OpenLifeSim Demo: Play the Life Simulation Game Before Release

OpenLifeSim Demo: Play the Life Simulation Game Before Release

TL;DR: There's still a long road ahead before the full release of OpenLifeSim, so I'm shipping the game in pieces. As soon as a part is playable — not necessarily finished — it goes into the free demo on the openlifesim.com main page. First up on the roadmap: a Zoo Owner special career.

Why I'm releasing a demo instead of waiting

Building a life simulation game is slow work, and waiting for a single "finished" launch means nobody gets to play anything for a long time. So I've decided to release parts of the game as a demo instead.

The rule I'm using is simple. The moment I consider a part of the game playable — not necessarily polished, not necessarily complete — I'll add it to the demo on the main page. You'll be able to try it in your browser, and I'll get real feedback while the design is still easy to change.

I hope this approach will help the site gain some traction ahead of the full release, and give the game a small community before it's technically finished.

New feature: the Zoo Owner career

While everyone was watching the solar eclipse this week, I was thinking about what to add next — and I landed on a Zoo Owner special career.

The idea, in short:

• Buy and collect animals to build out your zoo
• Hire and manage staff to keep everything running
• Earn a small daily bonus for logging in every day

It's a career path with a bit more management depth than the standard jobs in the game, and it fits the kind of long-term progression a life sim is good at.

How soon?

Sooner than you'd think. AI makes development very quick these days — though it still takes around four or five iterations to get any given feature right — so the Zoo Owner career should reach the demo shortly.

Try it

The OpenLifeSim demo is live on the openlifesim.com main page. It's free, it runs in the browser, and it grows every time another piece of the game becomes playable.