Java - Newlife [v0.8.8b] [Splendid Ostrich]

Realized I hadn't ever reviewed this here.

It's a text based (no images) game where you either start as a male-to-female TSF or an actual female protagonist. Has character customization where you can choose hair, eye, skin, build, race, wardrobe, and supports custom entries as well as custom NPCs. The main quest is to make enough money to solve your gang debt problem before the time limit is up.

The game cycle mostly revolves around a planner-type screen where you're given slots: Weekday, Weekend, Evening to assign activities like going to work, hitting the club, shopping, and also what you where when you do it. The game then fires off RNG and presents you with events for the week that may have additional choices.

Has M/F, F/F, M/M/F, dating/marriage, pregnancy, cheating, prostitution, sexual harassment, hypnosis, dubcon, D/s relationships, rough sex, BDSM (one event) and cuckqueaning (your BF can cheat/have sex with other women: your friend wants to get pregnant/lose her virginity so you help her, he bangs women on the side, he can bang a lesbian couple straight and break them up).

The content progression is pretty slow at this point, but the game rates high and is notable for me because it's a female protagonist game (with avoidable TSF) where you can have a cheating and dominant boyfriend which is REALLY rare.

The game is abandoned.
Minimal updates, and those which come are minimal effort.
I don't understand how this game is even allowed to charge money on the platforms.
The writing is very manipulative, Dancing wildly and energetically is always considered wrong and the language used berates the player. you're only going to get a positive report of your choices if you're ballroom dancing, No late teen is going ballroom dancing unless their parent force them.

as of 2024, This game's got some serious grit and personalization options, which is awesome. But you know, after a while, it starts feeling a bit samey. Like, they've had all this time to cook up new stuff, but updates come at a snail's pace.

So, they're trying to beef up the game with more lesbian content, which is cool, but it's still a work in progress. And here's the kicker: some of the coolest scenes are either one-shot deals or locked behind specific character traits. Total bummer, right?

Don't get me wrong, it's fun, but it's not gonna keep you hooked forever. You'll likely blaze through the content pretty quickly. Think of it more like a quick, enjoyable distraction than a long-term gaming commitment.

I love coming back to this game and experiencing all the small little random events. I wish there were some more random events taking place anywhere that's not in the bar/home.
I hope this creator gets to elaborate on all the things this could possibly have. Modding scene aside, i feel like it will be hard to get a large audience to make mods for this (we are all lazy people) and for those mods to work and get compiled into a list.
Of course, if the modding scene suceeds nonetheless, i'll only be happy.

v0.8.5

It's a game where you start as a woman or get transformed into one and then get to live the life from the other side.

I remember playing this game first 5 or 10 years ago, and was positively surprised. It did have a good vibe and offered a lot of possibilities.

Unfortunately, a lot of time has passed and the pace of new content introduction is... well... glacial. I have a feeling it's still really the same game from decade ago. There have been new mechanics and new events here and there, but not nearly enough, especially for a purely text based game.

It might be the sandboxy nature of the game, so you can easily miss new content, but even if you let updates accumulate and play them all at once after a 6 month or a year period, it just feels like the same game you've played 6 months or a year ago.

It entices you offering a lot of choice but then it doesn't react to your decisions enough, at least imho.

On the whole it is decent, and worth a try if you into these specific kinks and don't mind text only content.

Game is pretty boring and shallow. Barely any scenes, every sex action is generic and repetitive, it doesn't matter at all which characters you interact with, they all have exactly the same response and actions. Unique scenes there is maybe like 4 or 5 and they have no impact on the game. Gameplay is such generic management sim and feels like dev burnt out after finishing the text for it lol. What is the point in describing characters' appearance and personalities when they don't influence anything about their interactions? Spat out my drink when I heard this has been in development for 8 years, this would be acceptable for a first release but 8 years? Come on dude

I've been following this game for quite some time and honestly I really love it

Some of the negative reviews here seem to be people who just don't like text only games they want to have images which is fine even myself I don't always like text only games

But just because you don't like a genre doesn't mean you should then come and give it a bad review

In terms of text based games Newlife is really great but you do have to approach it the right way

This is a sandbox style game with lots and lots of content but it isn't a matter of just going into it and finding lewd sex scenes, the sex is a small part of the game. The actual game is about really building your character's life in this sandbox world

There is a lot of content variety and replayability since every new game you start has a degree of random generated attributes, like who your landlord is, who your boss and colleagues are, and even the people you can meet and date. So no two playthroughs are the same

Now in terms of the sex, some people have said the sex scenes are the same regardless of who you sleep with. That's literally not true. The NPCs have a large variety of stats and attributes (if you use the custom NPC tool you will see just how deep the mechanics are) that impact how they make love

You will have NPCs that will even sabotage your contraception and try to impregnate you against your will and while there is no hardcore outright rape in this game there is a lot of dubious consent and sleazy NPCs will take advantage of your character by trying to get you drunk and then do things you don't want to do. Now the dev has made a conscious choice to always allow the player to opt out of the sex which does take away a degree of realism but that doesn't mean there isn't softcore rape content in the game such as NPCs who secretly remove condoms during sex or sabotage contraceptives

If an NPC is loving they will try to please your character more during sex, whereas a selfish or sleazy NPC will only try to get pleasure for themselves and will use your character's body as a pleasure tool for themselves

So there is definite variety in how the sex scenes play out and it is also worth pointing out sex scenes change depending on your relationship with the character as well and depending on the location. You get unique dialogues and unique sex scene options

In terms of the sandbox there is a lot to explore, you basically can focus on your career, my only criticism is that I wish there were more career options as far as I am aware you only still have one career choice and it would be great if you had other options as well that included some degree of lewdness to them. But more careers in general would add a lot to this game

You can also focus on relationships either trying to just sleep around a lot or trying to find a spouse and making a life together. Recently added now is even lesbian relationships

All in all it is just a great sandbox text based experience and I hope the dev just continues to add more to it, the development time is taking a long time because in addition to having to write new content this game is very code heavy due to its sandbox nature. So anything new that the dev adds they need to add a bunch of new coding for it too

TL;DR = text based game with minimal development. Very repetitive gameplay.

Story: 1/5
- This game has barely any story. You follow the girl trying to live in a city. You go to work, you pay rent, you buy stuff, you go to a bar to pick up men (or women) and have sex with them. That is all. No deeper motivation.
- All the characters around the MC just feel like some random filler. Even characters that might look "important" at start of game will just get 2 or 3 custom events and that is all. After that there wont be any difference between them or random Joe from a bar.

Art and Sex Stuff: 1/5
- There are no images in this game. Only text.
- Sex scenes are made in this sort of minigame, where you click on branching actions you want to do, while oposing NPC chooses some different activity to do. Then you both do it if it possible. From the start it might look like interesting sex system, but after few hours it gets tedious, because there is absolutely no change! Every single character has exactly same scenes.

Gameplay: 3/5
- Whole gameplay is sort of management. You choose 4 actions for each week and then you proceed. You can go to work, you can go to shop, you can go to a club, etc.
- If you like a micromanagement, then you might enjoy it. You can choose many different things. Clothes, responses to different people, etc. A lot of actions have many choices.
- At start that management gives an illusion of many choices. But later you will find out that it just repeats same stuff over and over. Very repetitive.
- There are a lot of unfinished things in this game. Many actions do nothing and game just skips time.
- There are no sounds in this game.

To sum it up:
This game is really good for first 2-3 hours. But after that the fun value goes down really quick and you will get bored fast.
Sadly this game has VERY SLOW speed of development. After 8 years of development there has been minimal changes. Dont expect any progress.

God, I think I've been following this game for upwards of 5 years now. For anyone trying it out for the first time it's definitely a fun playthrough! There's an okay amount of replayability, but you only really should give it a go every 6 months. Being a veteran of the game I desperately want to address other reviews:
If you're going to play a game you should know the basics of it and areas it focuses on:
This game was never going to have a male mc, read the game intro for godsake
3ish years ago other women weren't even in the game, the "lack of updates" is the sole developer fullying fleshing out a new type of npc with totally new interactions and dialogue.
Some lesbians like me love the updates being made, hell I can finally get married to a cute girl in the game. You've got plenty of other games you can enjoy straight content on, don't complain about a game giving the chance for gays to enjoy it.
For the one reviewer: Sorry if there's not enough types of dancing? Is that really the content you want in a porn game?

While obviously not wowing anyone with splendid graphics, Newlife is one of the best gender swap porn games I've ever played, due to keeping things simple in terms of mechanics, and having some amazingly well written eroticism. Simply put, this game has the best female PoV interactive smut I've ever read.

Dev has borderline abandoned the game and probably milked subscribers. That being said, the game itself is really quite good if non-linear, text-based, female protag games are your thing. Very well written and has tremendous replay value.

*Sigh* I've played this game more than I'd care to admit, and although it is objectively lacking given the development time it never FELT lacking in game.
I think that if its your thing, you'll have fun crafting your little stories. Although you'll quickly find out there's not a lot of variations, game is still very enjoyable.

Review is for v0.7.13b
A game that NEEDS a lot more content.
I really want to love this game, but it has one major issue. It's a sandbox game about controlling a girl and getting scenes, but there just aren't enough scenes to satisfy the user. I've tried multiple times to create some sort of unique story, and every time it ends up being exactly the same... It really kills any sort of replay ability, and just ends up making the game feel empty. I really want this game to be better, it's unique and has an incredibly interface, but as of right now, it's just a one and done game.
For example, in my latest run through (which is about 2-3 years after my last run though), I tried to be a "Hot Wife" because I saw there were some new options related to cheating. Well, nothing different really happened. I got a boyfriend with a small penis and rarely had sex with him, then was cheating on the side with another guy, who I had sex with multiple times a week, and there was pretty much no content. I purposely got pregnant by the side man trying to get something to happen, but it was just him going "Oh that's cool" and then the real boyfriend going "That saddens me", like there isn't even an option to lie to him and try to convince him it's his kid. If there is something I'm missing, then it's too convoluted to figure out.
But I digress, it really is a good game to play once, I just hope that the updates speed up and there is a significant content updated in the near future. And maybe put a journal in the game that gives tips on how to get certain scenes. I'm not a programmer, but i don't feel like it would be that hard to add another button and put some tips in there.

I really did like this one. I've spent hours in this game, cause I like the creation of PC and the gameplay itself. However... yeah, I did not want to say this word, but... the latest updates are very poor and did not bring joy anymore. Maybe it is caused because the lesbian topic don't interest me, but it was the same even before those updates started (they were so small it didn't feel like proper updates). I know I shouldn't be like this, cause the author put a lot of effort in making this game, but for now I can't give more starts to this, as I feel disappointed rn.

If you have never played this game, it is a solid 5/5 fun shorttime. I advise you, to enjoy every minute of it!

Because ... yeah ... that is all you'll get.
One new scene in six months is not the exception but the rule - regarding update volume. And we are talking about a text-only game without any graphics or even render. So with a longtime/completion of 1/5 we get:

3/5

The game offers a solid amount of flexibility and customization. It eventually gets a bit repetitive though, as despite having been in development for all these years, new content comes pretty slowly. As of 2022, they've been slowly working on adding lesbian content as the main focus, though it's got a ways to go towards bringing that to completion. Also, for as limited as the content is, some unique scenes are one time only, or only able to found with certain character traits, and that's kind of frustrating at times.

It's a fun game, but it probably won't last you too long before you finish up all the content you're interested in.

Has so many different options, good game, wish it had pictures though. With a wide amount of options, you can live out whatever life you want. Only issue I have is that there aren't any pictures, pictures/videos would probably make this game perfect.

Game's fine, I can understand the relative disappointment at the lack of new content, but what's there is decent enough to not give a rating lower than a 3. That said, don't expect any leaps and bounds in progress from the developer, this is a game you'd probably want to revisit every half year or so, if that.

A really solid erotic text game. The fact that it doesn't have a single picture doesn't seem to be a problem, imo. It does get repetitive tho. Personally, I'd like to get more group "activities" and more random interactions on the street.

I thoroughly enjoy this game for its simplicity. I have a great time replaying it, even if it is limited in its encounters. It is a great tool for imagination. While it might not be very "gamey", the mechanics do make for interesting lovers and situations.