Time Travel: 2014

In fact, except for Lin Hui who is sure that "Life Restart Simulator" will be popular.

Most people did not expect this explosive situation.

What the hell? Why did this game become so popular?

Although it was not expected initially, the market has given a clear response.

Countless people working in the game industry have started to think about how the game "Life Restart Simulator" became so popular!

Dong Jiaqi is the game editor of Play Alliance, a long-established domestic game forum.

At first, when she saw some screenshots of "Life Restart Simulator", she felt like this?

It's just a boring and low-cost word game.

Originally, she planned to criticize directly.

But as she learned more about it and discovered various sand sculpture mechanisms, she suddenly found it interesting.

Although it doesn't really "restart life" as advertised by the game.

But she was still hopelessly "stuck" after restarting it once.

This game is like restarting life almost a hundred times.

This is really a bit magical...

Although game editors are not experienced in many battles, they have seen a lot of various games!

Why is she so out of control?

Or why is this game so fascinating?

Dong Jiaqi couldn't figure it out.

I even feel like I have been abandoned by the times.

To be honest, she felt that the popularity of several popular games this year was inexplicable.

The previous "Don't Step on the White Block" is like this!

The rules of the game are very simple, as the name suggests, just don't step on the white blocks and that's it.

This simple game has been out of control since it was launched on the App Store on April 16 this year.

It has topped the free game list in more than 40 countries and regions around the world, and ranked in the top ten in more than 100 countries or regions.

In May this year, it also ranked first in the global game download list (iOS + Android). In less than 3 months after the game was launched, the cumulative downloads exceeded 100 million.

Compared with "Don't Step on White Blocks", the popularity of "Life Restart Simulator" is actually not exaggerated.

I'm going a bit far, let's go back to "Life Restart Simulator".

Although she does not fully understand the deep thinking of developers, this does not prevent her from writing an article with empathy.

Usually, many of her articles are only from the perspective of players.

Dong Jiaqi typed the title without thinking - "The Secret of the Popularity of Life Restart Simulator"

Then she started to write about her feelings while playing this game:

Recently, a mysterious game called "Life Restart Simulator" has been circulating in the circle of friends...

At first glance, this little game is really amazing. It's unremarkable to the extreme, with white text on a black background at the beginning, one button, no commentary, no art, no sound effects, and even no ads.

"I don't want to stay in this garbage life for a second anymore", so do I want to start a new life?

"Restart immediately", then select a talent card for your new life to use for cheating, and then set the initial attributes like God pouring condiments, and then you can "start a new life".

Although I don’t know the specific creation process of the game, I can still judge based on my long-term experience in dealing with game producers.

It takes half a day to write the plan and draw the prototype for this game. It’s hard to say the copywriting + matching table, but I feel that it won’t take too long to complete.

As for the core content of this program, I think it will take one more day to get it done. After all, everyone can see how "simple" this game is.

Don’t get me wrong, “shabby” here is not a derogatory term.

It is this simple game that has harvested over 100 million traffic and accumulated 4 million players. The topic has been read 50 million times and discussed more than 50,000 times on the bib software.

What magic does it have?

Let me tell you about myself.

When I started the game for the first time, I was very careful when drawing cards and selecting initial attributes - after all, the initial attributes were only 20 points, and it did take some struggle to reasonably allocate them to "appearance," "intelligence," "physique," and "family background."

However, I soon stopped worrying and even chose to randomly assign the initial attributes.

Because I found that even if you choose to have full physical fitness, you may die at the age of 3;

Even if you draw the "1 in a million" card, you can still only marry as a wife;

Even if your IQ is only 0, you may still become a "technological pioneer" and change the world.

And I feel as if the designer is telling players that whatever you choose is useless, and life will not develop according to the trajectory you want.

This kind of design is actually quite depressing...

What to choose? Life is meaningless.

Think about it from another perspective, does the designer want to express that life is meaningless, so everyone should live happily for the rest of their lives?

I simulated a life. I was born in a rural area as a girl. From growing up to taking exams, getting married and having children, people around me died one by one, and I also came to the end of my life. I spent a "a bit rough but... A fulfilling life.”

It seems ordinary, but isn't that what the world is like?

Maybe what we are simulating today is the life that someone in the world is going through.

Players can feel the overlap with reality from the game, and experience the truth that is common to reality, which will deepen the bond between players and the game, and also allow us to look back on our lives from time to time and find new philosophies.

I have seen some people on the forum say that this game cannot be called a game, it can only be called a string of code.

Indeed, this game seems to be completely programmed, and there is no actual operation experience at all when playing.

For some players, they still prefer to wait for a game where their destiny is in their own hands.

But why is "Life Restart Simulator" still so popular?

I think it boils down to contrast.

The designers deliberately condensed the game settings to the extreme, but the laid out world view was as rich as possible, even incorporating many elements such as cultivating immortals.

This gives players a feeling of contrast between simplicity and complexity.

This contrast stimulates our desire to explore.

Let us put our body and mind into it unconsciously.

And when we get involved, the Easter eggs with certain connotations will bring us new surprises...

…

Next, Dong Jiaqi elaborated on many in-game details.

After that.

After feeling that the number of words in the article was almost enough, Dong Jiaqi began to finish the article:

When we look back at our lives from the game, we will find that no matter how exciting the game is, in reality, we still have our own things to be busy with.

It is true that we can constantly "restart" life in the game and create a perfect ending to escape the unsatisfaction in reality, but the most important thing to manage well is the life we ​​are experiencing. After all, our lives are the only ones that cannot be "restarted", and we should rely on our own efforts to create some warm or regret-free endings.

Just as some players commented on "Life Restart Simulator": "One life is equal to ten thousand lives. To experience life, one life is enough."

After a while, a passable game review was done.

After carefully reviewing it several times, Dong Jiaqi clicked publish.