BitLife is so hip that I created a character who was an 80-year-old grandmother, formerly a hitman-turned-captain for the Yakuza with a body count in the 50s, and she still found time to watch gaming YouTubers with her friends. At first, this is very funny in a jarring, somewhat dissonant way. But after seeing it just a couple of times, the charm wears off quickly. BitLife feels every bit like the hollow imitation it is. The primary source of woe for me here is that BitLife never, ever escapes its artifice. The emergent gameplay that makes The Sims stand out feels entirely pre-canned here, and the relationship mechanics on display are this stunningly noxious blend of one-dimensional and high-maintenance, so there's no real drama to be found, either. BitLife feels too clean, too manufactured, to stand out as little more than a version of The Sims on your phone with less clunky controls.

This is perfectly fine if you just need to kill time on a train ride, but since the most entertaining thing about it (being able to escape prison within a second by breaking the puzzle sequence with keyboard controls) has been patched out, and most of the mechanics that might threaten to redeem the experience are locked behind a paywall, there really isn't much sustainability past that. I originally wrote that I would have been happy to pay twenty to thirty bucks for this instead of having to deal with those microtransactions, but this, at best, is worth ten dollars.