BitLife Guide (Version 1.20 Update): Military Service, Birth Control and Pregnancies, Dating Foreigners, Emigration, Time Machine Explained

After mainly focusing on casual puzzle and word games such as What’s the Difference?, What’s the Pic?, and many others, Candywriter came up with something simple enough for casual gamers to enjoy, yet deep enough for anyone who likes a good life simulator game with a lot of twists, turns, and features. That game is BitLife, and it allows you to control the character of your choice (you can choose their name, gender, and hometown, or have the game create a random character for you) and make them live any kind of life you wish, with the usual goal being to collect all the available ribbons in the game. You can make them earn their millions in legal and illegal ways alike, make them fall in love (or play around), or allow them to make the best…or worst decisions they could possibly make in life – it’s all up to you, but keep in mind that this is an adult-oriented game designed for players aged 17 and above!

Although you may have seen it all when it comes to the different scenarios in the game, Candywriter keeps releasing new updates that add new features or make existing ones even better. Their latest update is v1.20, and in here, you can hearken back to those Minesweeper days in the military deployment mini-game, have children with multiple women within the same year (especially useful if you’re chasing the Scandalous ribbon while controlling a male character), and save battery life on your device, among many others. So join us for our new BitLife guide, where we shall break down all the new changes that have arrived with the game’s latest version, including military deployment, birth control and pregnancies, dating foreigners, family vacations, emigration, time machine plus many more.

Military Service – What To Do When You Get Deployed

As you may already be aware of, BitLife allows you to join the military straight out of high school – your characters can join the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, or Coast Guard, provided you have a high school diploma or GED, and if you work hard enough (and if certain stats are high enough), you can move quickly up the ranks. However, you may also be deployed to another country, where you will be asked to take part in a rather dangerous mission that could mean the end of your character’s life if you aren’t careful. What happens if you choose deployment, and how can you ensure that you return home in one piece?

Much like the Crime-related features involve the use of mini-games if you want to burglarize someone’s home or escape from prison, the deployment mechanic for characters in the military also involves a mini-game that, thankfully, does not involve any no-win situations, unlike the prison escape mini-game. In here, you will be asked to flag at least three land mines (depending on the size of the board) and clear the entire board without any mines exploding on you. If you clear a square on the board that doesn’t have any mines underneath it, you may see a number – this designates the number of surrounding squares that have a mine, may they be located horizontally, vertically, or diagonally from the mine. You may also clear a large block of squares by tapping on one, assuming there are several squares that are vacant. In short, think of this mini-game as BitLife’s answer to the Windows classic game Minesweeper.

If you successfully flag all the mines and clear all the other squares on the board, you will be given a medal for your gallantry, which you could choose to sell for money, display on your uniform, or opt not to wear. Unless you’re hard-up on cash, there’s no reason we see that would force you to sell your medal.

If you are NOT able to successfully flag all the mines, you will inevitably step on one while clearing out squares, and that would, in all cases we’ve observed, kill your character off due to your injuries. If it’s any consolation to those whose characters died after stepping on mines, this is, at least, a surefire way of earning that Hero ribbon and adding it to your collection.

Related: BitLife Careers Guide: How to Become a Detective, Family Physician, Dancer or a Graphic Designer

Now what happens if you decide not to be deployed? If you choose to value your life over your reputation, as the game will duly note in the dialog box, you will be reprimanded by your commanding officer…and discharged from service. As far as we’ve seen, the game will allow you to enlist in another branch of the military, so if you get discharged from the Navy for refusing to go on a dangerous overseas mission, you can always enlist in the Army, for instance. Or you can always return to school or opt for a white-collar or blue-collar job as a civilian. If your character’s Smarts stats aren’t exactly up there and they didn’t attend or finish college either, we would certainly recommend enlisting in another military branch, as you likely won’t have much to choose from aside from a number of menial jobs (Janitor, Telemarketer, etc.) in the civilian world.

Birth Control And Pregnancies

Aside from the aforementioned introduction of military deployments, the recent BitLife update also comes with a new birth control feature, as well as an overhauled pregnancy mechanic. What’s in it for you if your characters are at an age where they can start a family or choose to make it bigger?

To put it simply — If you’re controlling a female character, you could choose to go on birth control or go off it, while male characters, on the other hand, have the option of asking their female partners to go on or off birth control. Of course, it isn’t as simple as that, as you should always expect some resistance in some cases – your partner may or may not agree to your birth control-related request! This could cause some tension in your relationship, so it may be best to just roll with it unless you’ve got more children than you can afford or handle. You will definitely want to put your foot down if neither of you are making enough money to support a huge family – it may not seem obvious at first, but just wait until your kids reach college age and ask you to pay for their tuition!

Regarding the pregnancy mechanic, we all know a person or two – usually a celebrity – who’s fathered children with multiple women, or as they’re often known in popular culture, “baby mamas.” BitLife’s latest update now makes it possible for male characters to father more than one child a year, so if you’re gunning for a Fertile, Scandalous, or Wicked ribbon (usually the latter two), you might as well take advantage of this and have your characters go nuts with the hookups. (By that, we mean not using protection and making sure there’s enough money to get those STDs treated.)

As far as we’ve observed, however, we haven’t encountered any examples of male characters fathering two babies with a female partner. While it is possible in the real world to have two children (with the same partner) born about nine months apart from each other within the same calendar year, it seems that this comparatively rare occurrence has not yet been programmed into BitLife.

Around The World – Dating Foreigners, Going On Vacation With The Family, And Emigrating

In previous editions of BitLife, the game only allowed you to date men and women from the same country. However, the new update now allows you to randomly meet and date people from other parts of the world – this applies to all of the options under Love, meaning Date, Dating App, Hookup, and Threesome, as well as those random encounters while nightclubbing. It doesn’t add much to the path your characters’ lives may take as you progress onward in the game, though we’ve seen that it may increase the chances of your partner – especially if you eventually tie the knot – asking you to migrate to their home country with the rest of the family. (You can always choose to migrate back to your home country later on, though it’s not always guaranteed that your original home country will pop up among the options!)

In addition to the above mechanic, the game’s random events now include those where your parents may ask you if you want to join them on a family vacation, or ask you if you want to emigrate to another country. These events come up generally while your character is still a minor, so refusing to go on vacation/refusing to emigrate may result in a slight decrease in your relationship bar with your mother and/or father, depending on who makes the request.

Related: BitLife Relationships Guide: A Complete Guide to Exes and Flings

Conversely, you can also choose to take your family on vacation or emigrate to a new country once your characters have families of their own – their willingness to join you will all depend on their relationship bar status at the time – if they’re at odds with you, expect them to stay home while you have your fun and give your Happiness stat a boost!

Going Back In Time Via The Time Machine

In the real world, there’s no way to undo the bad decisions we made or go back in time to make the right choice. But BitLife now comes with a feature that allows you to do just that without having to “surrender” and have your character relive their lives from infancy. So if you chose the wrong job, made the wrong choices, or probably saw your stats go down due to one random event or another, you can take advantage of the all-new Time Machine feature and go back one, three, or five years into the past.

There is, however, one important catch to keep in mind when using the Time Machine – you’ll need to pay some real money in order to use it. The good news is that it will just cost you $1 USD or its equivalent in local currency, but the bad news is that the game will keep charging you a dollar if you make repeated travels back in time! That means you’ll need to have made a pretty big mistake in order to justify using the Time Machine – perhaps blowing your entire fortune (or close to it) in the Casino or in the horse races, getting taken to the cleaners after divorce when your ex-spouse walks away with most of your fortune, or contracting HIV during one of your character’s unprotected hookup sessions would justify that one-dollar expense.

Family Relationship Changes: Giving Gifts And Spending Time With Everybody

Any parent will tell you that it’s not easy dealing with multiple children, their own living parents, and in some cases, grandchildren born to their grown-up kids. That’s not even counting their (usually) many nephews and nieces! In the real world, the easiest way to spend time with all your immediate relatives is to organize or attend a family reunion. But since that option has yet to be introduced in BitLife, the game has nonetheless introduced a couple features in the latest update that make it more convenient to manage relationships with your spouse, your children, your parents, and even your nieces, nephews, and grandchildren.

The first feature would still require you to deal with individual family members, but it’s nonetheless a nice addition, as it allows you to send a variety of gifts to them. Generally, their appreciation level would depend on the cost of the gift, and if you send them a particularly cheap gift they don’t like (as indicated by red or orange appreciation), it could lead to some relationship problems – choose wisely, and generally speaking, save the gift-giving for those times when you need to mend a fractured relationship.

As for the second feature, this would simply require you to watch an ad video in order for your character to spend time with every living person on the Relationships menu – that’s parents, siblings, children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews. Now there’s a chance that some of your relatives may choose not to spend time with you, but that’s why the gift-giving feature is there – you may want to buy them something nice in order to get the relationship bar moving a bit before you visit them! Still, think about how easy it is – instead of tapping on every individual family member under Relationships, you can just watch a 30-second clip and let the game do the dirty work.

Other Changes – Dark Mode, Power User and Customizing Your Favorite Activities

We’ve already gone through the major changes you can expect from BitLife v1.20, so let’s move on to the miscellany and take a look at some of the other new things to look forward to when playing this game.

First, let’s start off with feature for the premium users out there – the official Bitizens who paid $4.99 to get rid of ads, gain access to the pet store, and now, enjoy BitLife in Dark Mode. Much like many an app or a device, the game now comes with a special mode that’s easier on the eyes (literally), as it changes the background to black and helps you avoid those all too common complications of staring too long at a screen with a white background. No longer do you have to worry about headaches and vision problems while or after marathoning the game – if this sounds like you, Dark Mode might be a good enough reason for you to pay up and become a Bitizen.

Related: BitLife Pets Guide: Tips & Tricks for Getting Pets

As for everyone else, Candywriter has introduced Power User, which is simply the company’s term for a power-saving mode that reduces in-game animations and makes the game more battery-friendly. While not as intense as your average graphics-heavy title, it’s still nice to have a mode that could allow you to enjoy the game for longer, even if your phone’s battery is running low and you don’t have access to a charger. This can be accessed by tapping the Main Menu tab on the upper left, choosing Settings, then Power User. (Dark Mode can also be turned on and off the same way, just in case you were wondering.)

Another small addition is the ability to customize your favorite activities. Committing burglaries more fun than playing the field in the dating scene? Prefer gambling at the casino or at the horse races than bulking up at the gym or reading a book at the library? The game now allows you to choose a custom set of favorite activities that will show up on the top of the screen instead of the standard Love, Mind & Body, Movie Theater, and Pets. Simply tap on the Main Menu tab on the upper left of your screen and go to Favorite Activities in order to customize these activities to your liking.

Of course, Candywriter also mentioned “more new scenarios” and “much more textual content” in their changelog – it may be a bit too much to discuss these scenarios in depth, but you’ll surely notice the difference as more random events take place and make your characters’ lives more varied across multiple play-throughs.