BitLife: Life Simulator

**BitLife: Life Simulator**, usually referred to as **BitLife**, is a mobile life simulator game created by developer CandyWriter LLC on September 29, 2018. The game utilizes a text-based format to try and create a somewhat accurate simulator while still having a strong level of playability and pessimistic humour. It has risen to be one of the most downloaded apps in both the Google Play Store and App Store in 2019. In October 2018, the app made its official accounts on Twitter and Reddit and in February 2019, it launched a YouTube channel. On October 18, 2019, BitLife starting selling their own merchandise.

## Gameplay

When first playing *BitLife*, you will see the main menu appearing, consisting of different options: *"New Life"*, *"Cemetery"*, *"Settings"*, ".

[Please insert main menu's image here.]

Tap "New Life" in order to play it. You will be given two options: to start a "Random Life", or to start a "Custom Life".

[Please insert name thingy image here.]

And now you will see this.

[Please insert image here.]

### **Childhood (0 - 18 years old)**

Once a new life is created, your character (*"you"*) are now in the *Infant* stage. The app first displays your character's parents and their occupation, your date of birth, star sign, how you were conceived, and your siblings or pets if you have any. Your character will start out with a random set of Stats, with happiness and health usually very high. To add one year to your character's life, press the "Age' button, which is displayed at the middle.

#### Schooling

At age 6, you will begin elementary (or primary) school, also entering the *Student* stage. You will attend high (or secondary) school within the age of 10-15, which varies in nations. Following the School Update of September 2019, characters may interact with school faculty and classmates and can join activities, clubs, cliques, and sororities/fraternities in countries where those appear.

### **Adulthood (From 18 years old)**

A character will graduate and get a driver's licence if they haven't already, depending on where they are from. They can seek higher education, get a job, join the military, or take time off. The stage of life will say *Student* if they chose higher education, *Unemployed* if they took time off, or their job position if they got a job or joined the military. If a character is unemployed full-time but has a part-time job, the part-time job will show up as their stage. If they have a part-time job but are not unemployed, it will show their *Student* or job/military position.

Adults have more options in the Activities, as many activities require a character to be 18 or over regardless of nation.

While 18 is legal adult age, a character cannot adopt, get sterilised, have a vasectomy, have tubed tied, or have IVF until they are 25. However they can manage birth control as young as 14.

## Criticism

### **Inappropriate Content**

While BitLife is not a children's game; some attributes were lessened. These include changing its primary app logo from a sperm to a baby in the womb (while the sperm remains secondary), removing the "Abort x10" achievement and changing "Get an abortion" to "Don't keep the baby", and changing "assault" to lesser terms such as "charge" or "rumble".

### **iOS vs Android versions**

Being released later than iOS, and with a developer company originally specialising in iOS features, Android users were often very behind in their updates. In addition, BitLife put more focus on their updates to iOS as many things were missing in Android and iOS was being advertised more on social media. However Android has not been ignored as Candywriter has hired new developers to update Android quicker. For the first time ever, an Android update preceded an iOS update when the limited-time Haunted update was released in October 2019.

While the iOS version is more advanced than Android, it is not without criticism. In February 2020, the *Mind & Body* update came out, with new character faces and an updated interface. This was widely criticised among fans on social media, claiming the new faces were "creepy" and the interface was "too big". Custom scenarios were also discontinued, to users' dismay.

### **Purchase of InstLife**

Candywriter has purchased the rights to InstLife and incorporated it within BitLife. *Expand this section.*

### **Monthly Bitizenship Subscription**

On October 1, 2019, BitLife suggested a possibility in the future that Bitizenship will be a monthly subscription rather than a one-time payment. [1] Demos with a free trial were tested in Canada and Australia. Subscriptions were only for new players and people who didn't have Bitizenship already, those who have already bought it do not have to pay additional fees. Fans criticised the greed this possibility would have and disliked that BitLife was following the idea of apps forcing monthly subscriptions when the one-time payment was seemingly fine enough.
However the decision on a monthly subscription was reversed [2] and the idea of expansion packs were going to be the likely replacement.
Since then, God Mode has been the only expansion pack besides regular Bitizenship.