:C: - Life Quest

So after installing Virtual Villagers 1 & 2 back on my PC, which gave me the BigFishGames client, I've been exploring their catalogue. One of the ones I bought after playing the demo was Life Quest, a game that appeared to take Kudos and put in time management gameplay. I liked Kudos, and I have somewhat of a weak spot for time management games, and after having played the demo (60 minutes worth, very generous of BigFish), I decided to treat myself.

The idea is that you have just graduated High School and are making your way in the world. You have to budget time, money and happiness and try to succeed, whilst doing challenges set by your classmates to achieve ever greater heights.

I really enjoyed my first hour in the game, it required a fair bit of juggling and there were a lot of choices that weren't available to me because I'd picked different things. My issue with the game is that after 2/3s of the way in, it lost all semblance of challenge. I had everything open to me, keeping my SO happy was a piece of cake, and the only thing keeping me from doing everything was that I had to take a day off from my job every few days to keep my happiness up. I finished everything in just over two hours, and that includes my time with the demo version (which saves your progress, another good thing, thank you BigFish).

It makes me sad, because this game had a lot of potential. If they made it so focusing in one area permanently locks out other bits, if they made it have a bit more juggling of skills, work and social life, it would have a lot of replayability. As it stands, it's a pretty fun game that's two hours long, and at £7.70 I can't really recommend it. If it were cheaper, if it were longer, I'd say it was adequate. But it's not, so it gets a 2/5, or a 3/5 if it ever drops to under £4.