I can't believe I paid 20 dollars for this.
In this "Virtual Life" game, we the player take on the role of the 19yr old woman who's just been kicked out of the orphanage without an education. Confused and alone, we're met by a fairy stating that the protagonist is a child of destiny or something. Standard call for games; the player's character starts as nothing and immediately starts doing something awesome. Let's proceed on to the awesomeness of this pink haired protagonist:
This game sorta puts you in a sandbox style of play where you have no specific goal other than to start clicking and do something. The "sandbox" is a fantasy town with an inn, a library, a store, a school (that teaches everything?), a fountain, and an area around the dungeon. Clicking one of these places gives you a bunch of options where you either spend money to increase stats, or increase and decrease stats to earn money. Going back and forth between theses stats ups and downs, you continuously go back and forth between the sequence of increasing a set of stats by spending money, and earning money by increasing the same stats a little less. Over and over again.
Repetitious monotony, huh? Apparently it's not possible to win this game, just get an ending. Then you have to either load from a earlier saved game, or start again and try a different series of actions to perform to achieve a different ending, the difference being that you choose option Inn.work.barmaid instead of Shop.work.boxes. The only option that I would ending that I would characterize as being different would after performing that series of back and forth learning and working to improve might or magic, then you spend money to buy weapons then go down into the dungeon to rescue the princess.
The dungeon is simply and elegantly designed in interaction. You have a map, a direction you're facing, what you see from that, and a few options depending on all this. The dungeon's layout is also randomized for every new game. And that's were all the good features stop. The combat is simple, uncreative and uninteresting. You either start fighting and hope your numbers are high enough (no tactics), try to be friends with it, or run away. What's more stupid is that killing most of the monsters in the dungeon makes you more evil. What is this? Book of Exalted Deeds?
You also loose health for walking around the dungeon, for neither an explained reason nor a way to prevent it.
And one more time for the emphasis: If you initiate a fight with a monster, your only choice in battle is to hope your numbers are high enough to handle it.
This game would be tolerable, maybe even enjoyable, if it's target audience was young men. At least at that point I would care less about the intellectual aspects and enjoy the eye candy. But no. This game is about teaching little girls that there are video games for them too, and that it's OK to spend four hours a day on a computer instead of interacting with other people, presented in a high school art student's drawing level. Which it doesn't, or isn't. Quite frankly I would be insulted if someone gave any little girl this game.
I would not be surprised if this game showed up on Newgrounds for free. The whole game, 'cause this is at such an amateur level that charging me money for it is completely insulting. It's like the monkeys flung poo at the type writer, and the company decided to run with it. Well keep running, I want my money back.