You'll most likely not heard of Positech Games or their life simulations since they are a independent UK development company staffed solely by former Lionhead coder, Cliff Harris. With little time spent on advertising and the rather niche nature of the games, Positech remains an unknown, although Cliff's discussions with pirates have earned him some attention a short while ago the company and it's games tends to fall beneath the radar of most 'mainstream' video game media. Kudos 2 has been in development for roughly a year and follows on from the quiet success of 2006's Kudos 1 with some rather rudimentary improvements, but it's comforting to know that should you decide to purchase, your heard earned $20 is going towards helping a developer feed his cats.
Government Came and Took my Baby!
Kudos 2, like its predecessor is a simple menu driven life simulation, unlike the obvious comparison of "The Sims", Kudos' point and click interface doesn't involve guiding your avatar around the house to the toilet, instead the gameplay has far more in common with an adventure game where the only adventure is the day-to-day drudgery of life. Kudos is a game without goals, much like the Sims, there's no one telling you that you have to be a high paid lawyer or a TV chef, you could simply aspire to become a 30 year old alcoholic delivery driver who spends his evenings watching HumorTube.com.
The Internet, as created by Al Gore, minus the porn
Each day you can select one activity (two on the weekends), from a vast selection of usual daily chores, such as:
- Paintball
- Staring at a blank wall
- Job hunting
- Shopping
- Learning to drive
- Taking a Kickboxing class
- Reading a book on golf
Trying to balance your life and your finances often gets rather tricky, either you have the money but not the time, or the time and not the money, giving you an often interesting viewpoint on the causality of life or perhaps a universal game mechanic to keep both lives interesting.
Grabbing a beers at a local bar makes you cool
To get far in a career you'll need to start taking some evening classes and perhaps read a few books to get the skills you need, for higher paid jobs you'll need experience first, so you can't read a book and become a manager and instead have to climb the business ladder. Other skills factor into your job also, you can't become a C programmer with just the knowledge of the language, you'll also need to keep up on your problem solving abilities, perhaps with a few nights at home doing crosswords and playing sudoku, wearing a smart suit to your interview to boost your confidence also can't hurt your chances of an interview. This all sounds like general advice you could give out on life, but it all applies in game, turn up to your interview hungover and depressed that your girlfriend has left and you'll leave the interview more downtrodden than before, making getting back onto your feet that little bit harder.
Passive aggressive girlfriends accurately mirror real life
Career is the obvious path to take in Kudos, everyone wants the big bucks and it's fun to see how instead of happiness from wealth your avatar always seems at his best when he's just got enough money to go out with friends, have fun and doesn't have a stressful job to get in the way, since none of your friends will want to be around you if you're just bringing them down. It all equates to some interesting social commentary, however ultimately you'll start a game of Kudos, play until you've reached whatever goal you've made for yourself and find you settle into a routine, much as in real life. Sure the game is fun to come back to up to a point, as life can be rather different depending on your career but Kudos' major failing is also its major premise, it's a life simulation. Despite the differences between Kudos and the Sims that I mentioned earlier, I believe there's a lot of crossover between the two games and who will enjoy them, if you play Sims so you can walk in someone else's shoes then you should at least check out the Kudos 2 demo. Personally I like the self reflective idea of starting off as a 20 year old who's life is going nowhere and having them work hard to turn their life into something meaningful, rather than to sit at home every evening playing videogames and -- oh, I've wasted my life...