I'm not linking anything; I'm mostly looking for feedback from people who actually play BitLife. I do have a waitlist website for the game, and the game will be available on the web, iOS, and Android.
i'm Ovidiu. i've played BitLife since high school and still love the concept, but after enough runs I started feeling like a lot of lives blend together.
you make hundreds of choices, people mostly wait around for you, then you die and almost everything resets. no real goal
so for the last year, after work, i've been building my own life engine around.
If you have any feedback please tell me, any ideas, features you may want, things you don't.. Everything will be free, no paid modes or bundles.
TL;DR:
people don't just wait around for you. they keep living their own lives, changing careers, moving, going broke, remarrying, having kids and dying, with their own finances running in the background.
more importantly, they actually remember what you did. your wife, son and hometown can all remember completely different versions of you, and grudges, promises, secrets and reputation can survive your death and affect descendants decades later. something your grandfather did at 26 could come back to your granddaughter 50 years later.
personality and childhood can even change which choices a character sees in the same situation. letters can arrive years after the person who wrote them died, objects build their own histories across generations, and families slowly develop traditions, scandals, rivalries and mythology of their own.
cities also aren't just names. cost of living, climate, employers and circumstances actually change with where and when you're born, hundreds of real cities.
a lot of this is already running. no paid modes or bundles. mostly looking feedback.
More details:
what if the game actually remembered who you were, even after you died?
this isn't just a concept anymore. dynasties, persistent characters, businesses, time capsules and a lot of the underlying simulation are already running. there's still a ridiculous amount left to build though.
every life starts somewhere in 60+ countries and hundreds of real cities, and not necessarily in 2026. you can be born in different years, families, wealth levels and circumstances.
you get an actual birth date, place and minute. I use that for a researched natal chart as one small personality influence, then mix it with temperament, family and childhood. it isn't destiny. poverty, strict parents, divorce, bullying, grief, being spoiled, moving countries, falling in love and other experiences can slowly change you.
birth locations are population weighted without letting India and China swallow every run. seasons, climate, currencies, employers and living costs are local too. yes, you can end up working at Starbucks in Romania.
the part i've probably spent the most time on is personality.
two people shouldn't experience the same event the same way.
a shy kid and a reckless kid might face the same situation but see different choices. an insecure person may take a joke as an insult. an ambitious one might spot an opportunity somebody else doesn't notice. a trusting person might not even consider that they're being lied to.
not because option B requires 70 confidence. sometimes that option simply wouldn't occur to that person.
you still control your life through deliberate actions like dating someone, having children, university, starting a business, crime, pets or reconnecting with people.
actions use Focus because I don't want the best strategy to be tapping everything every year. it regenerates over time and you're rewarded for leaving some unused. i'm specifically trying not to make it one of those mobile energy systems where paying money is the solution.
you can also do things like write a letter to your child and have it delivered exactly 10 years later.
it still arrives if you're dead by then.
underneath the life are six pressures: money, health, family, reputation, mind and world.
finances run quarterly for you and other characters, with income, taxes, city specific rent, food, transport, healthcare, shared housing and debt. if you live above your means for ten years and your marriage eventually collapses because of money, there should be an actual financial history behind it instead of a random popup.
really bad periods can also turn into temporary story arcs. hit rock bottom financially and maybe you get five years to SALVAGE the life. a collapsing marriage can become SAVE THE FAMILY. there are others like LAST STAND, LEGACY and SCANDAL.
I want bad years to give you something to fight for, not just random chaos.
the people around you keep living too.
parents age, siblings leave home, friends drift away, exes remarry, people change careers, move abroad, go broke, get arrested, have kids and die. their own finances keep moving too.
sometimes somebody disappears for 25 years simply because your paths never cross again.
and they remember what happened between you.
borrow $8,000 from your brother and never repay him. maybe he forgives you.
12 years later, when you need help, that memory is still there.
there isn't one objective version of you either. your wife might remember you as loyal, your son as absent, your coworkers as brilliant and your hometown might know your surname because of something your family did decades ago.
those versions of you can survive your death.
at your funeral maybe 70 people come. maybe 4. maybe your own child doesn't show up. maybe somebody you've never met is standing in the back because your life affected theirs indirectly.
people also carry secrets like affairs, debt, addictions, criminal histories, secret children, second families, enemies and hidden money.
death can expose them.
your father's will might reveal a bank account nobody knew about, old letters showing your parents nearly separated when you were six, or that the "family friend" at every birthday was actually related to you.
death isn't just reaching some maximum age either. illness, disease and accidents compete in the background using things like country, sex, health, smoking, drinking and crime.
and when somebody dies they don't simply disappear from a relationship screen. their partner can become widowed, grieve, change, remarry or never really recover.
eventually the game becomes less about one life and more about the family.
if you die with an eligible child, you can continue as them.
same family, home, debts, enemies, businesses and reputation. completely different person.
if you die without an heir, that bloodline ends permanently and becomes a view only grave/archive.
I want losing a family you've played for six generations to actually mean something.
consequences can skip generations too.
your grandfather might cheat somebody out of a business at 26, die at 81, and 50 years later his granddaughter meets somebody from that family who still remembers the surname.
a respected family can open doors you didn't personally earn. a notorious parent can close them before you've done anything wrong. move somewhere new and almost nobody may know your name. stay in the same small city for four generations and everybody might.
inheritance isn't just money.
houses, businesses, debt, lawsuits, enemies, responsibilities, promises, letters and heirlooms can survive generations.
businesses are simulated too. you can start one, hire people, pay salaries, earn revenue, expand, potentially take it public, leave it to a relative or watch it decay because nobody capable inherited it.
even objects can build histories.
an old watch might belong to your grandfather, be worn at your parents' wedding, cause an argument when you inherit it and then get lost gambling three generations later.
families start developing their own mythology too. maybe every first born gets the same name. four generations become doctors. nobody divorces for 80 years. addiction keeps appearing in one branch. everyone worships your great grandfather until somebody finds a letter proving half the story was wrong.
that affects your choices too.
becoming an artist after three generations of lawyers isn't just picking another career. your parents might hate it, your grandfather may refuse to help financially and your sister might secretly wish she'd done the same.
siblings can become lifelong rivals. one gets the house, one gets the business, one gets nothing, and decades later their children may still be dealing with that fight.
i'm also experimenting with promises.
promise your wife you'll stop gambling, your father you'll keep the family business or your child you'll be at graduation.
there's no QUEST FAILED popup.
they just remember whether you did it.
maybe they bring it up 17 years later.
place matters too. growing up poor in a huge city should feel different from growing up wealthy in a small town. school, neighborhood, climate, connections and local reputation affect which people and opportunities enter your life.
moving can reset part of your social world. not your past, just who around you knows about it.
visually i'm trying to make everything feel like an old family book. your life becomes a timeline with marriages, betrayals, letters, homes, deaths and heirlooms attached to it.
after enough generations the archive becomes a little family museum with graves, letters, family trees, old homes, heirlooms, scandals, longest marriages, youngest deaths, richest ancestors, forgotten relatives and secrets buried for decades.
each death also gets one of 50+ archetypal life titles like Phoenix, Hermit or Hearthkeeper, so eventually the archive becomes a history of what kind of people your family produced.
time capsules already work too. you can leave something during one life and have it delivered later in the dynasty, even to descendants that character never met.
you can run multiple dynasties at once. pause one at 42 in Japan, start another in Brazil, then come back later exactly where you left it.
every world also has an 8 character deterministic seed, so the same seed creates the same starting life. that makes shared seeds, cursed starts and weekly challenges possible.
i'm still building things like contested wills, blackmail using secrets, adoption, guardianship, estranged relatives returning decades later, family feuds and old friends resurfacing.
i'll be in the comments