Loving Life
Serenity Forge · 2024 · Emotional, Visual Novel, Interactive Fiction, Atmospheric, 2D
PC
Positive94% · 33
This game is free to play. Get it on Steam →
About Loving Life
"I cried, but not because I wanted to live longer. I cried because I realized how painful it would be for the ones who love me."
Loving Life is a short, non-fictional autobiographical visual novel created in 2012 by Zhenghua Yang (Z), the founder of Serenity Forge, as a reflection on a near-fatal incident that changed his life.
Story
At age 18, Z was a typical college student: driven by academic performance, struggling with family pressure, and wrestling with the viewpoints of his peers. However, as his first semester of college came to a close, his ordinary life would dissolve... with a 14 hour nosebleed and mere hours left to live.
Loving Life is Z's honest reflection of this episode of his life, weaving between prose, dialogue, and dream, as he traverses the deadly space between his present life, his past, and whatever that may come next.
Features
Loving Life was the first product released under the Serenity Forge label, and it marks an origin for the studio's commitment to emotional honesty, artistic experimentation, and narrative exploration. To commemorate Serenity Forge's 10th anniversary, we remastered and released on Steam with a raft of quality of life enhancements. Now, fans of the studio, new and old, can see where it all began.
- A Personal Reflection: As an auto-biographical VN, Loving Life tells its story with equal parts poetic recollection and honest conclusions. Read Z's memories, follow his thoughts, and live through his dreams as he navigates this profound episode in his life.
- Beautiful Visions: All of the game's art is hand-painted, from portraits of Z's friends to the surreal dreamscapes he traversed while in recovery.
- The Origin Story of Serenity Forge: Experience a story that reveals the cultural foundation of Serenity Forge, and that itself is an example of the studio's experimentation with games as vessels for meaning and emotional impact.
- Remastered for Modern Platforms: Play with modern conveniences such as font accessibility controls, audio controls, text speed adjustments, and select remastered assets, with corrections to visuals and rendering on modern monitors.
What Steam players say
Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.
Life can flip in a single afternoon, and you spend years learning how to breathe in the new version of it. What a wonderful way to tell that story.2 found this helpful
Felt more like reading a long text than playing a game. Couldn't stay interested.1 found this helpful
Originally released in 2012, Loving Life is a non-fictional auto-biographical visual novel about Zhenghua Yang (Z) and the near-fatal incident which led to the founding of Serenity Forge. This is where it all began.1 found this helpful
Recently I had the opportunity to speak with the developer and was introduced to this game. I had learned of his story through his TedX Talk so I was curious to see how it was told through the visual novel medium. It is spectacularly well told from his perspective at the time. I love how it shows how the mundane and repetitiveness of life can all halt in a moment with you realizing how it could all be over in an instant. Thank you for the experience Z! I hope many more get to experience this story as well.1 found this helpful
i enjoyed this a lot, after a lot of issues in life i can understand that such a big thing can change your perspective. being someone with my own issues i am yet to own it like he has. i hope someday i can be that way. this visual novel is short but great. im not usual into visual novels and what i like in games are hard to find. but with this i was thinking of my mental health and it made me try and find ways i can maybe gain loving life again,1 found this helpful
It was a well felt personal story game. Short enough to keep going until the end with a nice moral at the end.
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