A Day in the Life

haha honestly, this relates so much but also, I can survive without breakfast for awhile 🤨😂 didn’t feel realistic (kidding kidding!!!)  the gameplay feels like the past few days for me which is freaky. It makes me feel connected with you, or at least the character, knowing that someone has had the same experiences or the experiences I have are now out there for people to feel and understand. I noticed it has the same theme as your project 1 game, Have you felt/experienced all of the options you gave? Or just only a few and guessed on the experience for the others?

The first game that comes to mind when I think of a happiness point system is the Sims. Although not completely the same, it reminds me of their moods and aspiration bars that depend on you taking care of your sim as well as doing things they want to do. It also reminds me of Catt Small's game Sweetxheart, and the stress meter that changes based on your decisions.

This is very similar to the game I played earlier about nostalgia. Not necessarily in the exact theming, but in the way you live through life, that may have memories similar to your own. For example, while this game doesn't perfectly replicate a day in my life, it does have choices that I would make or remind me of other days I have had as a college student. Similar to the way Nostalgia made me reminisce on memories of my life in the past.

this is definitely working within the "social simulation" genre, though I wonder which tone you should lean into. There's a way where the story can be more earnest, but I do like the light comedy and specificity you engage with. There's a unique worldview and presence of the narrator, and I really think leaning into that specificity can really carve out this "totally-accurate" college student simulator from the rest of them.

It’s interesting how the whole day is measured simply in happiness points. I wonder if there ever is some merit to losing happiness points, like in real life with delayed gratification. Maybe the point isn’t how many happiness points can we get in a day, but how we can keep it balanced to be happy and productive. I wish I could see a breakdown of the scenes meant for certain scores which could provide insight on what the dev’s meaning is.

I really like how the author present daily life, it’s almost like the real life for common university students.

You gave us a lot of options to choose how we go through our day, which I really like! I like that the options range from self care to full on grinding, which is pretty realistic as a college student. Also all the text being italicized gave me this feeling the text was slowly expanding as if I was feeling tired, which was so real. I like that if you don’t maintain your happiness, you get a game over.

The grey, minimalist aesthetic of the game conveys the mundane daily life of a college student really well! Even the italicized words make the game feel like the day is lazily drifting away.

The gamification of the certain choices with "happiness" points really helps lend itself the ability for players to feel the "logic" of apathy in real life. We always do things in real life for a reason.

i love how restarting the game takes me to a different prompt each time (at least it seems that way), incentivizes playing again, feels like i’m making decisions in real time

I like how the different pathways all seem realistic to actual college student behavior. I have definitely done a couple of those things, though drinking spoiled milk thankfully isn’t what of them! Sleeping in however and passed my alarm however, is pretty common…