Idle Life Sim is an idle game with a really interesting visual style and core game system, but nothing else going on for it. The absolute lack of player actions beside watching ads and not playing the game for long periods of time (also limited by the game if you don’t buy some expensive doodad) made me lose interest quite quickly. I must say that I’ve tried a bunch of idle games recently and this one continues the trend of not letting the player do anything while idling, which doesn’t work for me. I wish they had made something else out of that game.
Starting up by designing a character and picking up a career from four choices, you’re thrown off in an empty house that you can decorate using furniture you buy from a store or get as you level up your skills. The amount and quality of furniture in your house acts as your level which is a pretty weird mechanic, rewarding you for putting a bunch of beds next to each other to be a higher level rather than focusing on decorating your home. This is pretty unfortunate, because I love the style of the game and wish the home decoration aspect was more than just a clumsy mechanic. Some items are related to your career and give more experience.
You continuously make money, but at a very slow rate. You cannot do anything to speed this up beside watching ads. There is a 14$ IAP to remove the ads completely, so that means you can repeatedly get more money by doing nothing, which would’ve been a nice addition to the base game experience. When you quit the game and come back, you get the money you made for 4 hours, which is the main way you’ll accumulate wealth for big purchases. There is a 7$ IAP to get twelve hours of inactive income instead! On top of that, you can pay another 7$ to get double profits for this character.
Because there are multiple characters that you can play in Idle Life Sim (they call it the Multiverse) which is kinda neat! After buying enough upgrades (most of them increase the money you make, although other effects are increased experience, reduced clothes and furniture prices as well) you’ll get to a point where you can create another character starting from scratch. At some point you’ll get upgrades that influence all your characters, which is nice, but the 14$ to get twelve hours of income and double profits is per-character, which feels a bit intense.
The final system I unlocked was the prestige system, which gated me getting some upgrades and level-ups, so it was mostly frustrating, you can increase your prestige every few hours by going to ‘parties’ and wearing clothes that match a certain trait. You can buy clothes with the regular or premium currency, and there are some quests that give you a slow drip of the premium crystals.
Idle Life Sim isn’t terrible, but it isn’t great either. The core gameplay is pretty bland even if the visuals are nice and some of the progression systems are interesting. I just wish I could play it for longer without having to wait before being able to do anything else.
