There are little adventures to add flavors to your game, but the main meat and potato remain the same. You are here to escape hectic reality and enjoy the virtual simplicity that a life simulation game has to provide. There is something soothing in playing a life simulator. The world doesn’t revolve around you, and you don’t go on a larger-than-life quest to defeat almighty dragons. The little things about caring for your crops or running errands make life simulation games shine.
Best Life Simulation Games
Customize your character, place new furniture or workbench in your house, and raise cattle. Experience the life you always wanted. Below are the fourteen life simulation games that will make you care for your virtual cattle, neighbors, and friends.
Stardew valley
It feels like going back to your childhood village where you grew up and left behind to chase a bigger purpose in life. Now you are back again to live a simple life. You can do a little bit of everything in the small town called Pelican. Meet new people, get to know their tastes, or go fishing and catch fish all day. It is up to you to choose what activity you want for the day. You are in the town to revive your old grandfather’s farmhouse, and you can do that by cutting bushes and trees, and planting crops. It’s a delightful game that will hook you for hours. You can plant, mine, harvest, make friends, participate in events or do all things at once if you have enough tools and energy. You can start your journey by selecting one of the five maps, each with its specialty. With its changing seasons, fun festivals, NPC birthdays, and stories to unfold, it’s a rewarding sensation to live in a town full of life. The game will specially connect to you with its charming characters and beautiful story you would never want to leave.
Animal Crossing: New Leaf
The game is perfect for people to relax their anxiety. Suppose you want to play video games to escape from your frantic life and create serenity in your sanctuary. Animal Crossing: New Leaf will help you calm down from daily real-life pressure. You can play at your own pace and experience the game’s coziness. Befriending villagers is also fun and stress-free. It’s one of the games where you can lose hours and won’t notice because the game provides you with so many ways to chill. Fishing, exploring, collecting bugs, or establishing bonds with villagers. The game never forces you to do those things. You can invest in those activities if you feel like it.
The Sims 2
It’s chaotic, it’s unpredictable, it’s crazy, and it’s awesome. Your sims not only have different personalities but aging, memories, genetics, and many more. You can have a whole generation of the family business by passing down your sims traits and personalities to younger generations. If you don’t want your sim to grow old and die, there is a section called aspiration where you can keep your Sims young and healthy by providing for their needs. This new mechanic gives Sims purpose in their life and ultimately makes the game much more interesting, as previous games did not have clear goals. Customize your Sims to tiny details and live a life you want. Passing your genetics to build family generations for a greater storyline makes Sims 2 a unique life simulation game.
Shenmue
The game is old but has a little bit of everything, just like in real life. That is why it has made its way to the best life simulator. It is so down to a life that you can take part in activities otherwise considered boring in real life, like carrying wooden boxes. It’s the mundanity of life and the personality of people that gives realism to the game. Don’t get me wrong; it is a story-based game with cut-scenes and actions. But no matter how you approach the game storyline, it still is a life simulation game at its core. Roam around town, collect toys, or play games inside an arcade station. All these trivial things make Shenmue a really good game.
Tomodachi Life
A unique blend to give new life to the characters of Tomodachi Life. It’s a beautifully funny game with tons of customization, even down to characters’ voices and their tone. It’s weird and wacky, but that didn’t stop players from enjoying what the game has to offer. You help your Mii look-alike start a new life on an island of your own. You will have pretty much every customization to create your Mii characters from age, name, expressiveness, and attitude. Take care of your Mii happiness level as they determine the island’s wealth. There are various things to do on the island, such as mini-games and relationships built. It’s all about creating your Mii characters and letting them into the world of unexpected results. Watching them deal with such results is utterly entertaining.
Two Point Hospital
A healthy dose of funny activities takes place in a hospital, and you are there to witness these bizarre yet creative combos of witty humor. It’s part management, part life simulation, and a whole lot of fun. You manage fifteen hospitals, and each has its own set of characteristics, including its monetary value and history. Dealing with patient illness also provides you with a fun number of activities you can do with them. It’s straight down to metaphorical cartoony acts of getting rid of illness that make curing patients enjoyable to deal with. Two Point Hospital delivers a great sense of personality to its patients while giving a proper amount of management content.
Spore
It’s a creature life simulator game, and the best part is that you can create your creature and customize them as they grow and evolve. Spore core gameplay mechanic changes as you keep on progressing throughout the game. From the top-down 2d to single-player 3d survival and galaxy traversing games, spores provide little of everything. It also stores the history of its creation in a shared online database. Now you can view how different players have made their creatures. This makes every spore game unique in its play style and gameplay.
Rune factory Frontiers
From beautiful towns to deep dungeons, Rune Factory Frontiers gives you a plethora of activities to engage in. The ambiance and its atmosphere change with the changing of seasons, which gives the game more variation in the same environment. You can go on with your daily routine in the game like farming and dungeon diving, or you can chat with town people and connect with them and their stories. It’s a game where you can live your life at your own pace. Rune Factory Frontier is a life sim with the addition of an action RPG, so if you like to chat and fight enemies, then this game provides you with what you are seeking.
Littlewood
The game is a minimalist version of life simulation where everything is simplified to its core and nothing more. However, you can do many things; they are just scaled down to provide you with fun and nothing unnecessary. I like how the game makes such a complex life management simulator into a bare minimum that is enjoyable and engaging. Now you don’t have to search or craft for tools like axes to cut down trees or pickaxes to mine stones; the game will automatically let you do all sorts of things providing all the necessary tools beforehand. Its beautiful music, charming characters, and the number of customization make this heartwarming game a delight to play.
Kynseed
Kynseed is a beautifully crafted pixel art game with so much to do. It’s a highly ambitious game where you can do pretty much everything, including building family generations. If you loved Stardew valley and played it to the point that there’s nothing left to discover, that’s where Kynseed comes in. Pretty much everything in this game is carefully designed to suit the real-life simulation. People remember the decision you make, and the game continues to build forward on the things you do. The towns are lively with people who will talk about your actions. When you invest time with the town’s people, you build a kind of relationship that makes you continue even more to see where it leads. Its gorgeous pixel art, changing of seasons, and a plethora of activities will keep you playing for hours, but its engaging stories are what will make you come back for more.
Graveyard Keeper
It’s whimsical with silly characters and a story to be told. You go on your daily life farming, fishing, mining, and crafting. The freedom to explore the world at your own pace and own time makes the Graveyard Keeper on the list. It is a life simulator with quests and stories to uncover. You can go on crafting and collecting resources or talk with people to go on a quest. The game-specific events also trigger on specific days of the week. As the game cycles to weeks and the quest is back again in a short period of time, you are not pressured to perform certain tasks in a limited time. You can sidetrack and do other stuff because there is so much stuff to get lost in.
Spiritfarer
The game might seem confusing at first because you are given a task to guide your spirits to the afterlife by fulfilling their goals. This might seem like a simple deck-building and resource-collecting game at first, but once you set your journey to farewell spirits, you will soon understand the larger purpose you have in the game. Spirits appear in the form of animals and stay there until their purpose is met, and you set them across the river of lamentation. It’s a game that actually connects you with characters and their longing on a deeper level. It’s about the things they could have done and the regrets these characters feel after death. You take care of a boat that sails between death and life. It’s a game that will genuinely feel emotional for the souls you have to carry. A heartwarming story that will make you care for every lost soul that appears on your boat.
Cozy Grove
It’s a game where you can dip your toes and relax for a while. As the name speaks for itself, Cozy Grove doesn’t want you to play for hours and end. It just wants you to pick it up once in a while and soak into the beauty the game has to offer. Characters here are designed in a cute cartoony way, and their dialogues are heartwarming and straight-up hilarious. The game runs in real-time around the world. This means that if a character suggests you come back tomorrow, it’s tomorrow in real life. This might seem difficult for players who want to enjoy the game in one go. It’s not action-oriented, and the game’s progression is also there to ease you in. Playing Cozy Grove makes you feel like you are camping out in the wild and meeting new friends who are different in personalities.
Slime rancher
A delightful game with a satisfying loop mechanic. Slime rancher lets you on your journey to build your slime farm. You catch slime to harvest money out of their poop. Yup. The game pacing is good at keeping everything fresh. As you explore new lands, you encounter new slime to capture, which will indeed make money and help you do tasks. There are also hidden places that you discover later on in the game that makes game progression exciting. The game rewards you with every bit of effort you put into collecting, crafting, and building your slime rancher.
