| Quick Verdict: My Little Life is your next indie idle game that sticks to the bottom of your screen while you work. While it has a lot of bugs and problems at launch, the game itself is incredibly well-made for what it is and I recommend it as a great timewaster. |
| Game: | My Little Life |
| Developer(s): | 9FingerGames |
| Publisher: | 9FingerGames |
| Review Score: | 8 |
| Cozy Score: | 9 |
| Price: | $5.99 |
| Pros: | Tons of items for decoration, progression helps push more unlocks, lots of creative freedom, addicting idle gameplay, lots of room for the game to grow and update |
| Cons: | Needs a lot more guidance and tutorials, Needs way more item description, takes effort to get to a good idle point, can’t customize the characters other than name, some bugs and crashes, end game still has unlockables with no way to get them, items a bit limited at launch |
| Platforms: | PC/Steam |
| Genres: | Life sim, idle game |
Ever since Rusty’s Retirement came out, I’ve been obsessed with apps and games that can linger on the corner or side of one of my screens as a toy. Between fully fleshed-out chill programs like the incredible Spirit City: Lofi Sessions or 9FingerGames’ own free game Yin-Yang Ping-Pong, My Little Life has been on my radar since the day it was announced.
My Little Life, similar to Rusty’s Retirement, docks onto either the side or bottom of your screen, depending on if you choose to build in the suburbs (which is horizontal) or the city (a vertical skyscraper). You start with one little randomized guy and build the floors or tiny homes around him. You pick a career for him, build his dream home, and live a peaceful life.
But, then you can start unlocking more townspeople, who serve as roommates in your tiny commune. By the end, there will be 6 characters to juggle, several pets, multiple career paths, and hundreds of items for decoration and utility.
My Little Life Gameplay
My Little Life plays like a more dumbed-down, 2D version of The Sims. Your tiny people have needs and skills that can be seen on their various tabs, affected by items placed in their manually set zones.
As mentioned, each person should have a career path that you choose for them. The initial three that are unlocked are Writer, Streamer, and Painter. But there are three more job unlocks after pushing through gameplay, such as Mechanic.
You have to earn both Credits (or “c”) and Fulfillment Points (FP). Credits are the actual currency that pays for any items. But, you don’t have access to everything at first, some being locked or hidden away, and most of what you can see requires you to manage your FP to spend on items you need.
You start out in what only be described as a shack. You don’t even have every amenity you need at the beginning and need to start a career path to earn enough money for things like a refrigerator that will feed your tiny person, wall expansions to fit more things, and a bucket to use the restroom in.
If you’re familiar with Rusty’s Retirement, you’ll know that you have to unlock things such as 5 different farms and a multitude of item types. So, My Little Life has a similar progression flow.
Your career paths, such as Writer or Artist, allow you to earn new item types that can be unlocked through promotions, which also increases the pay amount for doing that job. You’ll also unlock different things just through normal game progression.
The management portion of the game comes in trying to balance the zones for your tiny people with their jobs to help get them promotions. Luckily, once they get promoted or max out the path, you no longer need the items that were required to get that far. Once you do finish, you can keep it as-is or you can reset the path to choose a different one. Completing each of the 6 gets you Steam achievements.
This game sucked me in and I played for 2 days straight without exaggeration
When it comes to how to balance the gameplay of My Little Life, the developer, 9FingerGames, really leaned hard into the idle capabilities as it’s pretty much required to get anywhere in the game. Earning money is quicker by the endgame, but you’re going to be doing a lot of hurry-up-and-waiting. You might as well keep the game open on the side of your extra screen and let it keep earning credits for when you’re ready to actively play.
By letting the game sit overnight, I earned quite a bit to be able to finish up my final achievements and needs for my initial vertical city tower.
From there, I started a second playthrough on the horizontal suburb map. As of writing this, I’ve had the game open for over 38 hours across a total of 48, and I find myself taking a few minutes to progress the suburb playthrough anytime I glance at it.
In a game all about life, there are always pitfalls
Your characters have zero drama, zero problems that can’t be solved with money, and zero interactions between each other. While I mentioned that this is The Sims-like, there’s just no reason to have multiple characters other than the need to have the player juggle. Depending on your outlook on social interactions, this can either be viewed as good or bad.
However, while there aren’t any problems or squabbles between characters, the game itself isn’t perfect.
Let’s start with the early-level tutorials in My Little Life. In your Fulfillment tab, you’ll learn how to play the game through progression. These are pretty easy and help teach you the basics of the game. However, it’s when you start looking at the various icons all over your screen that you realize that they just taught you how to doggy paddle and then threw you into the deep end with no floaties.
It took nearly the entirety of my initial playthrough to fully understand every single icon that is on the menu, as none of them are named or marked. It turns out there is something called Township Quests, which opens up more item types for completing basic things like tasks and recruiting more tiny people. Nothing in the game tells you that there is a button at the bottom of that to complete the particular quest, especially since you have to scroll down to find it.
For some minor endgame spoilers, I expected to open up the last of the locked items in my furniture and item menus by completing the game. However, completing the town just allows you to name it and does nothing else. I have every Steam achievement and I have unlocked every possible item, person, pet, and job. But, I still have small locks on the menu that show no way to unlock them, even now.
Interestingly, I’m playing around the Chinese New Year. I saw that starting my suburb playthrough drops an extra gift package near my door, with a Chinese lantern and a wall scroll that can be unlocked with FP. Unfortunately, on the city map, that package is impossible to grab, once you’ve been building up, as the packages cannot be seen at any angle and you just have to hope they’re there when you order something. But, my Chinese New Year present is possibly just sitting there in the alleyway for the rest of time, as you are required to click it to open it. For the suburb map, it pops up again every in-game day, even though I’ve opened it already, which may be a bug.
Speaking of ordering, My Little Life is riddled with bugs at launch. I’ve run into various issues like stuck, convulsing tiny people that cannot be moved without restarting the game, and characters ignoring packages that should be outside for days (which I’m assuming since I cannot see them) when ordering too many at a time. Luckily, the game autosaves very often and a simple 10-second relaunch is all you need to solve those problems and is not a dealbreaker.
The final issue with My Little Life is that completing characters requires luck with the RNG. Since you don’t actually control your tiny people’s actions, you can’t tell them to use the restroom next or to eat something when they’re hungry. But, one of the final quests for some characters is to get them to be at 70% on all of their needs. You just have to be looking at the exact second that happens or you won’t finish it, since there are no notifications. After nearly a full day of trying, I’ve only completed 3 of the 6 tiny people.
My Little Life: Final Verdict
Honestly, even with the bugs and problems at launch, My Little Life is such an addicting game. My qualms don’t affect the score as much as you’d think as the game is incredibly well-made at launch by a tiny team and will likely get a lot of updates from player feedback.
Plus, you can’t really go wrong with a game that starts at $5.99 for dozens to hundreds of hours of idle gameplay.
In future updates, I hope to see a toggleable tutorial that explains the more advanced dynamics and terminology.
I’d also love to see way more items available for decoration or skills. For instance, at launch, we have a Streamer job profession and the only video game system they can have is what appears to be an original NES. The developer went all in on the Doctor and Mechanic professions but left out a lot for other job paths.
Lastly, I’d love to see the characters be a little more interactive in My Little Life. If they have to eat, putting them in front of a hunger-focused piece of furniture (such as a vending machine or fridge) doesn’t currently do anything and they may walk away and starve themselves more to go play a game on their computer 15 floors up.
I highly recommend My Little Life to anyone looking for something to kill time between Zoom calls. You can find it on Steam for $5.99. If you like this, check out our review of the fantastic Rusty’s Retirement, a clear inspiration for My Little Life to the point that one of the pets is a robot worker from Rusty’s farm.
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