The Use of Life
だらねこげーむず/Daraneko Games · 2025 · Choose Your Own Adventure, CRPG, Turn-Based Strategy, JRPG, RPG
PC
Very Positive91% · 811
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Screenshots
About The Use of Life
The Use of Life is a multi-ending adventure book style RPG.
In this game, your choices as the player will influence Goshe, the main character, as well as his thoughts and various attachments in life, represented by flames.
Whether Goshe uses his life for his own selfish purposes or sacrifices himself to help others is entirely up to you. The endings of this game are simply the conclusions of the various ways of life, and there are no "Good" or "Bad" endings.
The Use of Life features unique battles that combine the strategy of a turn-based battle system with the quick reflexes and action of a QTE system.
Each turn, both you and your enemy get to choose 3 actions, which you then take turns to perform. How will you deal with the enemy's upcoming flurry of attacks? How will you time your own attacks to deal the most damage? Your skill and strategy will determine the outcome of battle.
Even if you can't defeat an enemy, the game is designed so that you will gradually figure out how to deal with them and win. Boss battles are especially tense, where you frequently have to toe the line between life and death, and we strive to deliver the highest satisfaction you can possibly get after defeating a strong enemy.
Events in this game are narrated in an adventure book style, and some events come with TRPG-esque dice rolls that determine the event's outcome.
The same event will play out differently depending on your choices and the dice roll results.
You can choose to proceed cautiously and choose the safest options, or bravely throw yourself into every opportunity for battle you come across—it's all up to you, and your actions will affect Goshe's personality.
Goshe, the main character, obtains incredible power through a certain Curse. Through encounters with death, he can gain experience which can be used to strengthen his own abilities.
Not only will you gain different advantages in battle depending on what abilities you choose to invest in, but the outcome of events outside of battle can also be heavily influenced by your stats.
On top of that, by leveling up and unlocking new levels for the various classes, you can learn a wide variety of Skills and Spells to use in battle.
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・The "Fighter" carves up enemies with pure physical attack power and a high number of moves
・The "Samurai" unleashes unabashed power with Iai and lands fierce critical strikes
・The "Mage" specializes in high-risk, high-reward super-firepower using incantations and Spells
・The "Sorcerer" toys with their opponent by utilizing special attacks, including some that cause status ailments
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A myriad of fighting styles can be utilized depending on the class you choose to upgrade.
While this title is technically a JRPG, we are not aiming for a "good old JRPG" style, but rather a "good 'new' JRPG" style, in hopes of showing that this kind of evolution is absolutely possible.
A Story Influenced by Your Use of Life
In this game, your choices as the player will influence Goshe, the main character, as well as his thoughts and various attachments in life, represented by flames.
Whether Goshe uses his life for his own selfish purposes or sacrifices himself to help others is entirely up to you. The endings of this game are simply the conclusions of the various ways of life, and there are no "Good" or "Bad" endings.
Tense Battles that Balance Stasis and Action
The Use of Life features unique battles that combine the strategy of a turn-based battle system with the quick reflexes and action of a QTE system.
Each turn, both you and your enemy get to choose 3 actions, which you then take turns to perform. How will you deal with the enemy's upcoming flurry of attacks? How will you time your own attacks to deal the most damage? Your skill and strategy will determine the outcome of battle.
Even if you can't defeat an enemy, the game is designed so that you will gradually figure out how to deal with them and win. Boss battles are especially tense, where you frequently have to toe the line between life and death, and we strive to deliver the highest satisfaction you can possibly get after defeating a strong enemy.
Adventure Book Style Events
Events in this game are narrated in an adventure book style, and some events come with TRPG-esque dice rolls that determine the event's outcome.
The same event will play out differently depending on your choices and the dice roll results.
You can choose to proceed cautiously and choose the safest options, or bravely throw yourself into every opportunity for battle you come across—it's all up to you, and your actions will affect Goshe's personality.
Customization
Goshe, the main character, obtains incredible power through a certain Curse. Through encounters with death, he can gain experience which can be used to strengthen his own abilities.
Not only will you gain different advantages in battle depending on what abilities you choose to invest in, but the outcome of events outside of battle can also be heavily influenced by your stats.
On top of that, by leveling up and unlocking new levels for the various classes, you can learn a wide variety of Skills and Spells to use in battle.
----------------------------------------------------------------・The "Fighter" carves up enemies with pure physical attack power and a high number of moves
・The "Samurai" unleashes unabashed power with Iai and lands fierce critical strikes
・The "Mage" specializes in high-risk, high-reward super-firepower using incantations and Spells
・The "Sorcerer" toys with their opponent by utilizing special attacks, including some that cause status ailments
----------------------------------------------------------------
A myriad of fighting styles can be utilized depending on the class you choose to upgrade.
A “Good-New" Type of JRPG
While this title is technically a JRPG, we are not aiming for a "good old JRPG" style, but rather a "good 'new' JRPG" style, in hopes of showing that this kind of evolution is absolutely possible.
What Steam players say
Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.
While I very much like the story and consider it well thought out, emotional, and player choice being impactful despite the lack of clarity what your actions will do a lot of the time. I can't recommend the game due to how ridiculously brutal the combat is and the poor balance especially when it comes to end boss fights. Not going to bother with the hard mode, I'd say gameplay aside the game would be a 9/10 but I'm going to have to bump down my review score to 6/10. The only way to play late is poison, paralysis, and sword skills like samurai with those. Nothing else even remotely compares and the game would need a significant combat rebalance for other builds to be viable. A shame too because the game really shines outside of the combat, I just can't bring myself to play it again due to dying over and over and over to a single hit from an enemy due to your character being so weak and requiring perfect timing on every single hit of long combos and boss fights. Tedious to the point it drags the whole thing down. I'm sad that I have to be brutally honest here but it's true1 found this helpful
Such a great hidden gem. Play it if you like Expedition 33 or Paper Mario. Kinda hard though.
I cried in ending 3. The gameplay and the story are really well intertwined. All the final fights are so wild. You should really give this a shot and play at least the demo. It was what convinced me it was worth a shot, but the story is what pulled me in
A beautiful game. An incredible achievement by the developer. They should be proud.
Fun little game, normal difficulty provided a good challenge that lead me to die a few times but never game over. I only did one ending and really liked the one I got. If you like visual novels with some real gameplay and rpg elements this is an easy recommend
Great story with impressive writing. Music is awesome and love the art style. Make sure to go through both story branches as they are completely different.
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