Lolife
At first, I really didn’t like Lolife. Well, more I just didn’t “get” it. Instead of being inspired by Link’s Awakening like Resonant Tale was, this one seemed more inspired by Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link, or Ys, or Hydlide, or SUKIMA, which – not necessarily worse, but definitely more inaccessible.
But as I died over and over and slowly started to understand the how and why of the very specific grind it was asking from me, the secrets started to unfold in a very Tunic way. And Tunic is amazing.
Lolife is an open-world RPG made in Pulp for the Playdate. There’s not really anything like it on the system, and it pulls no punches. It’s mean in the way that NES Zelda games are. Plop you down in this new world with nothing but your wits, and see how it goes. It’s going to go poorly, at first. That’s just how it is. Like Zelda 1, it won’t tell you where to go except by putting too-strong monsters in your path when you’re going in the wrong direction. Like Zelda 2, you’ll lose your accrued experience points if you die before banking them into a level up.
At level 1, there is only one kind of monster you’re able to kill with your weak little sword. After enough of them, you can beat slightly stronger monsters. Eventually, you won’t even earn experience points from the weak monsters, to always encourage you to fight creatures a little tougher than you can handle. Of course, you won’t know you can’t handle them until it’s too late, and you wake up back at the graveyard next to your own tombstone.
Once you figure out The Loop™, you’re able to start digging into The Secrets. It has almost Deus Ex levels of being able to do things in different ways. You can go in guns blazing, or find a key, or trick a guard, or sneak in through a hidden path. There are multiple endings, and there are achievements and a monster codex to point you in the right direction towards finding everything the game has to offer. It rewards multiple playthroughs, and one run can take 2 minutes or over an hour.
There are also Easy Mode accessibility options like double damage and invincibility, but they take away all of the friction. However, not sure I’d have as much fun running around looking for the rest of the secrets without them. And you don’t have to use them – you can be a hardcore gamer all you want!
Two different combat modes – turn-based or real-time – let you pick how hard you want to chase after certain enemies. The real-time felt frustrating at first, but it’s just another part that you figure out as you come to understand this game. They don’t make games like this anymore! Games that trust you, and punish you, and reward you, and keep so much inside that you have to pry out with a crowbar.
I didn’t like Lolife… at first. But there’s nothing else quite like this on the Playdate, and the fact that it was all done in Pulp, with a soundtrack by Initial Daydream’s James Gameboy? You gotta try it. If this is your kind of game, it will be VERY your kind of game.
(Coming June 10, 2025, to Catalog and Itch. Copy provided by developer.)