My Life Coach is an open-ended casual experience that has been specifically tailored for the DS. The approach, in fact, is meant to be as casual and as open as it can possibly get. At its essence, My Life Coach is an interactive journal that attempts to get people to think about their lifestyles, to make goals, encourage players to work towards and achieve these goals and to see if they need to make some changes for the better.
How long left?
That game starts off with the player being introduced to a well-animated stick figure. This figure is meant to be a representation of the player. Initially, the player is subjected to a lengthy process by which the stick figure asks the player a series of questions, which will help determine the direction that the game will take. It will help determine whether the person will need to make adjustments to their eating or other living habits and so forth.
As mentioned, the game is designed to formulate challenges for yourself. Depending on the initial inputs and what you determine is best for you, the computer will come back with challenges in order to cater for the changes that need to be made. For example, you may be asked “did you eat an apple today?”. If you answered “no”, the challenge may be something along the lines of “eat one apple by tomorrow”.
In keeping with the casual approach, the game is designed to be picked up and played whenever you have a spare few minutes. Some may ask the point of such a game, as it can be easily cheated. Well, with the effort that has been put into design, which includes the knowledge from several experts from lifestyle areas such as fitness and nutrition and is really aimed at helping people, you’d only end up cheating yourself. The game seems to have put in a genuine effort to give people of all ages a product that will actually yield some personal benefits.
Hungry?
A lot of casual games feel like they have been designed to with “casual” first in mind and “game” second. The game is obviously helped by being designed by a group that has had a lot of experience with games. As a result, there is a product that has in the least, looked like it has been well produced. The presentation was exceptionally clean and well put together.
While the Japanese market has taken casual games on board very enthusiastically, it remains to be seen if the western market is just as willing. However, if such games were to take off, it would be a well produced and appropriately intended game such as My Life Coach that would have the best chance of succeeding. While it we won’t know whether it will take off until it actually is released, but we hope that such ventures don’t start taking away too much from hardcore games.
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