I have definitely heard that a few times. I wish I knew the breakdown of readers who don’t have kids vs. those who do, and those who would want them vs. those who never would. And to see the ratings breakdown from each group. It’d be impossible to compile that info, but I think it would say a lot about the story and the expectations everyone had going in for it.
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Finally had time to finish it. And damn, am I proud of my virtual daughter! It was lots of fun, and quite light-hearted until you scared me with the car accident… Damn, that was terrifying T.T
The dialogue was top-notch! Like, it was really good dude. I’m jealous of your writing skills. Keep it up~
I actually got quite emotional some times Like when she made the turtle - I proudly displayed it, fuck that promotion- and later when she fucking saved all that money from her part-time job to buy her dad a big-ass tv 
She didn’t have to, not at all, but to me it showed that she appreciated all those years of care and it hit me right in the feels. And going to her mother’s grave. I cried actual tears.
In the end Elizabeth became some kind of fake wrestler, but hey, if she’s happy then I’m happy.
Wholesome game.
I’m an emotional wreck.
10/10
edit
Eh, sorry for this mess of a ‘review’. I can get overly excited when I like something ^_^’ My apologies.
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Don’t be sorry, I enjoy seeing firsthand how much it impacted you. Gives me that warm ooey-gooey feeling inside. And wholesome is exactly what I was shooting for!
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For your data, I don’t have kids, but want them desperately and rate the game a 10/10
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I like this game a lot. Yes it has a couple problems but it’s an amazing game but I’ll try to write some constructive criticism:
1- The further you get in the game the more ‘grindy’ it feels
2- No clear consequences for your choices. It’s kinda like Fallout 4 where the dialogue option is nothing like what the actual dialogue is, I don’t know if this is good or bad though since it is a Parenting Simulator and as far as I know parents can’t predict the actions of their kids (not accurately at least)
3- Influencing you child’s passions is hard and not in the good way. It’s way too ambiguous, you can’t just choose for him to go to acting class and let his passion for it grow. Now I have only had 3 playthroughs so I might be wrong (probably wrong too).
If you told me to give a rating out of 5, I would give TPS a solid 4.5/5. Amazing game but it has some quirks like any Hosted Games release (this is a solo effort after all).
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If anybody can give me a walkthrough or guide on how to make my child a huge actor I would be eternally grateful. Thank you in advance.
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Grindy? Dang, I am sorry to hear that. Stat balance is definitely a tough nut for me.
You are right that while there are some times where you pick your MCs exact words, in others you just pick the general tone. I think of it more like Mass Effect, but then I haven’t played Fallout 4. But your choices still influence what is said, at least most of the time. There’s a few railroaded convos with fake choices (like the surgery for sinus stuff), but they are relatively few and far between.
That’s kind of a deliberate design choice. I tried to emulate your child’s free will as much as possible for a video game, so that they might go in the direction you steered them for a time, but might suddenly veer off to follow their own whims based on the personality you helped them develop from the very beginning. I imagine it gets pretty frustrating when you really want them to get to a specific endgame, though.
How detailed should a guide be? Like, every specific answer or just generic stuff like having high Pop and high Brain and such like that.
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How detailed should a guide be? Like, every specific answer or just generic stuff like having high Pop and high Brain and such like that.
Do both. First the general stat combos and major dialogue choices, followed by a detailed, choice by choice guide that is hidden unless revealed (like under a spoiler tag, or the equivalent).
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Well, I guess the generic version I already did above. Here’s the specific acting guide for TPS:
In the play scene, make sure you do one of the three jobs available, unless your kid has both Pop and Edu at 57 or higher, in which case they get the main part despite your lack of interest. It takes Pop at 51 or higher to get the main part if you are a part of the production and help them practice their lines to wow the director, although they can get it automatically if you decide to cheat (which also unlocks an achievement), though since cheaters never prosper your playboost hidden stat will be higher if you do the practice lines option instead. You’ll also see a different play director with each school, because sometimes I have very bad impulse control when it comes to creating characters just for the heck of it even if they’re just one-offs. If you don’t cheat or practice lines, they need 56 or higher in both Pop and Edu in order to get the part at the tryout. If they fail to get the main part, they never get interested in acting and that whole path is locked out.
During the show, when the line flub happens you need to have either sat up front or have the stage manager/line reader parent jobs to help them. Whisper works with all three of those, mouthing the line only if you are the stage manager or line reader.
That being said, you can also let the flub happen, and then choose the option where you uploaded a video of it online. It increases your Followers stat for social media, which helps later on in the acting path, and comes into play during a later audition scene when one of the casting people mentions being impressed by how well your kid recovered and kept going in the video.
After the play itself, pick the drama camp option the next year and make sure they don’t leave to pick up a playboost increase.
For the commercial, wait to see how into the idea the kid is without your influence. Choose the first option for a playboost bump, although it increases their stress level and also reduces the activity stat for whatever their other activity is, if any. Drop 100 bucks and get a Selfishness boost to purchase a lower number to reduce their stress, unless you desperately need a Pop boost, in which case take the first option and get pop +1 and stress increased further. The only way to guarantee they get the part is to have Pop above 58 and Edu above 62, a stress level below 3 (which you should have if you bought the low number), a high playboost stat (3 or higher) and either to have done the best possible in the first round of auditions or to have leaked the video. Otherwise it’s a die roller, with a 67% chance of success if you had three of the things listed above or 33% chance with just two of them. Keep in mind if you have the pop or edu stat at those levels but not both of them, you get no boost from it.
When picking classes for freshman year, naturally you’ll need drama. Make sure to choose non-taxing classes besides that since it is one that increases the academic stress level. If that goes too high you’ll lose the bump from it.
Choose the option where you don’t have them work to exhaustion when they’re young, effectively skipping the job section. Also, bonus points to anyone who gets that reference.
I know I skipped the second audition scene, but this already took almost an hour to write so I’ll have to pick it back up later.
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@hustlertwo
Bug I noticed. When I decide to quit STEM in favor of acting, the game still references it even though the available choices say that my only extracurricular activity is acting.
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Good to know. I haven’t had anything really reported yet that I know of/can remember, although funny enough I did see a couple typos myself playing through it as well as one doing the acting guide above. I’m nothing them for a future update but as of right now I don’t think anything’s been big enough to merit one on its own.
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The mention of the cat at the end of year 17 (after the car crash event) is still present.
Another bug that links the most polite relationship break with the estranged parent (father in this case) to the bio-mom’s equivalent scene (replaces the name with “Shirley”) is also there.
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Yeah, the pet/car crash was one I ran into on my own first runthrough after it was published. Thanks for the tip about the Shirley issue, though.
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The thing is about this game is that you are being held back by the concept of the game. I can guarantee that nobody can make stats that make sense in a Parenting Simulator. Unfortunately, parenting is mostly putting out fires when they arise and eventually preventing them from happening ever again.
The feeling I got from this game the most was growth, I actually feel like I’m growing chapter after chapter. The feeling of growth is one of the hardest feelings to emulate in video games and you managed to do it in a text only video game. No drawings of how your child looks after some years, just plain text.
What I’m suggesting here is what if you made a game with a concept that doesn’t hold you back?
How about a game about somebody who starts their own country and tries to grow it from there.
Maybe a game centered around a musician who’s trying to make it. Maybe they’re a rapper or a pop artist…etc
These are just suggestions that I wanted to share, thanks for the guide btw.
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The stats were a bit wonky here, and while opposed pairs worked well for the opportunity cost nature of this story I don’t imagine I’ll use them again for a story outside of this property. I at least liked the stats in TPS more than I did in my first story, where each one did largely the same thing in slightly different ways (aside from Insanity, of course; I’m still happy with how that came out).
I appreciate that! I suppose organic growth as opposed to mere statistical progression isn’t something we see a lot in gaming. The best example I can think of is EarthBound, especially since it even stops at a couple of points to reflect on how far you’ve come and what you’ve accomplished. If I ever make my Pokemon-style trivia game, EB would likely have a fair bit of influence as well.
I’m still waffling a bit about where to go from here, but as of right now my third story seems most likely to be League of Lunacy, which hopefully will capture a bit of what you’re looking for as you join and subsequently shape the development of a mercenary guild taking on various missions in a magic-afflicted realm. It’s going to be a lot more character-focused than this was. Almost certainly way longer, too, at least from a code standpoint.
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@hustlertwo
Just putting my two pence in, I’d be really interested in you doing A Day In The Life as your next game. 
Though the League of Lunacy game you’re planning does sound pretty exciting.
I look forward to what you’re making next and keep up the good work. 
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A Day in the Life? Was that one of my working titles for the TPS followup centered around balancing family life? I’d already forgotten. I still have no clue what I would actually name it, all my working titles would never fly since they already are in use with TV shows. A Year in the Life would be perfect but that’s Gilmore Girls, and Family Matters is a pretty obvious one.
It’s definitely possible I’ll do it next, given how intimidated I am by the coding elements of LoL. Heck, I might even break one of my rules and work on two WIPs at the same time. Of course, it’s also possible I’ll do a more direct sequel to TPS than I had originally anticipated since I’ve started kicking around the thought of doing a Grandparenting Simulator as either a cheap DLC or even a cheap/free standalone story. If I did that one, it would likely be a good bit shorter than any of the other possibles. I’m not interested in it being just a retread of TPS, which means it would likely would either have a reduced timeframe (say, until the kid was 8 or 9) or simply have one event a year. Maybe both, depending on your choices!
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As a fan of both fantasy mercenary stories and life sims both sound great to me. I’m not sure which one I’d prefer to see first…
You won’t hear me complaining if you do! 
But no matter what you decide, I’m sure it’ll be great.
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The dubious beauty of App Annie: it took over 110 reviews on Google before I finally got a 2-star, and thanks to this app and BabelFish I now know that it came from a German reader who was really, really upset about the adenoids scene. Apparently the doctor’s incompetence and my own were dealbreakers. Why he still gave me the second star, we will never know.
Update: Over the last few days I have gotten a couple of phenomenal reviews on the English-speaking side of things, absolutely glowing. Yet my score does not budge from its new low of 4.3, because two more negative reviews have come in from surly foreign folks, in this case a 1 and 2 star review from Poland and Turkey respectively that complain about the fact that only the first bit is free. Not as egregious as the troll reviews from before, but still a bummer.
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Hello! I’d just like to start off by saying how much I enjoyed playing this. At first, I had just intended to play the first few chapters for free, but by the time those were over and little Alexi was ready to head off to school, I was thoroughly invested. As an all-time lover of raising sims (like well… the sims!) and a newer fan of text-based games (like alter ego (and I think it’s fair to say that I even enjoyed this game more than alter ego)), this was the perfect thing for me.
I’m not close to the time where I would consider having kids or not, but this was still very enjoyable (plus I have a little sister with a considerable age gap, so there were a few events I could definitely see). I saw a negative review when considering downloading it that made my ‘maybe’ turn to a hard ‘yes’, calling the game cliche and cheesy, but hey! I’m down for that, bring on the cheese! And cheese it was. and heart-wrenching- there were more than a few times I cried. I just had such a wonderful experience.
Just to say how my 3 kids did here’s how their lives went.
Alexi Emmerson was my first, the song of the proud and calm mama bear, Valerie Emmerson. Alexi led a very normal life, went to Jefferson Elementary, had an average brain (even though he struggled in the beginning) and sports scores, was pretty popular (despite his glasses) and close to his mom. His dad- Lucas- had died and they made the trip to his grave. He also had a dog named buddy who was an old and loving girl and eventually passed right before he graduated. Finally, he managed to keep his friend Paul, get a mediocre score on the SAT, and graduate from a state college with an English degree that allowed him to get an entry-level job.
next, there was Isabel, who was meant to be if Alexi was a girl and Lucas had raised her (Valerie dying in childbirth) so a lot had been the same, but there were a few differences, as Lucas was a more protective, concerned, and self-sacrificing parent than Valerie. Izzy got bullied by her best friend Felicity as her popularity was lower (eventually made up though), never got into acting, etc. They also got a cat instead of a dog and he was an interesting little guy- never got the vet scene with him. She was very smart, played piano instead of the violin, got 1410 on the SAT (though she decided to go to a state school) and graduated with an English degree. Though I got very scared at one point because she got into a car crash.
My last kid’s life was the most different. Asher Brantly went to the prestigious school of Edgewick, was more independent from his dad, very smart, into art ( that darn turtle scene got me, lol), got a high SAT score, stayed friends with Juan, and went to a second tier-ivy league school… only to drop out after the first year and come home, getting a job at the same place as his dad. Their cat Astro ended up getting life-saving treatment and lived through.
that being said there are a few things I couldn’t figure out how to do- like have them do really good after high school, be valerdictorian, succeed in their hobbies, and on the parent’s end how to keep progressing through the career and I wonder if there are any tips you had- or perhaps a walkthrough, if it’s not too much of a bother.
Sorry for this long… thing, but I just had to get this out.
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