Nacon’s new Life sim series makes my career goals feel woefully inadequate

Life, as Nacon calls it, is a new series of life sims themed around professions. It is not realistic in any way shape or form. The trailer’s narrator opens a restaurant. She plans out everything from the layout to the menu, and then plates the food for every order. One week later they’re fully booked up and everything is going great. Time to plan for a new career, apparently. “Tomorrow, I’m still deciding whether to become a surgeon or maybe an architect?” is a line directly lifted from the trailer.

Instead of a job simulator, it comes across as a self-actualisation exercise. I fully expected it to end on a record scratch and to find out that she’s been sitting on the toilet eating cereal out of a cat litter bin. But no, reality never intruded on Life.

All the professions are separate games, all developed by different developers. The first one coming out, Train Life: A Railway Simulator, is made by Simteract, whose previous game is Carpool Simulator. In Train Life, you drive the trains and manage the development of your company. You can perform every job on a rail line single-handedly, while retaining the chirpy demeanor of a billionaire trying out a profession for the Gram.

But then you’ll move on to Cyanide’s Chef Life: A Restaurant Simulator, where you manage everything from supplies and cooking to serving tables. In the trailer, you can see her piling up two steaks and placing a basil leaf on top of them. This utterly revolting concoction somehow translates into a raging success in a single day, which clearly isn’t enough for our hero, who abandons her venture before the fish starts to smell.

Bored after successfully launching a hospitality business in a single nanosecond? Why not branch out with Hotel Life: A Resort Simulator by RingZero? It’s not enough that you designed and built the entire hotel. As the store page says: “You are responsible for all aspects of their holiday from check-in to check-out (cleaning, tidying, food, entertainment, etc.) until you have the means to hire qualified staff to do these jobs for you.”

Life’s different games will be out at various points in the coming years. Train Life is out on July 15th.