In The Good Life from White Owls Inc. we follow Naomi Hayward, a feisty New York journalist who, after building a unfathomable amount of debt, is shipped off to the British countryside to pay it off by investigating the supposed secrets of a quaint little village named Rainy Woods - the happiest town in the world! It may be sunshine and lollipops at first, but soon trouble starts raining down like cats and dogs, and Naomi may find herself caught up in something bigger than she bargained for in this “GODDAMN HELLHOLE”!
The Good Life is one of those games that every time I saw it I’d immediately pass over it. I mean the cover art screams generic “there-ware” life sim that you may download because it’s literally there and you have nothing else to play. Even looking at screenshots and watching the trailer did nothing for me, nor did it at any point say “hey, this is a ME game”. Even the fact that you could seemingly transform into a cutesy cat or dog didn’t sway me. Then it dawned on me. Wasn’t there a SWERY game recently released that had a similar concept? And after a few minutes of research, my suspicions rang true. This WAS that game! So I took a deep breath and immediately downloaded that sucker.
With renewed interest, I was now excited to try it out. I mean I loved SWERY’s other games like Dark Dreams Don’t Die, and Deadly Premonition. They were the perfect blend of benign settings, weird storylines, and even weirder characters. Although The Good Life seemed like a departure from those darker themes, my hopes were high that it would at least have some of that charming SWERY weirdness.
I gotta tell ya, after hitting New Game on the title screen, my hopes for The Good Life actually being good were quickly dwindling. Not only did the narrator’s voice rub me the wrong way, but the environments seemed empty and uninspired, and the character designs, at least on first blush, just felt off. There was a strange warbliness to the graphics too, kind of like what you’d see in an early PS1 game, with all of its texture warping. But I was determined to dig deeper. I knew that games from SWERY take a bit longer to chew, and take a bit of patience for the flavors to come through. And for those who know me, I’m a patient man, and for what it’s worth, at least when it comes to food, I’m known to chew. Also, I know that SWERY’s games are typically purposeful in design, for the good and for the bad, for better and for worse.
Aesthetically, the game really did grow on me the more I played. The design started to show its thoughtfulness which played well with the quirky cast of characters. I very much enjoyed learning how each resident ticked by helping them with requests. After each completion you learn more and more about their personalities and their relationships, which in turn fosters your own attachment to this odd yet humble village in the middle of the country. Honestly, who doesn’t want to drink the town Vicar under the table in a drinking competition!? Or maybe go out on a lengthy investigation with the local private eye, Norlock Homeless, just to hear his parrot incessantly say “Fish and Chips”. And that’s only scratching the surface of the oddities you’ll find in this town! However, the management portions of The Good Life like growing crops, crafting items, or foraging for materials were secondary to all of this and probably my least favorite part. Don’t get me wrong, it was satisfying saving up to buy a new house, or to craft a new outfit, or even to explore in our animal forms, but a lot of the time it ended up feeling tedious and just a bit too grindy for my liking. I mean, having to collect 200 aluminum cans to make 2 aluminum chunks in order to make 1 freakin’ table is a bit ridiculous.
With that in mind though, a lot of tasks that you’ll be given where significant grinding is necessary, are all completely optional. So, if you don’t really feel like putting yourself through that, you can just stick to the mainline story objectives, do a few of the side quests to build up your money, and go about your merry day interacting with the eccentricities of Rainy Woods and filling in the blanks surrounding its deep secrets. Though it is a little frustrating that some of the funnest things like acquiring costumes, garden decorations, and the odd potion or two are all locked behind the grind. Thankfully, everything else in the game kind of smooths that rough patch over. It was cool being able to track scents as a dog, or climb buildings as a cat, and it was especially fun taking pictures based on the hottest trends within your social media account. Which, if you have a keen eye, and are a bit clever, it can net you a big following, and a significant amount of money that you can use to buy goods, unlock shrines, inspect campsites, and all of the other bits and bobs you’ll run across.
To say my patience paid off would probably be right on the money. After putting some quality time into the game, its charms started to shine through. That’s not to say it didn’t have its problems, because it certainly did, but a lot of them were outshone by the little things that made it fun and addicting. What I especially liked was that the SWERY-isms that I was hoping for were all present. The game just has an unexplainable vibe that you can’t help but be intrigued by.
It’s the fact that The Good Life leads you to believe and expect one thing, but upends those expectations with twists and turns that make you repeatedly say “what the heck??”, in the most endearing way possible. I love that it’s vulgar and brash at times, something I certainly wasn’t expecting when I first saw it. And I especially appreciate that it starts you off under the impression that you’ll just be playing a run of the mill, lighthearted life-sim. Which you technically are. However, that quickly gets turned on its head when you uncover some possibly supernatural influences after investigating a murder case! It’s this back and forth rollercoaster of expectations that propelled me to want to keep playing, and because of that it’ll definitely go down as a game I’ll remember fondly.
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