LIVORA

This breaks my heart to write this review, but after reading the new player guide, the quickstart guide and trying to start a new life, I am overwhelmed. I like the concept a lot. I like the idea of having to manage different stats for your character. The problem is that there isn't really any guidance when you begin a game. I would really like a guided tutorial of sorts, a guided loop so that we can actually use the UI while it's being explained to us, what it means, etc. I'm also disappointed in that you can't start your own life from birth. People's lives are often shaped by their childhood and plays a defining role in how one navigates their adulthood. That's not a game breaker for me though; just a preference. As if right now, I have to give it a thumbs down. I hope the developers can make it easier to learn how to play the game. While the guides do explain the UI, I would like actual guidance before playing the game for real, not just something to read. Hopefully with improvements, this will be fixed! I'll keep an eye on this game, and hopefully I will change this into a thumbs up in the future.

I was really excited for this, but right now I don't think it's playable. Its gameplay consists of 2 elements - the UI and the writing, and both are... broken. I don't know what resolution/display this is designed for but on my PC at 1080x1920 UI elements overlapped one another, some messages were unreadable. The writing reads like it has been machine translated from another language, it really doesn't make sense a lot of the time.

I thought LIVORA was going to be a pretty simple life sim, but I ended up getting into it a lot more than I expected. Most of the game for me was reading what was happening, checking where I was with money, bills, work, health and relationships, then trying to pick the option that wouldn’t cause me problems later. Some choices seem small at first, but after a while you start noticing how everything connects. I’d focus too much on one thing and then realise another part of my life was starting to slip. It’s not a fast game, but I don’t think it needs to be. The fun is in trying to keep your life moving without everything falling apart. Money, rent, stress, family, work and health all keep pulling at you, and it makes even normal decisions feel important. What I liked most is that I wanted to start again after playing. I kept thinking about what I could do differently next time and whether I could build a better life with different choices. Really enjoyed it. Definitely worth playing if you like life sims and choice-based games.