Developed and Published by 9FingerGames, My Little Life is an Idle life sim, above the taskbar, Sandbox game.
Have you ever desired to play the Sims while doing random work-related tasks? Well, me neither. However, if some jolly Jimmy would want such a thing, the world of second-screen gaming exists.
Sadly, the game we are looking at today failed at the task. Sims on top of my taskbar just wasn’t as good as what was described on paper.
Game Before Gimmick
Taking the tiny game screen and pushing it to the side, let’s focus on the gameplay first.
You begin with a character and assign them a place to live. The game starts very bare-bones: you have low funds and are essentially dumped in the middle of nowhere. After a brief tutorial to guide you through the basics, you’re free to start shaping your character’s life. The world can be played in two main ways: horizontally or vertically, each offering a different approach to expansion and development (more on that later). The simplicity of the start might be underwhelming, but it’s up to you to make the most of it and guide the character to something greater.
Unlike The Sims, in My Little Life, you only make subtle changes to the world around you. You can manage food, arrange furniture, give items to characters, design the house, and more. Ultimately, the character will walk around and live its life based on the decisions you’ve made.
Over time, your little world will begin to grow as more characters arrive and start building their own lives around yours. Eventually, new houses will be built, and the world will expand.
Now for the gimmick
There are 3 basic ways to play My Little Life. Getting the first out of the way: you can play it like a normal game- in windowed mode. That is just the game, already spoken of in the previous heading. Let’s talk about the other two.
Horizontal Little Life
The default way to play the game is by building a house in the middle of nowhere and slowly expanding the community horizontally.
Just as you might imagine, with a scroll bar included, you take care of a neighbourhood, ensuring the characters meet their needs creating an atmosphere of togetherness, and so on.
Vertical Little Life
The game screen is stacked on either the right or left side of your display, with the world represented as a single, ever-growing apartment building. This creates a city-centre vibe, and despite the occasional annoyance of the floating screen, I found this to be a unique and enjoyable way to play My Little Life.
The failure to grab
Not referring to something you need to warn your children about, I am talking about the mundanity of My Little Life.
In my experience, no matter what task I tried to do while playing, I was always drawn to focus on the game. However, this doesn’t mean the game was good—it was just a half-hearted life simulator.
Ultimately, it felt like a waste of time. Something built not for busy people to relax or enjoy but a cheap attempt at cashing on young computer owners with severe attention issues.
An experience worth nothing much
My Little Life is a game where your existence is as exciting as watching paint dry on a cold day. If you ever wanted to experience the thrill of pretending to manage a life atop your taskbar, congratulations.
It’s not quite a masterpiece, but hey, it’s certainly a “game” that will take up time in your life that you’ll never get back. Truly, an experience worth… well, nothing much. Enjoy the second-screen life, folks!
