The Life Simulator

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

Version

1.14.1

Free or Paid

Free With In-App Purchase

Apple Watch Support

Not Known

Device(s) App Was Tested On

iPhone

iOS Version

12.3.1

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

VoiceOver reads most page elements.

Button Labeling

Most buttons are clearly labeled.

Usability

There are some minor accessibility issues with this app, but they are easy to deal with.

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.

Recommendations

6 people have recommended this app

Most recently recommended by Tiffany J. Kim 3 years 7 months ago

Options

Comments

By Ornella on Sunday, June 23, 2019 - 17:04

Drug dealing is fun. When you are successful there's a pop up saying blue pill x1 =$100 powder =$500 something like that. Same with shoplifting. 1x candy bar =$2 and so on. Home theft is rewarding if you don't get caught. And the bank robbery is even better. I didn't get to try the last option because I died in jail. About life goals you find that in settings. When you achieve something you get the normal pop up with the sound effect. Then go in to badges and what ever that achievement is if it says for example, doer, completed 100 side hustle projects. So that is already done for me. And in life goals the first option is world traveler. Take 500 international or luxary trips. 35/100. That's how much I've done so far. Now my question is about subscriptions. I'm not sure if to leave them on like the jim membership, streaming services personal doctors and so on. Does that affect anything in the game in a good or bad way. I had mines on for a while and I turned all off because I wasn't noticing anything about them really. And about the doctors visit and or hospital stay I'm not sure when that is useful.

By Sabrina on Sunday, June 23, 2019 - 17:04

I am going to play my next life as a criminal. That seems like lots of fun. I have only done a few shoplifts as of now but I am going to go in for it with my next character. Went to jail three of the four attempts. Rotten luck.

By Ornella on Sunday, June 23, 2019 - 17:04

As of now I got promoted for the law firm that I work for. I'm age 40 and my kids are only 6 years younger than me because I got the youth alixear reward then I took another one when I was aged 36. Not sure if I will buy another one because it went up to40 million. My real estate business is level 4 bringing in some good money and I have a few side hustles. I developed 7 apps, made 7 music tracks and wrote 7 books so far. So even if I go on vacation I have money coming in. One thing I think is silly in this game is when a parent die the pop up says your mom left you $1. That don't make any sense and it happened to me twice.

By Tiffany J. Kim on Sunday, June 23, 2019 - 17:04

Hi, I have noticed that the subscriptions are good if you are one of those workaholics who needs to pull the all-nighters though if you're that rich, you probably can afford to take nice vacations and get to a hospital every now and then. Right now, I'm retired and I don't have any of the subscriptions. However, I've been taking it easy since the retirement and have regularly gone on vacations and put myself into the hospital without any issues. I think that if you are able to regularly tend to your health/happiness/sanity by taking vacations, hanging out with your partner/children, and going to the doctor or hospital, you probably don't need to pay for the subscriptions.

I have typically gone to the doctor or hospital when I've had a significant hit to my health such as when I get hit by a car (-50) or when I've been mugged or get the flu and don't know the home medic skill. It also helps if you get the message that health is low, which you probably will get if you end up living through your 70s, 80s, and beyond. That's when you start taking lots of hits due to your weak/very weak/failing states. Getting the healthy life perk does help with it somewhat, but I'm guessing that once you hit failing, you'll have to spend a lot of time restoring the hits to health points. Knock on wood that by this time, you have a good bank account and can drop money on this without a second thought.

In regards to the inheritance left by your parents, it is solely based on your relationship with them at the time of their death. When I was besties with both, I inherited 200K every time, but this last time, I ended up with nothing, or perhaps I missed the notification. We were close but it averaged about 59% so no filial piety award for me!

By Ornella on Sunday, June 23, 2019 - 17:04

That explains. I was never close with my parents. I worked so much then only when my happiness was low I spent time with them. I have a lot of money so I might turn it on. I hope I live long enough to bring my business up to level 12 or so. real estate is doing really good.

By aaron ramirez on Sunday, June 23, 2019 - 17:04

Unfortunately, my first game ended very prematurely. I had been advancing very slowly for a century or two. I became really good at doing bad things (so not worth it, by the way.) and was a level 9 baseball player, which was a pain to reach. Thing is, I was dumb, because I didn't realize you could own multiples of each property, so each of the properties looked pretty worthless in terms of income. Once I figured it out, I went from generating about 30 million dollars/week to like 3 billion dollars / week within like an hour. Problem is, my game decided to end very suddenly. I never received the notification that I unlocked a badge or anything. It just took me to the new game screen. I thought maybe my character had died and I just missed the notification, but nope! I went to the graveyard or w/e after creating a new character and there was no cause of death listed. My poor character was only 36, and she had a 30 year old daughter that she was like best friends with. :(
So now I'm looking at starting a new game, but I really don't want to start out from the beginning. That would be such a pain! Do any of you know if you can still earn badges / goal things in sandbox mode? I know you won't earn game center things but I can't bring myself to care about that.

By Ornella on Sunday, June 23, 2019 - 17:04

I think you could still earn them because that's what I'm playing in now and when I do something I could see it going up.

By aaron ramirez on Sunday, June 23, 2019 - 17:04

I just started a Sandbox game and completed all of the degrees, and nope, no polymath, even though it said 19/19 in the life goals section. So yes, progress is tracked, but the rewards aren't actually handed out. Thankfully, I already had the perk from that goal anyway. I'm going to have to restart and go through the horrifically painful early game all over again. At least my character started with a philosophy degree, which is a quick way to get into law school. No way in hell I'm creating another 60+ movies.

The issue with crime is that the rewards from it don't scale. Grand Heist rewards cap at around $1000000, which is literally nothing in the grand scheme of things. By the time you reach that point, you should already be generating several million per week through interest / movie sales / whatever, and when you first unlock grand heist, chances of completing it are at 35% with street smarts, or whatever that skill is called. Being in jail sucks, because each break out atempt takes 12 weeks of your time, except 12 weeks don't actually pass ingame, so you age 12 weeks, but you don't earn 12 weeks worth in income or anything. That's why you can't break out of jail with 3 months jailtime or less.
Fun fact though, you can actually participate in sporting related things while in jail. I actually reached level 9 in baseball while I was there. This is... most likely a bug.

By Ornella on Sunday, June 23, 2019 - 17:04

When I was close to dieing in my previous game I kind of found out that and I wished I had known that from early because I think when you press the health button while in jail you could work out. I mostly stared at the wall and smoked cigarettes. I tried the escape only once and thought its not really worth it.

By DMNagel on Sunday, June 23, 2019 - 17:04

At least all crime and prison activities for this game is accessible.

By Ornella on Sunday, June 23, 2019 - 17:04

Even though I still play bitlife I like that the crimes are way more accessible in this game. Only problem is when in jail there's no option for a lawyer.

By Ornella on Sunday, June 23, 2019 - 17:04

My question is for making apps and movies and so on is it unlimited? Like you could make as much as you want or does it stop at a certain number? Side note I am a workaholic. I keep sending my self down in age because I don't want to get old and die. Lol. I'm now trying to get the space hotel. Damn that's 10 trillion dollars I think. Another question is Philanthropy. Is it rewarding?

By DMNagel on Sunday, June 23, 2019 - 17:04

If you play sandbox, it's not rewarding. Otherwise you'll get the angelic perk.

By Tiffany J. Kim on Sunday, June 23, 2019 - 17:04

As far as I know, you should be able to do as many side hustles as you like. When your movie/app/etc goes viral, you'll make the most money off of it, but that is capped at whatever the viral rate is, so you will just need to complete more projects to make the amount of money you desire. I was at one point trying to get to #1 on the app developer leaderboard but ended up saving humanity before I got there so I stopped, but I was pulling in over a million dollars just from the apps I had developed over this guy's 300+ year life, LOL.

By Ornella on Tuesday, July 23, 2019 - 17:04

Has anyone been able to get anything else other than double work income for the year? When ever I get an add that's all I get. If I click no and the next time the add pops up I get that exact same thing. I'm unlucky.

By dezzi on Tuesday, July 23, 2019 - 17:04

In reply to by Ornella

Once you reach 72, there will be a different ad pop up that will ask you if you want to watch a video and it will make you two years younger than what you are

By dezzi on Tuesday, July 23, 2019 - 17:04

In reply to by Tiffany J. Kim

Congratulations for making it that far. I can’t do that unless I play in sandbox! LOL it would be neat if anybody was interested if we talked about strategies

By Ornella on Tuesday, July 23, 2019 - 17:04

Well, I'm trying to get lots of youth alixears because I'm 50 years old now and I don't want to age up. Lol so I'm waiting to claim enough to get back down to 8 years again because they cost billions now given that I've bought so many. I dout I will be able to save up for that space hotel. The price is outrageous.

By Sabrina on Tuesday, July 23, 2019 - 17:04

Thet> is a place for life goals and one for badges. What is the difference?

By Queenofeagles07 on Tuesday, July 23, 2019 - 17:04

I'm 8 and my ddaughter is 3 years old, best game ever!

By Sabrina on Tuesday, July 23, 2019 - 17:04

They just released an update that fixes the bars and this game is now fully accessible. yay!

By Ornella on Tuesday, July 23, 2019 - 17:04

Wow I will update later. I'm still trying to get my business up to the highest level and I'm sticking on 50 years till I get another youth alexiar. Its so expensive now.

By Sabrina on Tuesday, July 23, 2019 - 17:04

On the setings screen I see life goals and badges; what is the difference?

By Ornella on Tuesday, July 23, 2019 - 17:04

Personal secretary. Do anyone know where that is useful? I have mines turned on in the subscriptions and not sure if I'm wasting money on it because I'm not sure what its purpose is for. I mean I know what a personal secretary is but for the game I'm not seeing anything that useful. And another question. What is the experimental treatment good for? I think I used it once but nothing happened. Thanks.

By Gregory on Tuesday, July 23, 2019 - 17:04

In reply to by Ornella

I believe the personal secretary helps maintain the sanity statis and the experimental treatment helps with the health statis. They don't do much else other than that though; nothing special anyway

By Sabrina on Friday, August 23, 2019 - 17:04

I love this still.
It is very detailed and clean and I cannot get that music out of my head. Currently trying to get a business going. It doesn’t go very well. I still don’t understand the difference between the life goals or badges.

By KE7ZUM on Friday, August 23, 2019 - 17:04

What I don't lik is this. I still can't see what "plus 5 etc is when I get the pop up messages such as I had a good day. Those still don't read.

By Ornella on Friday, August 23, 2019 - 17:04

Plus means the happiness levels going up and minus means down. If you see burger flipper and a minus sign next to it that means you need 2 brains or 2 smarts to get that job.

By Hilary Reed on Monday, September 23, 2019 - 17:04

Hi. I read in here that to select male, you turn off VoiceOver and slide left. I have determined that gender is in the upper middle of the screen, but I can’t get it to work.
Thanks.

By Unregistered User (not verified) on Saturday, November 23, 2019 - 17:04

The latest update fixed some of the earlier issues, and the developers are very responsive to feedback.

By KE7ZUM on Saturday, November 23, 2019 - 17:04

I noticed. I love the update now. Man that game rocks.

By Unregistered User (not verified) on Saturday, November 23, 2019 - 17:04

I can't find a way to unlock the daily mystery box though. I saw it in the release notes, but I can't seem to find it, and I'm still trying to unlock the good luck daily perk.

By Gregory on Saturday, November 23, 2019 - 17:04

If you're talking about the mystery reward, I believe that's one of the dayly rewards. You get a different reward every consecutive day you log on.

By Queenofeagles07 on Thursday, January 23, 2020 - 17:04

just click and one week over?

By KE7ZUM on Thursday, January 23, 2020 - 17:04

Yep, each click is a week, but a lot can happen during that time.

By Kibo on Thursday, July 23, 2020 - 17:04

In reply to by Ornella

I know this is a bit weird on this coment, but I canT get the forum topics, so I'll ask away. Do you know any similar ai dungeon that is not 17 plus?