The Good Life Game Review

Slow start, but amazing second half.

 Amanda BlainPosted:October 18, 2021
Updated: May 24, 2022

Let’s get started on this The Good Life Game Review.

What is The Good Life Game?

The Good Life is a “daily-life debt repayment RPG”. It is part The Sims, part RPG, part horror, part a Mobile Game you’d play on your phone, part extremely sarcastic and out-there characters – all mixed together.

You play as Naomi, a rather unlikeable journalist from New York who has to move to “Rainy Woods”, a backwoods British town. She is trying to pay off her massive debt by taking various jobs photographing things and running errands.

Who Makes The Good Life Game?

The Good Life Game is created by game developer Hidetaka Suehiro (SWERY) and his company White Owls Inc. SWERY is a very controversial developer with his previous games like Spy Fiction, D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die, and Deadly Premonition. The reviews on Deadly Premonition were so polarizing that it actually made it into the Guinness Book Of World Records.

The Good Life was a successful kick-starter in 2018 where it received 81,030,744 yen in funding.

Which Platforms is The Good Life Game On?

The Good Life is available on Steam, Playstation 4, Xbox One (and Xbox Game Pass Currently), and Nintendo Switch.

The Good Life Game Review Gameplay

There are 2 main goals in The Good Life:

1. Pay off your debts by doing errands and photography jobs around the town
2. Solve the mystery and murder that took place in Rainy Woods

Naomi is not a likable character. She is rude, dumb, and obnoxious. You won’t like her and yet you still have to play her. She will grow on you. Maybe.

The Good Life Game is extremely quirky. Almost all the characters are often rude, swearing, and strange. One quest has you running around as a dog peeing on things. It is not all rainbows and butterflies in this happy-looking cartoon world. In fact, just under the surface most of the characters have some dark secrets.

Photography in The Good Life

You can take photographs of anything, anywhere, anytime. When you are setting up for the photo, try and make sure there are lots of “tags” in the picture. More tags will equal more money or “emokes” as they call it.

You take these photographs and upload them to Flamingo App which is only available on your ancient PC at home. Each photograph uploaded will result in a slow trickle of money being deposited into your account.

Twice a week the ‘trending topics’ will change to new keywords. You are then tasked with running around trying to photograph those things, while you are doing everything else. More photographs uploaded with trending topics equals more money.

You can also buy some very expensive camera equipment. Start Saving!

Main Quests, Urgent Quests, Side Quests, and Shrine Quests

There are countless things to do in The Good Life Game. These fall into 3 different categories – Main Quests, Side Quests, and Shrine Quests.

Main quests advance the main story.

Urgent Quests are time-limited quests that mean you have to focus on that right now. You can fail these.

Side quests are errand missions for NPCs. There is an endless supply of sidequests available from characters who have a green exclamation mark on their head.

Shrine Quests are given to you from the Oracle at an unlocked Shrine. You can only have 5 at a time. They will be completion-type quests like getting 5% favor in Dog, taking 10 photographs, or completing 5 side missions.

You select which quest you are focusing on and it will appear on the left side of the screen. Many quests require an NPC character to be in a certain location so if you make that quest “active” they will usually appear where they need to. If a quest is NOT active, you usually will not be able to progress on that quest. You can switch back and forth at any time (except during Urgent Quests). Basically, you can only do one quest at a time.

There are some exceptions to that like various shrine quests with “unlock 7 outdoors kitchens” which will keep track at anytime you unlock a kitchen. But overall, you get one quest at a time.

There is a main overarching storyline that for the first bit I suggest you follow for a while. There is a pretty slow start to the game. It is quite a while before you are given all the tools you need to be able to properly do things. Eventually, you will be able to turn into both a cat and a dog. It will still be a while after that before you get all the abilities. Even then they are not explained very well. (Hint use Z as cat to jump over everything)

Naomi even breaks the 4th wall several times which is always quite funny.

There are also several puzzles to solve and mini-games (like out drinking someone to become the drinkQUEEN) mixed in to even everything out.

There are in fact so many things to focus on that I never really knew what to be focusing on. I was constantly getting lost in little side missions.

You can remodel your garden and house, but I finished the game and never had to do that. I never really figured out even HOW you did that. There are also fashionable clothes you can have mad,e but I only did the main quests for that too. Never even touched these parts but they can be worked on after the main story is completed.

Running Around

You start the game walking around at a ridiculously annoying slow pace. You can run for about 3- 5 seconds before you will get tired. There is a dreaded – YOU RAN TOO MUCH – noise and you stop almost completely. Very frustrating. You can run longer as a cat or dog, but eventually, you will unlock the ability to ride a sheep.

Once you can ride a sheep the game start to pick up and not be so annoying. Yeah, this game is very odd.

Pick up Everything

You have 80 inventory slots which is a lot. As you run around you will see a small arrow in the ground telling you ‘something’ is there. Pick up everything. You will get various items that you will need to progress missions, bugs, seeds, food, and crafting ingredients.

If you max out your inventory you can go to the shed by your house that has some extra storage spots.

Cooking

You will need to eat pretty regularly.

You can cook your own food at your house or at an outdoor kitchen. You will only know a few recipes when you start the game.

You also can purchase food from the pubs in town. If you purchase food enough times you will unlock the recipes to make it at home.

I basically lived on baked potato the entire game. That might not have been the best option but the food in town is very expensive and even the easier items like ‘toast’ I never seemed to learn how to make.

Sickness

Another one of the more tiresome aspects is sickness. You have a hunger bar, health bar, stress bar, and hygiene/sleep bar. If any of these gets too much out of wack you will end up getting sick. This will make an orange box float above your head. Your stats will be impacted like half stamina so now you run even slower than before.

There are several ways to cure sickness including a trip to the vet, medicine from the vet, or medicine from the witch. This was pretty expensive. I completed the game and still didn’t have the right ingredients to regularly cure from the much cheaper witch options.

I eventually just learned to deal with being sick a lot and tried to focus more on trying to keep my stats up so I wouldn’t get sick.

Purchasing more expensive food can definitely help with this as there are many buffs, but again it will be more of a late-game experience.

The Good Life Voice Acting

The game has English voice acting, but only in certain parts. It is almost like they ran out of money with the voice acting so only certain lines are transcribed. This makes for some weird experiences.

All characters have one or two-line catchphrases like Naomi’s “Yeah Baby. Goddamn Hellhole. and SERIOUSLY?” You will hear those 3 lines countless times as they interact with different characters. Instead of Naomi’s voice reading the entire interaction with an NPC out you will just hear “SERIOUSLY?” instead.

This is how it works for all characters. You will hear their 3 catchphrase lines over and over. It definitely is aggravating when you start out. As you move through the game, it somehow kind of grows on you.

Except… when Naomi is riding the sheep and Shift Key speeds up. You will hear that “Yeah Baby” each time you do, so like 5000 times. I frequently wished there were mods so I could tweak some of these things. Maybe someday.

You can also play as the game was intended in Japanese voice acting and English subtitles.

The Good Life Controls

So this is where I definitely have some complaints. Almost everything on PC is done with your left hand. That includes such weird combinations as – Left Ctrl, Left Alt, and Left Shift all at the same time when trying to take a photo.

The also constant timing out of running and then having to press Left Shift again has my pinky still hurting.

This is likely a solid candidate for playing a control on your PC.

Final Thoughts On The Good Life Game Review. Is The Good Life Worth It?

Yes, The Good Life Game is worth it! Make it to the second half and you will enjoy it.