Become: Life Simulator: One Year Per Step in Become — Why Millions Can’t Put It Down

Become: Life Simulator

You hit the button. The small person on television ages from three to four years old. Kindergarten, elementary school, middle school. One year at a time. Sometimes you make the proper choice. Sometimes you make a mistake. Either way the age counter doesn’t stop and the days don’t rewind.

And that’s the meanest aspect of Become: Life Simulator. The game doesn’t provide you a save point to go back to, unless you scrap the entire life and start again from scratch.

Life simulator games have been around for years. BitLife on phones, and other types of text based idle life games. But Become is walking a slightly different route. It slows the tempo down, so slow that you really pause and wonder, what did I even do this year?

The following is intended for those who have just downloaded it, or who are still contemplating whether to download it at all. This is also for those who have already lived a dozen lifetimes and yet cannot quit.

What it actually becomes?

The One Sentence Version

You are born into a random family. Your parents have jobs, savings, maybe debts. How the system deals you your brains, attractiveness and health. Then you leap ahead from year to year – school, work, dating, purchasing a house, establishing a business, getting in trouble. You expire at around eighty. The game builds a little tale of your entire life and displays it to you.

Then you go again.

How It Differs From Other Life Games You’ve Played?

Most life simulators go the way of “more” – more experiences, more jobs, more endings. Weight chasing.

The game is played on a phone, but your in-game character also possesses a phone, according to the official shop description. That seems like a loop, but you get it when you play: you glance down at your screen in real life and the character in the game world is looking down at their phone too. You put two layers of screen on top of each other and something surprisingly immersive emerges.

On top of that Become adds a lot more complexity to its economy system than other similar titles do. You establish a firm and they give you a profit and loss sheet. You trade stocks. The news changes the pricing. And you purchase property and various neighborhoods go up and down. You are in debt . Each year the loan rolls forward at 10 percent interest . There is no frill here. It hurts.

From Birth to Death — When Your Choices Really Matter

Those Twelve Years of School Pass Faster Than You Think

The game begins to throw choices at you at the age of six. Which school to go to. Which club to join. Which sport to train in. Whether to be team captain. It appears like child’s play, but you’ll pay for it all in the end.

Your grades determine which institution you can attend. The university determines your first career. This isn’t the sort of delicate design where you can “choose A and still loop back to B. If your marks are bad, you won’t get into a good school. If you go to an ordinary university, your first job is one step behind everyone else’s.

That uneasy sensation is exactly what Become intends to provide you.

Money – The Game Doesn’t Mean to Be Polite About It

Become packs is a complete economic simulation. purchasing houses buying vehicles buying stocks establishing companies borrowing repaying Houses appreciate and then crash. News moves stock. You operate a firm, you manage staff, open branches, read the literature.

The biggest hurdle is the debt. Ten percent per annum is hardly an unreasonable rate of interest in real life, but in the game it may ruin you. If you pay simply the minimum on the debt you took out when you were young, it will hardly have budged by middle age.

The design is sincere. Honest enough to make you not want to look at it.

The Football Line Is A Gift To A Certain Type Of Player

Get stuffs in a full football career simulation. A league table. Ten clubs. One season after another. You compete for a starting position, you fight for trophies, you fight for moves to stronger clubs.

This line isn’t for everyone. But if you do, you’ll find that it’s deeper than a “mini-game inside a life simulator” ought to be.

The Hardest Challenge in the Game Is People

Family, friends, enemies, comrades. These folks are texting you. They remember what you’ve done. Ignore them and they’ll gently fade away. You hurt them, they’ll keep a grudge. Love them well and some things remain.

The game doesn’t transform relationships into a progress bar. It’s more like something left on low simmer, if the heat is wrong the flavor is bad.

Why You Can Never Stop That “Age Button?”

The Addiction of Instant Feedback Hidden in Plain Sight of Interface

There is a button in the center of the screen. Push it and the age increases by 1 year. Then something comes up, and you have to make a choice. Press again, and add another year.

The loop is as straightforward as it gets. But it gets the job done. People have practically no resistance to “what happens next” – especially when “next” costs only a single tap.

Eventually You Get to a Year You Don’t Want to Push

Here’s where it gets good. Some years you don’t want to press down.

Perhaps you just blew a romance. Perhaps your firm is poised to go bust. Maybe your parents health starts to deteriorate. You realize that pushing it will probably make it worse. But if you don’t push, the game just sits there.

The best thing about Become: Life Simulator is that it makes staying alive stressful.

Death Is Not A Failure, It’s Settling

The game will conclude about eighty. It doesn’t mark you. It doesn’t score you. It puts your entire existence into a passage. What you made, who you loved, how you went to the end.

Then you look at that chapter and you’re like, “What was I even doing with this life?

That sort of settlement is worth a lot more than a S rank.

Who It’s For And Who It’s Not For?

You’ll Love It If…

You like text-heavy games. You can accept injustice from random luck. “Running a virtual life” you think is better than “winning a battle.” The game is happy to make you feel horrible from time to time.

If… You Might Not Want To Stick With It

You want instant, punchy gratification. You can’t stand being given a bad start at random. You want every decision to pay off, today. You’re sick of hearing the phrase “ten percent annual debt interest”.

One Piece of Honest Advice

First play two lives. First, play it gently, get the feel of it. The second, take it seriously, and see how much you can modify your decisions.

If you’re halfway through that second life, and you actually care about that small figure on screen, then this game is for you.

Frequently Asked Questions About Become

Be Free?

The game is free to download, however it does include advertising. Ads do not break into your activity and tend to appear at natural break moments. If you’re very sensitive to advertising, be aware of this in advance.

How long does a run last?

Depends on how quickly you hit it. Fast forward through events and you can go through a complete lifetime in ten-plus minutes. Read slowly and select wisely, and one run can last over an hour. The game has no time restriction imposed on it. You set the tempo.

How Is This Different Than BitLife?

BitLife is a little more of a “collection of events”–your life is a series of small hilarious or ludicrous episodes. Leans toward a system simulation with stronger interconnectedness between economics, relationships and career. Both are entertaining but the ambiance is completely different. If you enjoy BitLife but find it a bit too dispersed, Become may be a better fit for you.

Does the Money in the Game Connect to Real Money?

Nope. Everything inside the game is imaginary. You go bankrupt, but you don’t truly become bankrupt. If you make a hundred million you can’t take it out. Just a game.

Can I Begin Again?

Yes. When a life dies you can open another But you can’t “reload a save” in one lifetime. What you selected is selected. What’s done is done. That’s a guideline that counts. It adds weight to every option.

Summary — One Year Per Step, One Step for Every Year

• Become: Life Simulator is not a game you get to “win”. It’s not even a game you get to “feel good”.
• It’s something that makes you sit there and then hit a button and then think about what you just did.”
• You come into this world. You go to the school. You do work. You adore people. You fuck up a few things. Some things you get right, You get older. You die.
• The game keeps a record of your life, and reveals it to you.
• Then you switch off the television and return to your own year, your own step.

Its biggest trick is undoubtedly that it makes you want to click the button, and it makes you terrified to touch the button. And in actual life, does it not happen so?