The Good Life was a Kickstarter title headed by Swery. The story follows Naomi, a journalist deep in massive debt. She was sent to investigate the mystery of a small British countryside town dubbed, "The Happiest Place on Earth." Early on in her snooping, she stumbles into a murder mystery and then from there, proceeds to solve the the mysteries of the murder and the town.
Unlike some of Swery's past games like the Deadly Premonition series, the murder mystery element isn't a strong focus. It's not even a serial killer on the lose either and it's just that one murder. The tone is also a lot more lighthearted too. In typical Swery fashion, the story gets crazy at times, but overall, it's not that fascinating. The climax in particular was weak.
The graphics aren't very good. Despite the cartoonish art direction, the character models look like they came out of a PS2/PS3 era game. The same goes for the environment textures.
The gameplay has left me a lot of mixed feelings. There's some interesting ideas like taking pictures and uploading to an Instagram-esque website to earn Likes and money.
Like Deadly Premonition, the townspeople live on a life schedule so they will do certain things on certain times/days. However, I don't think their schedules are as dynamic enough since it's fixed for most of the time with very little variation. It's not interesting enough to follow characters' lives.
One thing I'll mention though is that the townspeople can be pretty quirky, but fortunately, it's not all of them. It was an issue I had with Deadly Premonition 2 where everybody seems to have some quirk that's dialed to 10.
The map is fairly large with a lot of space, but it's not very condensed with unique content. The town's center is where most of the activity occurs and it's somewhat small. The outskirts consists of mostly open fields, random houses and unnamed NPCs.
For reasons I don't know why, Swery took Deadly Premonition's character health status conditions and added even more of them. Things like catching cold, throwing your back out or getting a toothache can be randomly inflicted and will last forever unless treated at the medical center or ingest the proper medication. Realism aside, this just isn't very fun to deal with.
The core gameplay involves completing main and sidequests which feels excessive at times. Most of them fall within the categories of taking specific pictures or crafting certain items. They get boring after a while especially crafting. The world has a ton of items and you need large quantities to make quest related items. Most of the rewards just consists of money and aren't worth the hassle.
The main standout gameplay is the ability to transform into a dog or cat. Dogs can dig up treasure in the ground and dig through trash for item. Most importantly is the ability to track people and item scents. It's annoyingly the only way to track people in this game since only one scent can be memorized at a given time. Dogs can also defeat medium size animals, but combat is clunky here.
Cats are mostly known for jumping higher than the dog and being able to climb certain walls. They can also instant kill small rodents and animals.
The Good Life has some nice novelty to it especially with the countryside setting and the life-sim schedules for the NPCs. You even get to transform into animals and ride a sheep as a mount, but the overall gameplay feels clunky and dated. There's also too many things padded out which makes completing quests a chore to do. The story is serviceable, but not really a hidden of gem of sorts.
Unlike some of Swery's past games like the Deadly Premonition series, the murder mystery element isn't a strong focus. It's not even a serial killer on the lose either and it's just that one murder. The tone is also a lot more lighthearted too. In typical Swery fashion, the story gets crazy at times, but overall, it's not that fascinating. The climax in particular was weak.
The graphics aren't very good. Despite the cartoonish art direction, the character models look like they came out of a PS2/PS3 era game. The same goes for the environment textures.
The gameplay has left me a lot of mixed feelings. There's some interesting ideas like taking pictures and uploading to an Instagram-esque website to earn Likes and money.
Like Deadly Premonition, the townspeople live on a life schedule so they will do certain things on certain times/days. However, I don't think their schedules are as dynamic enough since it's fixed for most of the time with very little variation. It's not interesting enough to follow characters' lives.
One thing I'll mention though is that the townspeople can be pretty quirky, but fortunately, it's not all of them. It was an issue I had with Deadly Premonition 2 where everybody seems to have some quirk that's dialed to 10.
The map is fairly large with a lot of space, but it's not very condensed with unique content. The town's center is where most of the activity occurs and it's somewhat small. The outskirts consists of mostly open fields, random houses and unnamed NPCs.
For reasons I don't know why, Swery took Deadly Premonition's character health status conditions and added even more of them. Things like catching cold, throwing your back out or getting a toothache can be randomly inflicted and will last forever unless treated at the medical center or ingest the proper medication. Realism aside, this just isn't very fun to deal with.
The core gameplay involves completing main and sidequests which feels excessive at times. Most of them fall within the categories of taking specific pictures or crafting certain items. They get boring after a while especially crafting. The world has a ton of items and you need large quantities to make quest related items. Most of the rewards just consists of money and aren't worth the hassle.
The main standout gameplay is the ability to transform into a dog or cat. Dogs can dig up treasure in the ground and dig through trash for item. Most importantly is the ability to track people and item scents. It's annoyingly the only way to track people in this game since only one scent can be memorized at a given time. Dogs can also defeat medium size animals, but combat is clunky here.
Cats are mostly known for jumping higher than the dog and being able to climb certain walls. They can also instant kill small rodents and animals.
The Good Life has some nice novelty to it especially with the countryside setting and the life-sim schedules for the NPCs. You even get to transform into animals and ride a sheep as a mount, but the overall gameplay feels clunky and dated. There's also too many things padded out which makes completing quests a chore to do. The story is serviceable, but not really a hidden of gem of sorts.