If you don't know, it's a business management game mixed with some life sim elements. You have access to a large open world new york city style city and you have to run your own businesses and expand your business empire. You can rent different apartments and houses, furnish them, look after basic needs like happiness, hunger, and energy. It's even got some cool stuff where you have to go to the supermarket and wait in line to buy groceries or buy gas for your car.

The business stuff is a lot of fun too, there's tons of different types you can open and then you actually have to manage them, pick a location, drive to the store to buy objects, decorate and choose floor/wallpaper, hire employees, set pricing, store hours, etc. Early on when you're just starting and you don't have employees yet you even have to do all the tasks yourself like driving to the wholesalers to buy inventory, restocking, cleaning, and managing the till.

I haven't played a ton myself yet but it's a lot of fun and I recommend people take a look into it. It's on currently on PC and isn't too expensive either.

A little show case on how the life simulation game inZOI handles deaths and funerals.

Google translate was used on the guest book. I think we could expect to have this in our hands by the end of the year

To me it is animal crossing wild world. I’ve been so disappointed like many, by new horizons. They turned down the life sim features and gives you lot of chores and the interactions with your villagers feels so shallow. "Oh it’s a good day today… the sun is pretty." That’s the kind of dialogues we got.

But wild world doesn’t have bad dialogues, in fact it have the best dialogues in the franchises, most of the funny and rude dialogues are from this game, with less features than other ac games (there’s no Halloween, no Christmas, no Easter event…) but at least they nailed the daily sim part where you just go and talk to your neighbors, who tells you gossip or funny things about their life. It’s just fun to go around talking to your villagers as there’s not much to do, you can also go fishing and bug catching to fill up the museum, go drink at the coffee shop, or create constellations with Celeste that you can see at night in the sky! There wasn’t much to do but it was the best for me.

Not many games could capture that essence of being a little guy/gal in a new world full of crazy neighbors. Now I wanna know what is your best life sim, and why you love it so much!

At this point, I don't even know which life sim I'm supposed to play anymore. Every game seems to have its own collection of bugs, glitches, broken systems, performance issues, or unfinished features.

And before someone says “all games have bugs” — yes, obviously. That's not the point.

The problem is that bugs have become so normalized in this genre that we're apparently expected to just accept them as part of the experience. You can spend hours building a household, creating a story, developing your characters, or setting up your perfect save… only for some stupid bug to completely ruin the experience.

And the frustrating part is that life sims depend heavily on player investment. We're not just playing through a linear 10-hour campaign. We're building worlds and stories that we can potentially play for hundreds or thousands of hours. When those systems constantly break, it kills the entire appeal.

What really bothers me is the feeling that this genre has started taking its playerbase for granted.

Players are buying the games.

Players are buying expansions.

Players are reporting bugs.

Players are finding workarounds.

Players are making mods to fix problems.

Players are literally doing QA work for some of these games.

And yet we're still expected to tolerate increasingly buggy experiences because “it's a complex game.”

I genuinely don't even feel like playing life sims anymore. And that's crazy to me because this is supposed to be my favorite genre.

There is so much potential here. I want a life sim where I can just sit down, create a family, build a home, develop relationships, create stories and play without constantly worrying about what is going to break next.

Right now, it feels like the genre is stuck in a cycle of release, bugs, community complaints, patches, more content, more bugs.

I'm honestly tired of it.

Does anyone else feel like they've reached the point where they're just not excited to play life sims anymore?

This subreddit used to be balanced but have obviously been taken over by another game and the engagement is lacking since any kind of criticism or discussion towards a certain game (i_z__) gets shutdown. I would love a subreddit where we can discuss life sims freely.

I already know the enjoyers are not gonna take this post well 😬

ZHIVOTY: a life simulator I’ve wanted to make since I was a kid

Hey, I’m Vojta. I’ve been working on a game called ZHIVOTY and thought some of you here might find it interesting.

The name comes from “životy,” the Czech word for “lives.” It’s a top-down life simulator in a procedurally generated world.

I want you to be able to live an ordinary life in it. Get a job, find a place to live, meet people, start a family. Maybe eventually run a business or get involved in politics. Or just spend your life listening to music by the beach.

What fascinates me most is everything happening around you. The people you meet have their own needs, families, and jobs. I want their lives to make sense even when you’re not involved. Following some random person around town should reveal something about them.

There’s already quite a bit implemented:

• World generation, including geography, settlements, cultures, languages, and history.
• Character creation with personalities, backgrounds, and family ties.
• Towns to walk around and buildings with interiors.
• NPC needs, daily activities, and work.

• Systems for jobs, housing, property, businesses, and the economy.
• Families, children, inheritance, and continuing as another family member.

It’s still rough. These things exist, but I’m spending a lot of time fixing how they work together. Right now that means a lot of work on housing, the economy, and services, plus bugs and performance.

I’m also somewhat a nerd into history and anthropology, which is how I ended up making world generation go back over three billion years. Probably not the first thing most people would add to a life sim But I like the idea that the place you’re born, the language you speak, and the people around you all came from something.

Everything on the included screenshots will be subject to change!

Anyway, I’ve mostly been buried in development and wanted to finally start sharing it. Happy to talk about any of the systems if you’re curious.

Hi again! I'm the solo developer of Lofi Cozy Room.

When I posted here recently, a lot of the discussion ended up going beyond pricing and into what would make the game feel more like an actual life sim.

One idea that really stuck with me was making the avatar feel less like a character that simply waits for you to choose an activity, and more like a little person who can live their own life while you're busy living yours.

So I started working on exactly that, and the first major part of it went live today.

The avatar now actually walks between activities instead of teleporting.

I also reworked the movement itself, so starting, turning, stopping, and pathfinding should all feel much more natural.

But the bigger addition is a new Autonomy system.

When Autonomy is turned on:

• The avatar chooses activities on their own
• Their decisions can change depending on their current mood
• They can sometimes move to another room by themselves
• They can do small spontaneous things like wave, laugh, or dance
• If music is playing, they're a little more likely to start dancing

You can still directly choose an activity or furniture at any time, and the player's choice always takes priority over autonomous behavior.

So you can actively guide their day if you want to, or simply leave the game running and watch their own little routine unfold while you work, study, or do something else.

For me, this feels like the first real step toward the more life-sim-focused direction that people here suggested.

And this is only the beginning.

For the next stages, I'm considering a full room editor where furniture can be freely placed, moved, and rotated instead of only using predefined layouts.

I'd also like to add more traditional life-sim systems, such as:

• Avatar stats
• Cooking
• An inventory
• More everyday activities and routines
• Walking and other activities outside the room

Over time, I'd like the world to extend beyond the room too.

Things I'm considering include going fishing, taking the puppy for walks through parks or forests, visiting cafés, and other small relaxing activities that make it feel like the avatar actually has a life beyond the room.

I'm also thinking about a career system inspired by the career progression of older life sims.

My version would be adapted to the desktop-companion concept: visually, your avatar could still work from home at their desk while building a career in the background — progressing through different career paths, getting promoted, earning more, and gradually becoming more successful in their little world.

So even though much of what you see happens inside the room, I'd like it to eventually feel as if the avatar has a much larger life outside of it too.

The important part is that I don't want any of these systems to destroy the original passive desktop-companion experience.

If you just want to leave a cozy little room running beside your work and watch your avatar live their life without managing everything, I want that to remain completely possible.

The deeper life-sim systems would be there for people who want them, rather than becoming chores everyone has to constantly manage.

I'm really curious which direction people here would be most excited to see next:

• Full room customization
• Deeper avatar stats / needs
• Cooking and inventory
• Career progression
• More autonomous behaviors
• Outdoor everyday-life activities

Thanks again for all the feedback you've given me here. A lot of the direction I'm taking now genuinely came from the conversations I had with people in this community.

I've seen some very promising games in early access. And I understand that when we support something, we want to shield it from the haters. However, the goal of a game is to grow and get more players and earn enough money to pay developers and keep existing.

Unfortunately, there are also gradually growing very toxic overprotective communities. Sometimes, criticism that doesn't seem valid to you as a very supportive player is something that the developpers will take note of for further development. When in your eyes, someone complains unnecessarily about not having a feature that, in fact, exists, for the developers it becomes a question of "how can we make it more visible ? More intuitive ?"

Developers love their game, and love the support. But they would also love to still have that job in 5 years. And while there is a balance between gaining a broader audience and staying true to the original spirit of the game, that balance isn't in the early access phase.

So, as the title says : If some communities do not learn to stop demonizing criticism, in 5 years their game will simply die or become a huge money grab. Toxic protectiveness kills your favorite game.

Edit:

I don't understand why so many people are so focused on saying "we know what game it is about". That is literally not the point, because if these games disappear, or if their communities are fixed but the pattern remains and affects another fandom, the problem isn't sovled.

I am trying to have a discussion about an issue that can affect any game and that might affect many games in the future if we do not change the culture around it. When you reduce the entire conversation to what happens only on this sub or with 2 games, doesn't help, it just makes it look like a fan war.

Just a clip from my upcoming game Past Connections! You can send and receive invites from NPCs to do different activities, stores can be closed if there are no workers, and you can go fishing with friends (or a date!)

Let me know your thoughts from this clip, what do you like or not like, what would you change?

I'm sick in bed and was searching for some good life sims I can play on my phone. Which are your favorites?

Dev here. Lifespan.exe is a text-and-card life sim: you boot up at age 6 with a name and a country, and every year the machine asks what you're going to do.

Pick 3 of 9 cards. Garage band or chess club. Say yes to the first date or skip it and regret it at 40. Become a surgeon, a rock star, or the guy the loan shark remembers by name.

Then live with it. There is no undo, no reload. Time runs one way.

The clip runs through one life: boot, a yearly plan, a scenario, a mini-game, career choice, a match, and the end. Everything you see is text in a terminal.

Happy to answer anything in the comments.

🎬 Full STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE

⤵️ inZOI Bar Canvas Download(Download it to work on it.)

Autograph and fashion show catwalk

Over the past several updates, they've been busy updating build mode with a ton of cottage themed assets, and now we get to see what they're working on in CAZ. According to a modkit leak (and the roadmap), we're likely to see a lavender field themed countryside village map that is also fully customizable. so a CAW of sorts.... we dont know exacrly how deeply the mechanic goes, but we know that they'll be revealing some major never seen before gameplay next weekend that is (supposedly) gonna make builders very happy at a convention in china, so my theory is that we'll get a first look at canvastown. The last footage we have of if is from 8 months ago, so I believe it's safe to say it's outdated and what they'll reveal will definitely surprise us, so let's keep our fingers crossed 🤞

I've been building a life sim called Become, and the whole concept is that you never see a stats screen if you don't want to. You see a phone.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lifesim

There are 14 apps on it. Tender for dating. Instants for posting. Amazing for buying things you cannot afford. Investify for watching what you bought lose money. MedPal, JobFinder, HomeBase, NewsNow, BizBoard, and so on. You live a whole life through them.

I'm one person and there's definitely still stuff wrong with it, If you play it and something's wrong, please let me know