For fish-out-of-water photographer Naomi Hayward, a pond-hopping trip to the quiet little burg of Rainy Woods seems like a grim errand. She’s a New Yorker (and quick to remind others of this fact) but distressed by where her mounting debts and gigs have landed her, yet frequently counters her bitterness with an irreverent cheerfulness. It’s this dichotomy and contrast that informs much of The Good Life, the newest release by White Owls Inc. and video game director Hidetaka Suehiro, aka SWERY, and it's well in line with his oeuvre while also feeling noticeably hampered on the Nintendo Switch.
Naomi’s arrival to town introduces her to a few of its eccentric inhabitants, an assortment of conspicuous weirdos which include a hotel manager haunted by the angel of death, an anthropomorphizing camera tech, and a punk pub bartender. There’s nary a single character in The Good Life that doesn’t have a twist or wrinkle to disarm any surface-level trope, and all of them have fleshed-out daily routines and schedules to study. These are elements Naomi can exploit to complete a variety of photo challenges and quests, let alone the emergent murder mystery that comes to the fore in the first ¼ of the game.
Naomi tends to slip into profanity - itself a nice contrast to the exterior sweetness of her environment - but often reacts with a simple sunniness that does not seem to be intended sarcasm. While Deadly Premonition was beholden to Twin Peaks in myriad ways, The Good Life has plenty to compare as well, with occasional darkness, pop culture references, and, plentifully crude design.
The Good Life has a very dated overall look. The lighting is atrocious, texture work is bland and phoned-in, and Naomi controls very stiffly, whether in animal or human form. There’s an early shapeshifting animal ability obtained where she can become a dog or cat at a whim, and it factors into several different game mechanics.
On that last note, mechanics are an aspect in which The Good Life never really falters. There are a bevy of hunger, sleep, health, and stamina bars to maintain, among others, all of which Naomi will need to keep topped up with cooked dishes and drugs. Fail to do so and she “dies,” to be resuscitated at the Rainy Woods animal hospital at considerable cost. These life sim elements can be an amusing distraction in their own right, though they just as frequently get in the way of questlines. Still, much like other life sims, things get easier farther on into the game, and early distractions like gardening and hunting in cat form evolve into methods to master Naomi’s draining stats.
The photography component is also a potentially nice touch and becomes the primary method of income, although cameras and upgrades like alternate lenses break down, requiring more in-game busywork to resolve. It can be hard to tell whether The Good Life prefers players to pursue the various story threads as they present or frustrate them with fetch quests, janky controls, sluggish run speeds, and “deaths.” To say the game has a pacing problem somewhat calls its basic structure into question; for instance, quests can only be taken on one at a time, forcing constant returns to target locations that were not able to be resolved on an earlier visit.
When everything is flowing in The Good Life, it feels like a touch of Animal Crossing with alternatingly quaint and irreverent British pastoral television, all with a burgeoning murder mystery underneath. Unfortunately, some of its rougher edges seem possibly related to the Switch itself and, although loading times are usually on the shorter side, their frequent appearance interrupts the flow even more. The Rainy Woods residents are charming and strange and there’s a numbingly pleasant feel to smalltown life and chores, but stiff controls and muddled design make it hard to find a good rhythm in The Good Life.
The Good Life is out now on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. A digital Nintendo Switch code was provided to Screen Rant for the purpose of this review.