Earn Your Life

by acactus
Overall★★★★★★★★★★2.94
Fun★★★★★★★★★★2.60
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★2.98
Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.63
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★2.27
Humor★★★★★★★★★★3.12
Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.09
This is a short text game about living your life.
Screenshot (842).png
You can take opportunities as they appear, or you can choose to do nothing. That is okay.

Your choices may affect the paths available to you in the future.

You are mortal, and cannot keep living forever. You are 18 right now, and you likely wont live much past 80. (It's a good thing untimely death is not a possibility).

The game is as short or as long as you want it to be. Trying to breeze through life is an understandable temptation.Screenshot (839).pngScreenshot (841).png

(The music was written by the lovely @manicInsomniac, who was a part of the team behind https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/mahou-shoujo-monster-promised-fate . I am opted out of the music category at her request- if you want to support her, please check out that game as well c: )

screenshot

Comments19

Youpeoples
Youpeoples29 Apr 2019, 22:48
Its just like real life. You do the things and at the end its just over. Were you satisfied? idk.. am dead.
karmicRetribution30 Apr 2019, 01:23
It was interesting, but it lacked a tangible goal. Without any win/loss state, I could just click thru randomly without feeling like there was a particular point. However, the fit to the theme was very good, and the music was great!
jadedResearcher
jadedResearcher30 Apr 2019, 01:53
I liked that it let you decide if you lived a good life or not, and it made me feel like real life is that way too. You spend your time and only have so much of it.
TableGuardian30 Apr 2019, 19:37
I feel bad for the poor simulated beings who I repeatedly forced to search for the truth and spread their word. If *only* there was some kind of higher purpose... though I guess life doesn't have a higher purpose either! Dark.
Carraka
Carraka1 May 2019, 02:32
I really enjoy these types of games, and being able to see everything I did at the end was a nice touch. Really creative options in here too! If you end up working on this more, I'd really want to see some of the choices you make earlier in the game influencing the choices you make later in the game. There also seemed to be some random events (family growing)? happening independently of that, and it would've been cool to see how those events were affected by or affected the choices you made. Also, the red on gray was a bit difficult to read, and the numbers were difficult to read as well, so that would be something to improve.

And I also liked that I got to decide whether I was satisfied. Wish I could have a dream that long ... would probably learn a lot. Or faff about for 9999 years.
aCactus
aCactusauthor1 May 2019, 14:17
@carraka If i make an updated version of this in the future, probably the first thing it’d have is the option to play without the text filters. I wanted it to look like a digital alarm clock in this version- im sorry if that design makes it difficult to follow the text.

While many options can only happen if you take other options first (you cannot go to mars unless you build a spaceship, for example) it’s a very simplified system, and the random blurbs about other things going on in your life are completely unrelated. I’ll try to come up with ways to add more depth to both of those in the future.

Thank you all very much for the feedback so far!
Cikyt1 May 2019, 21:36
❤⃛ヾ(๑❛ ▿ ◠๑ )
sylvie
sylvie4 May 2019, 00:21
I thought it was funny how you can do crimes for years and then run for political office or join the police and nobody seems to care.
Dorblin7z7
Dorblin7z74 May 2019, 03:53
Interesting little idea, I like that I was able to build a little story and read it at the end.
harark4 May 2019, 05:48
That was exciting! Really liked the music. Would have liked it if there had been a branching of sorts, where new options are unlocked depending on what you choose to do. Maybe that is already the case, but wasn't clear. Then again, content creation is not really the strong side of game jams. Good work!
ShadowKitsune
ShadowKitsune4 May 2019, 20:54
Good game! But there's a few things that could make it better.
- There is no consequences to your actions, that is something necessary in a game, without consequences the player reaches a point of "just clicking buttons real fast" after a while.
- It would be cool to have a more sarcastic mood set in than a darker mood, joking about how life is shitty is always better than just saying it.
- Changing the available options after a choice would make the game more dynamic, thus simulating the sense of action vs consequence.

Overall, is a good game with problems probably caused by bad planning or time constraints.
Codesity
Codesity4 May 2019, 21:05
An interessting Story and Text Adventure. It could be more design, but I Like how you compared it with the theme. Good Work!
Copper_Aardvark_Games
Copper_Aardvark_Games4 May 2019, 21:41
Really cool text based games. I always love these sort of thing because the visual story all takes place in your mind and sort of forces your brain to create the environment described. Very admirable take on the theme.
heyycap5 May 2019, 05:07
Our team toyed with this type of idea. Sometimes you have the same answer twice on the choices... And it didn't seem to matter what I chose, and there was an unpredictable result after choosing certain things, without an apparent cause.
Link
Link5 May 2019, 09:32
I bit repetitive, you should add more events. A storyline would be great too.
coatline
coatline5 May 2019, 18:04
Like @link said, it was a little repetitive and so was the music but I guess better have it than not. It was an interesting concept and I thought of doing something like that too. Maybe make the UI a little more interesting and a sound when you clicked a button. Good work!
PopDaddyGames
PopDaddyGames5 May 2019, 21:51
I love the text based idea here- this is dope.
luckyDaisy
luckyDaisy6 May 2019, 05:33
I enjoyed faffing off for an entire lifetime. Felt a bit too real though.. perfectly mirrors my life of crime :smile:
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