Five Sim Games

Hey friends. Did nobody ever tell you life was gonna be this way? Maybe your job’s a joke, or you’re broke, or your love life’s D.O.A.? Or maybe you just can’t stop making dated references in your professional life. Either way, the good news is, there’s a sim game out there for you. Sure you’re wearing two different socks today, and you accidentally “reply-all’d” everyone in the office that hilarious insulting meme about your boss, and you’re trying to convince yourself that Sour Patch Kids count as a vegetable. But as long as you have sim games, you’re on top of the world managing a much smoother life than yours!

Goody Gameworks has made all sorts of games, but with A Goody Life, they give you the task of essentially creating a legacy… which might be a bit intimidating for those of us who consider their bed their best friend. The idea is that you’re trying to register your family’s name with the town by being as successful as possible during your characters’ lifespans, with each successive character’s start in life dependent on how well the previous did.

You’ll manage basic physical needs, as well as skills that impact your work performance, and of course, decorate your itty-bitty house. Of course, it’s not a realistic life sim since there’s no option to binge on pizza bagels until you can’t walk straight and stay up until 4AM reading Wikipedia articles about fruit, but hey, you can’t emulate perfection.

You can’t really talk about sim games without mentioning Flipline Studios’ Papa’s Series of restaurant management games, and while they’ve covered everything from cupcakes to pizza, we’re going to talk about Papa’s Pastaria because I love carbs and garlic bread and this is my article, dang it. Once again conned into doing all the work by the lazy owner, it’s up to you to serve the customers that come in each daily promptly and accurately by cooking each individual order.

It may seem simple at first, but keeping track of cooking times and carefully assembling each unique order before customers get impatient quickly turns into a juggling act. Don’t worry… you can count on me to eat all the evidence of your delicious failures. I gotchu.

Calling Lance Knifehand’s Rogue Legend: Tame the Wild ambitious is sort of an understatement. Originally developed in just a few months, it blends everything from Harvest Moon to Minecraft and even classic top-down action RPGs. As the game opens, you’re forced to flee your idyllic village when it comes under attack. I mean, I don’t know what else you expected. You’re a rosy-cheeked RPG protagonist. It’s practically law that you have a tragic childhood.

One year later, you’re trying to put your life back together, having just purchased a run-down piece of property for you to farm and build on as you please. The game is definitely rough around the edges, but still impressive given its short development time and scope. If you’re interested in keeping an eye out for the sequel, Rogue Legend 2, you can follow the development logs on the official site.

Most of us probably don’t spend a lot of time day-dreaming about cubicle jobs functioning as cogs in a giant soulless machine, but because none of us ever got our letters to Hogwarts, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Corporation Inc, by jmtb02 and our own Jimp, is all about building the biggest, most powerful corporation of (literal) button pushers in the world.

Just thinking about it kind of makes my soul shrivel a little. But, like… in a good way in the context of this game! You need IT people to keep things running smoothly, janitors to do repairs and cleaning, basic workers to, uh, work, and probably a really nice powersuit and business card. It’s simple, addictive, and cynical in a weirdly adorable way. Just keep an eye on your stapler.

Sure I’m barely able to take care of myself on a basic adult level, but after playing Barbarian Games’ Building Rush 2, I feel confident in saying I could totally run a city with a minimum amount of screaming, explosions, and blood. The goal is to make as much money as you can in the allotted time on each level by producing and delivering orders to buyers, which often means having to spend some cash yourself to build more factories and fleets.

You need to be as fast and efficient as possible, since buyers aren’t very patient and getting trucks there to deliver costs money itself. It’s an endless cycle of commerce that’s slightly less magical than your average Wonka factory, but only if you’re the type of person who wouldn’t also force their works to wear silly suspenders and novelty lederhosen. And I mean… why would you deny yourself that?

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Writer: Dora Breckinridge / Professional spline reticulator.