This game is a life simulation game coming out in early access this year (the beginning of June). Simmer Erin reported that it is coming out in May (on my birthday), but the date was changed on their offical webpage.

The game looks a lot like Second Life, but it is mixing The Sims' elements with multiplayer games, like Second Life and Roblox.

Here is their offical webpage! There is a lot of content in this game already, such as pets, jobs, NPCs powered by AI (kind of worried about that), 200 branded stores, skills, traits, transportation (bikes and skooters), minigames and more...

I don't like how the graphics look, but it seems like Project Renee will have real competition, and that makes me kind of amused!

A trailer video for anybody that is curious.

Yooca: Your Life — A New Open World Social Life-Sim (Official Trailer)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dJzVFFfqeM

I'm confused by what I'm guessing are mini games within the game?

Not only is the game free but you can "earn actual coupons valid at real stores near you in Malaysia." I hope that they will cover airfare as well; I did not check it out but a roundtrip from where I live to Malaysia must be rather costly.

Many moons ago I met a wise old man who told me that there is no such thing as a free lunch. I wonder what the catch will be; my bet is on special perks players will need to win all those games. But, of course, I am curious and I still have some lives left so I wishlisted it and I will certainly take a look at it - after I will be sure there is no malware involved.

Also, congratulations to Casimir for dodging the bullet on his birthday.

Looks a little asset flippy, but I guess I can give them credit for it look relatively playable. I think most of the NPCs are just set dressing though. There's a lot of mention about "investing" and "brands" which puts it a bit on the sketchier side for me.

Now that I have seen the trailer, I must say that those animations are looking rough. But, the game will be in early access.

Does anyone get a little bit of LBY vibes from this? Both games had very rough animations and body proportions (RIP LBY).

I do not think it is a scam though. Simmer Erin posted a pic of the team making this game. Here is the video. I guess it is a real team. I know it is diabolical to think that way, but maybe this photo is stolen or a very realistic AI-generated photo?

The game truly is kind of sketchy because it clearly lacks artistic vision...

I don't think it is a scam either, at least not in the usual "grab the money and run" sense - after all, there will be no money to grab at the beginning. On the other hand, those 20+ people don't look like altruistic millionaires to me; they made the game to make money and the only question is, how? The game will certainly be playable up to a point, but sooner or later we'll hit a paywall; if nothing else, those locked items certainly smell of microtransactions. I think it would be much better if the developers just told us where the walls will be.

As for the game itself: so far, it looks like a very poor relative of InZOI and feels rather clumsy (which does remind me of LBY); maybe this will change after early access, or maybe not. At this point it is also impossible to judge how effectively they will use AI but at least for now, I am not very optimistic.

I guess it depends on their goal as a life sim. If they plan for characters to be highly customizable and unique, then using premade assets like it seems they have is a mistake. They'll run into the same problems that the LBY team did (building an entire system around flawed characters and being unable to truly fix it)

If it's just a placeholder, ok, but I figure by early access, at the very least the character system should be pretty feature complete. After all, people will be creating forever characters presumably.

And again, I feel like this is much more similar to GTA than what I imagine a life sim to be. (family, aging, multiple characters, etc)

Being my usual suspicious self, why would any brand ( never mind 30 of them) want to be part of the game that looks like this? I'm over the whole early access thing. A person can't throw a stick without bumping into some game dubbed 'early access' that never seems to come out of 'early access'. Publish games that are finished or go pound sand. Early access is a scam at this point IMO. I don't fuck with the gaming industry anymore because of this among other things. My yapping is not the same as these bozos ( the gaming industry) trying to live in my wallet.

If I were a CEO and a gaming company wanted to use my name and product as assets in a game, that 'deal' better have a paper trail, a license agreement and I better be making money from it. I'm not talking about people running to the store or to a website to order my product, I mean getting a cut from game sales for using my product. Said game is going have polish, be clean, playable, ect...

The whole Malaysia thing is a problem. I have nothing against Malaysia, but as it has been pointed out, who is going to spend a few thousand dollars to cash in points or whatever they're doing? Nobody.

Steam will post anything and doesn't review anything, so they can't be trusted either. Bot reviews are not reviews as bots don't play games.

I understand the monopoly EA has on the life sim genre needs to put through a paper shredder, but messing with stuff like this isn't it. It has red flags written all over it. If people want to send EA a message, stop giving them money. It is the only language they understand and when they don't get it, the dancing monkeys suddenly appear. i.e- EA moving TS4 kits to the marketplace only to have to remove them because their plan didn't work the way they wanted.

If anybody is actually interested in this; wait. Wait for game play, reviews and see what happens.

One day, one of these games will turn out to be a real find, but I must admit, I am past the stage of leaping in and hoping for the best.

The problem is that Steam games are all over the place and you hardly ever know what exactly you will get. I have two games that are in perpetual early access, Saelig (a realistic medieval Sims-like game; launched in 2017) and Mashinky ("a transport strategy game", mainly about trains; launched in 2018); both have been perfectly playable for years but developers obviously feel that EA status gives them more freedom to tinker with their game. On the other hand, I've encountered quite a few cash grabs - launch a seemingly attractive game, never touch it again and disappear. Such games are mostly still available: even after players post warnings all over the place Steam does nothing about it.

Free games are yet another problem. Some are excellent, made by people who have something to say and say it well, in every sense. (I'll name but one, Missed Messages; it is what I call an adult game - not about sex but about really hard life problems, certainly worth playing but not for everybody.) Others are studies, so to speak, for bigger projects and most are not very good but not very bad either, basically harmless. "Cozy games" are a relatively new arrival but they are all over the place by now, free or payable, and Yooca is the only one I know that combines "cozy" with "Sims-like"; a very attractive and therefore potentially a very dangerous combination - dangerous for players who will get addicted to it.