs fixing. All i get is random and female.
Love this game!
Submitted by aaron ramirez on
This game is so much more enjoyable than Bitlife. My biggest gripe with Bitlife, which I have no right to complain about given that I never reported the issue, was that all of the meters were unreadable. Dealing in the estate market was pretty much undoable which made me sad because that's one of the best ways of generating income, and also looks like a lot of fun. I also didn't like how many times you had to roll a character to get a career path you wanted.
Do any of you know how to read your health and happiness bars on this game though? I can't find them anywhere, and am considering contacting the developers. I also noticed that when I gain either, Vo doesn't read the stats, just the numbers, but if you move character by character, you are shown an unpronounceable character.
Gender Issues
Submitted by Tiffany J. Kim on
I agree that the gender selection is buggy with VO. From what I could gather, it appears to be a sort of sliding selection as when I turned off VO and hit the screen where the gender selection was, I got Male if I went to the left, then Random was the next selection, and finally Female.
Thanks
Submitted by DMNagel on
Will try it.
Quick tip regarding ads
Submitted by DMNagel on
Just close and reopen the app when you're finished watching an add. You'll still get your reward. You won't get the reward notification though.
I did that
Submitted by Ornella on
I did that and I was wondering if I got my reward or not but good to know that also works. I got a youth aliexar and I am 10 years younger so from 18 I am now 8 and has so much money.
I'm intrigued about this game
Submitted by Kristen on
I'm intrigued about this game, but ... as someone else said ... I can't seem to figure out how to tell how much Happiness I have until I get a notificaiton my person is depressed.
Anyone able to figure out where this information is? Or maybe it is like BitLife where it is a bar that is not readable.
Bitlife
Submitted by Joel on
Actually, it’s the other way around for this game in BitLife your bars or readable, but in this game, they are not readable
a question
Submitted by Ornella on
If anyone knows, when I got the youth aliexar thing I turned 8 but when I open the app it says that I'm still working and the middle school I think is dimmed. How do I get to go back to school? Thanks.
Yeah. It is so weird. You're
Submitted by Kristen on
Yeah. It is so weird. You're right. In this game, the relationship level is readable easily (in BitLife, you can't read relationship levels). In this one, you can't read your own status bars, but that's the easiest thing in BitLife.
I kind of like the setup of this one. The layout feels easier to navigate, as the modal dialog bits are actually coded properly and I don't have to flick past a whole lot of things to find what just popped up. The only thing that is a bit difficult is the fact there is a lot of stuff in each tab and, for some reason, I have hit or miss success in navigating via Header (and i am sure there are headers).
I'm still getting used to the fact each interaction is a week. Raising a relationship level is a lot more difficult due to the cost of each 'date' and the fact you have to pause to go do 'work' for a bit. Plus getting married is super expensive.
I am on the Uber driver scenario right now. I opted to try out the Youtube Star path for him, since you don't need a college degree. I took out a loan to buy the recording equipment and it took me forever to actually get him out of the hole. He's at like 67-68 years old right now (started at age 32) and he is finally able to just do the Youtube Star stuff without having to switch back to Uber to gain money.
If you're curious, you have to make 60 Youtube videos, I think, before you can make the "Pro" level videos. I forget the breakpoint for "Good" videos, but it was around 25-30 videos. At around 60 videos or so, my guy is making about $1500 per week just on the videos now, which is about double what he aws making at Uber.
Ouch!
Submitted by aaron ramirez on
$1500 per week from 60 videos is so little. Now I see why the Young Child scenario is so easy. It's the only one I've done, but it gives you enough time to finish Middle School, High School, and a college degree before you turn 20. I took theater, and I've released 50 movies so far that all generate around $200000 (most likely more... I don't have it in front of me right now.) The best pat is I'm not touching any of the money in the bank, so I have so much in there that I earn more from interest than I do the movies!
I'm also working on getting all businesses to level 12, but that's going to take much longer.
How do you deal with the status bars in Bitlife?
It's impossible to tell how much money my parents make, or how much property is worth, etc, unless that's changed very very recently. have the developers been made aware of this issue? It seems to be something most people are aware of on here. If not, I'm probably going to send them an email pretty soon.
Also, the three status bars on Life Sim are not important at all, mainly because it's super easy to alter them. Pretty much all vacations raise happiness and sanity and things in the health tab raise all three. It's pretty intuitive what raises what. e.g. a hospital stay raises health by 30, not happiness or sanity. I remember when my char's parents died, I earned $200000 from them that I then used to go on a $50000 vacation that basically maxed my happiness and sanity again. thanks dad!
Not Sure On Status Bars
Submitted by Tiffany J. Kim on
I was trying to figure out how to read the health/happiness/sanity bars but I was not able to find those either. I have no usable vision, which doesn't help to get a clue. I looked in Profile and Health but couldn't find them in either tab. I have just relied on the notifications (in the event I get click happy and work one too many all-nighters), which thankfully can be remedied by staying at the hospital, going on some vacations, etc. I think I will contact the developers about this.
I have thus far been unlocking different perks as I've completed life goals. I am working on the polymath life goal, but I admit that some of these life goals, particularly involving philanthropy, will probably require winning the lottery or using many youth elixirs!
Having Trouble
Submitted by Zoe Victoria on
I haven't been able to beat this game yet, can anyone give me some suggestions?
So, once I got the 60 video
Submitted by Kristen on
So, once I got the 60 video mark as a Youtube Star, it really increased my earning potential per video. With the "Pro" video option, I have a better chance of making an Average or above quality video, which makes more per week.
I think as I made even more videos past 60, my experience went up and I had an even better chance. I had several viral videos, many "great" and several average. Viral videos seem to make $1000+ per week.
Once I got enough money from the videos, I was able to upgrade my Recording Equipment, which doubles the amount made from the videos, too. I stopped after I made 100 videos, as it seemed a good stopping point and my income from them was about 15,000 or more per week.
I'm at age 93 with my guy now, though, but he is a multi-millionaire. I'm not sure when he will die, though, since I have more than enough cash to just keep throwing money at the problem when his health dips to danger levels. (I notice each decade, the health drops faster per week ...) I kind of want to try a life starting from a child, but I'm interested in seeing how old this "Uber Driver" guy will get to.
Since I was done doing the videos, I started up a restaurant chain in my old age since I can pretty much just throw money at it and watch it grow while living off bank account interest and video earnings. We'll see how far I can get!
It would indeed be nice to know the exact values of the health/happiness/sanity bars, but I've been able to muddle through thanks tot he alerts that pop up if health or happiness gets too low. And there is a notation on the top of the "Health" tab that shows how much per week gets deducted from your health based on your age ... and then another number showing how much your diet adds to it (I have the 'Vegan' diet and took the Nutritional Science education thing, which makes it +2.5 haelth. I also have the $5k a week personal doctor which adds +2 health and the gym membership for $250.)
Back to school
Submitted by DMNagel on
You can't go back to school if you already finished it. When you make yourself younger, you will still keep your knowledge.
Oh ok
Submitted by Ornella on
Well since I was a high school drop out and I'm 8 I will try for colledge.
If you're a cheater like me
Submitted by DMNagel on
You can just steal money from the future to pay for college by using time altering. Not fair i know, but who said life was ever fair? Oh well. Just saying.
Bankrupped
Submitted by Ornella on
Lol to Dm Nagel and my game just ended a few minutes ago. I ended up bankrupt after shoplifting. This game is really fun. I will choose another life and play again but if the character is random I will still play it. A question about working; when you tap on the work option does it show that you did the job because when I swipe to my job the apply button is dimmed or is it every time the app reopens. Because when I reopen the app it says that I made money while away.
Working
Submitted by DMNagel on
There will be a popping noise to indicate your actions. You only apply once for a job. In order to work online you need to choose work, overtime or all nighter at the bottom to work 1 week at a time.
Regarding new lives
Submitted by DMNagel on
When you restart a new life, you get to choose scenarios. It seems to me, that your first ever life is generated randomly for tutorial purposes.
New lives
Submitted by Ornella on
Yes I saw that. I was able to choose the gender that I wanted and typed in my name with out any trouble.
Yeah well, ladies first lol.
Submitted by DMNagel on
When you double-tap on random to select gender, it will switch to female right away with no problem. Selecting male is more tricky since it requires you to turn off voice-over.
Prison and a few more questions
Submitted by Ornella on
So I made another game and I tried shoplifting and this time I got caught and my prison sentence was for a month. Unless if I'm missing something I'm not sure how to pass the time to get released. When I check my profile and it shows I'm in prison I swipe write and it says 3 weeks and its dimmed. I wasn't sure what to do so I made a new game. Another question is when I do certain things random stuff happens like I got a cold -5 or I found $20 on the street +5. I'm wondering what the + and - signs meant like what do you gain or lose.
Great questions
Submitted by DMNagel on
I haven't been in prison yet, so can't help there. As for what you gain or lose, no-one knows. We should contact the dev.
Prison update
Submitted by DMNagel on
When in prison, you need to go to the vacation tab. There will now be actions that will allow you to skip weeks.
Oh lol
Submitted by Ornella on
Well next time I end up in prison will try that. Another question is I chose the restaurant sanario and I had $250000 but in the work tab when I swiped down to the restaurant I couldn't do anything with my money and when I tapped on work over time or all nighter the buttons were dimmed. My question is if you already have your own business do you have to start a new business to get more money to do things because not much income was coming in when I started and I wanted to upgrade to add another restaurant to the one I already had. A side note when giving a gift do anyone know what the gift is? It wold be interesting to know because I think it improves family relationships I think.
Not sure what the gift is.
Submitted by DMNagel on
All I know is that it gives family relationship. It also tells the percentage. It just says gift, so I assume we have to use our imagination. As for businesses, they are a little more complex and I haven't played with it much. All I know is that you will need to tap on the name of your business and you will get a whole new menu with options.
I think we can at least read our happiness bar
Submitted by DMNagel on
When you go to settings and to life goals, you can check under the happy life life goal. It says that I will need 80% happiness by the time I reach 80. It also says that I am currently on 98.1, so I guess I'm well on my way.
Not doing very good
Submitted by Sasha Stride on
C am in debt of over 100000 dollars. How do I get up to that?Ee
Thanks for answering
Submitted by Ornella on
I kept working so much and I got a pop up saying that I would die in 5 weeks if I don't do something about my happiness. So I'm guessing going to the park and spending time would get it up. Sorry for asking so much questions its sometimes confusing. Lol.
yes
Submitted by Sasha Stride on
Yes, going to the park and spending time seems to do it.
Life goals
Submitted by Ornella on
Life goals in settings shows all the achievements or what you need to get those badges so I don't think that helped but thanks. I just died from being depressed. No matter how much I go to the park or spend time with my family or even travel nothing worked but I did get a badge for dieing young.
Pages