Looking for a life simulator game that doesn’t come as full-featured as BitLife — a game which we have been covering extensively — but is just as addictive while also being easier to pick up? We suggest you check out LifeSim, a new iOS and Android simulation game from HyperGames. The company doesn’t seem to have any other available titles, but this appears to be a very promising first effort, as this game allows you to “live your dream life” as a top actor, businessman, or politician. You’ll start out out at the bottom as you choose your name, appearance, and occupation, before working your way all the way to the top as you earn more money, buy more houses, vehicles, and other items, and meet the man or woman of your dreams and start a family. However, you’ll also have to prepare for random challenges that you may encounter along the way, as well as ensure that you aren’t sacrificing your well-being in the name of becoming rich and famous!
That’s pretty much what LifeSim is about in a nutshell, but just how can you achieve a lot in your chosen career in the quickest possible time? That’s what we’re here for in this new LifeSim beginner’s guide, where we detail nine tips and tricks designed for new players, covering everything you need to know in order to earn more money and become more prominent in your field sooner rather than later. So stay with us and check out our LifeSim beginner’s guide for tips, cheats and strategies and find out how to become a money tycoon!
1. The Basics – This Is A Time Management Game Above All
Although the name of the game may suggest that this is something similar to the likes of BitLife, the slight similarities pretty much end with the name. LifeSim is a game designed for the more casual gamers out there — while BitLife has your characters starting out with varying stats (hence much of the challenge behind it), with varying career paths each of them can take depending on the many, many variables that could come into play, LifeSim is strictly about time management, making this more similar to the average “be a celebrity” strategy game. Regardless of the career you wish to enter — Start-Up, Show Business, or Politics — you’ll start out at the bottom, having just turned 18 and presumably fresh out of high school as a newly minted adult, with no variable stats of any kind that may make your character smarter, better-looking, healthier, or happier than another character in another play-through. You will be able to customize your character’s name, gender, hairstyle, skin color, and facial hair, however, and your success in the game will all depend on how well you’re able to balance your time while ensuring that you remain healthy and happy and don’t go broke.
As the game’s tutorial will show you, your path to success will be guided by the Career tab found on the bottom of your screen — the second button, in between Shop and Relationship. Each time you repeat an action under Career — you’ll have to repeat actions so many times before you complete a task and move on to the next — you will lose some Health (as designated by the red bar/energy drink on top of your screen, below your Energy indicator) and some Happiness (the yellow bar/smiley underneath your cash indicator). Regardless of the Health and Happiness points you may lose, you will expend the amount of energy indicated in the “To Complete” area. But that’s where things may get a bit challenging if you’re just starting out in the game.
You will also be informed in the tutorial stage that tasks will cost you less energy if your Health and Happiness are above 70, and conversely cost you more energy than usual if both figures are below 30. You certainly would want to avoid the latter if you want your energy to last, but there are ways to increase your Health and Happiness, as shown in the tabs of the same name underneath Resources (or if you tap on their respective bars on top), which contain various one-action tasks that could improve each respective stat. Next to those tabs is Cash, where you can do odd jobs to earn more in-game common currency — likewise, doing an odd job under Cash will cost you Health, Happiness, and Energy, and the above-70/under-30 rule will still apply here.
2. Watch Ads To Speed Up Your Progress
LifeSim offers no shortage of videos for you to watch, and you’ll likely spend a lot of time watching video after video, even if it’s the same old 30-second ads replaying over and over again. If you want to progress quickly through your chosen career, you’ll need energy, and you’ll also need to be happy and healthy enough so that you don’t waste too much energy. The game comes with options that allow you to earn 45 units of Energy (out of a full 200), as well as gain 30 Health or 30 Happiness (out of a full 100) by watching a short ad video, so make sure you take each possible opportunity to watch those ads so that you can keep moving forward.
In addition, the game lets you watch videos in order to double your salary — your current salary will go up as you reach certain points in the Career tab, and once the Cash bar fills up entirely, you can claim your salary and allow one month to pass by in game time. (Completion of tasks could also cause one month to pass — salary isn’t exactly monthly in this game!) However, you also have the choice of watching an ad video to double your pay, while hitting the “x” button and going back to the main screen will allow you to click on the video option on the upper right corner (below your Happiness bar) and earn yet another bonus month of pay without letting any in-game time pass by.
Yes indeed, this is a game that will let you watch a ton of videos, but it’ll all be worth it when it comes to your Energy, Cash, Happiness, and Health — in other words, all the four key stats you should be paying close attention to when trying to get promoted quickly and move on to bigger and better things in your field of work.
3. Improving Happiness And Health And Earning Money On The Side
We already touched on this in the first tip, but we’re going to break things down a little more as we discuss what you can find in the Health, Happiness, and Cash tabs.
For both the Health and Happiness tabs, you’ll start out with just one activity each as an 18-year-old who’s just getting started in their chosen career. For Health, that will be Walk in the Park, which normally costs 5 Energy and results in a gain of 6 Health per action, and for Happiness, the first available task is Go to the Cinema, which costs 5 Energy and increases Happiness by 7 points per action. But as you celebrate new birthdays in multiples of three — that would be your 21st, 24th, and 27th birthdays, and so on — new tasks will become available that cost a similar amount of Energy but result in substantially bigger increases in Health and Happiness. For example, Yoga Classes (unlocks on your 21st birthday) will still cost 5 Energy, but will result in 9 additional Health points per action, while Bike Ride (unlocks on your 24th) costs 6 Energy and boosts Health by 12 points per action.
With the Cash tab, the new types of side jobs will appear depending on what you’ve achieved in your career so far, and the energy cost/bonus cash per action will vary rather substantially. For example, the first odd job, Distribute Flyers, earns you 50 cash per action and costs 5 Energy, while Wash Cars, which is the third, gets you 144 cash for 12 Energy. Later on, Place Ads on Your Channel will get you 276 cash for 12 Energy — this means you’ll definitely want to perform more of the latter task and less of the former if you want to earn more cash per energy units spent! That’s basically the key when it comes to earning extra cash — you want to spend as little energy and earn as much cash as possible.
4. Start A Relationship
At some point in the game, you’ll need to get into a relationship with someone, as reaching certain Relationship levels would be essential in getting hired for some higher-paying jobs under the Career tab. It all starts out with the basics — swiping right a certain number of times on Tinder, attending dating classes and speed dating events — but once you reach the second level, you’ll have a partner of your own whom you could eventually marry and have a family with — you may even reach the point where you and your partner are ready to have grandchildren before the age of 40, though we doubt that that’s something you’ll want in this game due to the catches involved in the Relationship feature.
The best thing about the Relationship feature is the fact that some actions could really improve your Health and Happiness stats — Hire a Nanny for Children, for instance, adds 30 to the former stat and 20 to the latter, while costing only 8 Energy units. But herein lies the catch, as each time you tap on To Complete for the Hire a Nanny task, you’ll be spending 2,156 cash per action! That’s quite the pretty penny in the in-game universe, so don’t rush through these high-cost tasks even if it means a huge boost in Health and/or Happiness.
Of course, being in a relationship isn’t all happiness and sunshine, as there are circumstances in which your romance may hit a small snag that will take its toll on your Health, Happiness, and/or Cash. In fact, these small snags — and unexpected blessings, relationship-related or otherwise — may pop up elsewhere in the game, as we’ll be explaining in our very next tip!
5. Beware Of Random Events
The road to success in LifeSim, just as it is in real life, is paved with surprises that may either be pleasant or unpleasant. And while we don’t want to burst anybody’s bubble, we have to warn you that the surprise events that take place in this game seem to skew toward the latter. Sure, you’ll still make progress in your career or relationship and you’ll still get the gain in Happiness, Health, or Cash that you were promised, but each of these three stats (sometimes more than just one) could take a hit, depending on the type of negative event you experience. Let’s take a look at the Take a Course of Vitamins task under Health — you can expend 6 Energy to get a 20-point Happiness boost, but if those vitamins give you diarrhea, you’ll lose 6 points under Happiness because that’s obviously something nobody wants to go through.
However, it’s not all unpleasant surprises in LifeSim, as some of the game’s random events could also be positive ones that could improve any of the aforementioned stats on top of the stated gains for the given task at hand. For example, you may have chosen Go to the Cinema under Happiness and gotten a 7-point Happiness boost, but if the movie turns out to be bad, you will get a refund from the theater in the form of a cash bonus.
Completing Health, Happiness, Cash, Career, or Relationship tasks aren’t the only situations where you may have to deal with random events. Sometimes, going to the main menu or starting the game after quitting out of it would trigger a random event — once again, brace yourself here, because based on our experience, about 60 percent of them tend to be negative!
6. Take Advantage Of Things When You Level Up And Time It Well
Completing certain Career tasks will allow you to level up, and once that happens, you will get your energy completely refilled, thus allowing you to theoretically do much more in one sitting before watching your next video. However, you could make much more out of your next level-up if you time things carefully and make sure your energy is as low as possible before you perform the last action/repetition before a Career task is completed — not all these tasks will allow you to level up, but a lot of them will.
In order to minimize your energy before this final action prior to task completion, you can also complete Happiness and Health tasks to get you above 70 for both stats by the time your energy gets a full refill upon level-up. Sometimes, you could find yourself catching up once your energy returns to 200 by completing actions under Relationship, Happiness, and/or Health, but you can avoid this by getting Happiness and Health up to a high level right before you’re due to level up.
7. Certain Tasks Require Purchasing Assets To Unlock
As is the case with most games in this genre, LifeSim occasionally requires you to purchase certain items with your in-game currency so that you can move on to the next stage of your career. So while you may not consider it a good idea to splash some cash on a new outfit or a new pet that — as far as we can see — doesn’t exactly offer much outside of unlocking a new task, you may want to purchase the next available outfit, pet, or vehicle if you can afford it. That could save you the burden of having to complete odd jobs under the Cash tab in order to earn more money and earn your salary faster so that you could purchase that new item sooner rather than later.
As a bonus tip, you can also “buy” outfits for your partner, though these are all for cosmetic purposes and generally won’t cost you any in-game cash. There are some items you can buy in the shop that will cost you some real-life money, but we generally do not recommend them — their main benefit is allowing you to achieve a new class in a certain category, e.g. Business class in clothes, but by being patient, you can reach this class simply by playing the game like you normally would and only buying Business class clothes, vehicles, houses, or whatnot when you can afford them with your in-game cash.
8. Earn More Cash By Completing Achievements
Aside from earning your salary (and doubling it through videos) and completing odd jobs, you can earn more money by completing achievements. These can be viewed by tapping on the trophy icon on the upper right hand corner of your screen, and as you can see, the achievements represent milestones you can reach by naturally playing the game. However, it is highly encouraged that you take note of the individual achievements, which may run the gamut from earning a certain amount of cash, accumulating a certain number of Happiness or Health points, or successfully completing the mini-games a certain number of times. Once you’ve taken note of the ones you believe you can complete the fastest, work toward doing so, because you could easily earn a few thousands per achievement completed! Of course, that might not sound like much in the grander scheme of things, but those thousands could add up quickly and could help you rebuild your cash balance after a big purchase — with that in mind, some achievements would require you to buy so many properties, vehicles, pets, or outfits, which means you could get some money back instantly after splurging.
9. Mini-Games – A Quick Primer
LifeSim comes with no shortage of mini-games which you could play in order to earn extra cash or improve your Health and Happiness stats. We’re going to deal with them extensively in a separate guide, but while we have you with us for this beginner’s/intermediate guide, we’re going to give you a quick backgrounder on the mini-games, and what you can expect when you access this menu and take a break from your career to, well, play some games and ostensibly relax and unwind away from the world of business, entertainment, or politics.
If you want to earn extra cash, you can either go to the Casino or Stock Exchange, with the former giving you the choice of Slots or Roulette, and the latter allowing you to purchase shares and to try to sell them once the share price is at its highest. For both options, the returns may not seem like much, but once again, those returns can add up as you keep playing those casino games or playing the stock market.
Going to the Karaoke bar could improve your happiness if you are able to hit the right notes as they light up, with the latter being the operative phrase — do not make the mistake of hitting the notes while they are approaching the end but not quite lit up yet! Meanwhile, you’ll want to go to the Gym if you want a Health boost — simply tap on the left or right arm icon before the bar runs out. For both mini-games, you’ll have a maximum three mistakes before you lose either Happiness or Health.
The Beauty Salon and Medical Center aren’t mini-games per se, but rather serve as places where you could customize your character even after you’ve started your career. The former establishment allows you to change their hairdo or facial hair, while the latter lets you change their name or gender. These changes, however, do not come free, so make sure you’re ready to push forward with those customizations before paying for them!
This would be all for now as far as our LifeSim beginner’s guide is concerned. There’s still a lot to cover about the game and we might be back with another guide in the near future, including additional tips and tricks. In the meantime, if you have discovered tips that you would like to share with us, then feel free to drop us a line!