The Game of Life

Masc looking person and femme looking person and two children in a car driving on a yellow road. Text reads 'The Game Of Life'.
I love The Game of Life (the proper board game). It lets me live out a fantasy life in which I actually have a full time job and can afford a house. The digital versions do give you that – but they’re a little inconsistent on whether or not they also let you choose who you marry.

It turns out there are actually two digital versions of this game: a free one that can be downloaded online, and one you can buy through Steam. Thankfully, the free one allows you to choose a spouse of either binary gender, and there are several options for each, but the Steam version just sort of forces you to marry who it wants. There’s no choice, just ‘you got married!’ I was pretty disappointed. Though, to be honest, playing a board game like that by myself and losing to bots was a fairly depressing experience anyway. This is not a game that’s full of thrills.

You should play this if…

You don’t have friends around the play the real version with and you have an overwhelming craving for some immediate Game of Life action. If you’re going to play it, you should absolutely play the free version – it was superior to the Steam version in every way that I could see.