My Little Life - ★★★☆☆
Image: 9FingerGames / IndieLoupe
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Developer: 9FingerGames
Publisher: 9FingerGames
Release: 31 January 2025
Retail Price (Steam): 5,89€/$5.99/£4.99
Playtime upon Review: 8.9 hours - largely idle
My Little Life from 9FingerGames is - to quote - “a life simulator that lives on the bottom of your screen, allowing you to focus on other tasks while periodically checking on your own little person.” Those tasks can be anything, from watching football to working, from writing reviews for My Little Life to fueling your crippling SuperTaxCity addiction… you get the idea. If you’re familiar with Rusty’s Retirement, it’s that, but with the Sims instead of Stardew Valley.
You start with your first little character next to what the furniture shop reliably informs me are fences, and not the wooden grave markers of the home’s previous occupants. You get started with some menial tasks, the usual things you’d expect upon moving into a new home: throwing out any leftover rubbish, making sure you’ve got employment, buying a bucket to poop in - like I say, the usual.
Next, you start working on improving your tiny person’s life. As every Sims player knows, getting a good bed is more than worth the money, so perhaps you do that. Perhaps you then quickly realise you’ve been a little too lavish with your purchase, and that you’ve got no money left to ensure your tiny person can eat and wash — or do both at the same time, by balancing a hotplate on your outdoors wooden tub. My Little Life is very forgiving in that regard, allowing you to resell items at the same price you bought them for. It might seem small, but it helps the game feel casual and cosy and helps you not stress about the decisions you’re making.
“It’s teetering on the edge, but as long as you know what you’re getting yourself into, I’d say it’s a soft ‘would recommend’. ”
As I’ve mentioned the Sims a couple of times now, if you’re expecting a Sims-like, even a casual one, I wouldn’t really say this is the game for you. I don’t think the developer is trying to pretend it is anything more than it is, or trick anyone into thinking it’s a more in-depth life sim, but perhaps if you have a quick glance you might be expecting something a little different.
Money ticks up quite slowly, In My Little Life, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. On the contrary, there’s a lot of so-called idlers where you feel the need to pay attention to them constantly: you find yourself going back to them frequently to get one more little upgrade and increase the amount you're earning ever-so-slightly. That’s not so much the case in My Little Life, you can leave your little people to do their own thing for considerable stretches of time, before quickly checking back, buying a few things, seeing how their aspirations are progressing, and then almost forgetting they’re there.
Eventually your little community grows from one person to six, and each new person brings new aspirations. I say “new” but they’re very samey - they’ll all ask you for an instrument almost immediately, want to spend time mastering that instrument, ask for some fitness equipment, want to spend time on that, want all their needs above 70% (even though they’ll sooner play their drumkit or exercise than take the actions they require to get there)… it would have been nice if there was a little bit more variation in them.
There are some inconsistencies, too: are they “little people” or “tiny people” - are they “fulfillment tasks” or “quests”? It’s nothing major but there is a slight lack of attention to detail that also shows up in other areas. I don’t think 9FingerGames were necessarily expecting My Little Life to get as much traction as it did, and they do seem to be actively working on it, so I expect some small improvements along the way to smooth out some of the rough edges it currently has. Small things like prices displaying incorrectly on the UI seem to have already been fixed between me playing the game and writing this review, but there are example of other unintuitive things: not being able to buy two of the same thing at once is a personal peeve - having to wait for the first one to arrive and be placed before you can buy a second.
It’s teetering on the edge, but as long as you know what you’re getting yourself into, I’d say it’s a soft ‘would recommend’. It’s not going to blow you away, but it’s a nice little desk toy to waste some time on. With the improvements that seem to be coming, it's likely that it will lean further into a recommendation a few updates down the line. My Little Life is awarded ★★★☆☆ by IndieLoupe.com
The reviewed product was purchased by IndieLoupe.com.
