The village being entirely populated by a cast of shapeshifting night-creeps doesn’t come up very often, partly because of how quickly a whole other mystery comes tumbling out of the mystery chute. Somehow, that little mystery is not what The Good Life is all about. You can pet them if you like, and eventually, after drinking a potion offered to you by a stranger, you can turn into a cat or a dog yourself. During each new moon the residents transform into friendly cats and dogs, who wander about the streets eating out of bins and wearing tiny hats and little waistcoats and such. Your first scoop is handed to you on night one. You play Naomi Hayward, a reporter sent from New York to work off her debts while digging up dirt on the postcard-perfect town of Rainy Woods. And in your final seconds of consciousness, and with the ride still running, your brain’s confused synapses concocted a dreamlike series of fetch quests punctuated by extended, inexplicable dialogue. The Good Life can be more specifically categorised as what it might look like if the Cotswolds were a poorly maintained Disneyland theme park ride on which you’d died, having become trapped inside one of the animatronic woodland creatures. You can also turn into a dog or a cat whenever you like. It can be broadly categorised as a daily life simulator - in the vein of Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing, but not like either of those - with a Pokémon Snap style camera mechanic in which you take photographs of interesting things and people about town for kudos and cash rewards. Like so many of Swery’s previous games, most notably Deadly Premonition, The Good Life is characteristically goofy and haphazard. The Good Life – which has nothing to do with the 1970s British television show about a couple of doom-prepping swingers who owned an allotment in Surbiton – is a colourful open world adventure in which you play an investigative photographer charged with uncovering the secrets of an idyllic English town.
It's tonally stupid and structurally broken, but also surprisingly deep and occasionally self-aware. The Good Life is a shambolic RPG that barely hold together, wrapped in the trappings of a rural life simulator.
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