The Good Life

I played this completely a few years ago when it was on gamepass on my xbox one. 10/10 in cozy gaming. Love the adult humor that honestly just adds even more charm to the game. I felt like the map was much bigger than I anticipated it to be, so that was pretty neat. I bought this on steam so I can experience the magic all over again! I couldn't give this game a better review, and I can't wait to explore again!

Majora's Mask, but it's just the sidequests.
Obviously, there's a lot of Deadly Premonition in here, too, but mostly the part where you're retrieving Arnold for George, or helping Emily with her cooking. The mystery angle is present, but it very much takes a backseat to running errands for the quirky townsfolk and trying not to get killed by badgers and foxes in the process.
To clarify my Majora's Mask comparison, The Good Life features days of the week, moon phases, a day/night cycle, and NPCs that operate on strict schedules. Depending on these factors, you may only have a short, hours-long window each in-game week to progress some of your quests, and if you miss it? Well, better luck next time, find something else to do.
Fortunately, there's quite a lot else to do. Every time I've run into a dead end on a quest, it's pretty easy to just shift gears and focus on doing something else for a while. Much like Pathologic (a comparison I didn't expect to make), you'll spend a lot of your time raiding trash cans, boxes, bushes, and generally just picking up items off the ground as you go about your business.
On this point, I'd like to clarify the frustration some other reviews have expressed around how "grindy" the item gathering and quests are. The upgrades and quests in question are clearly intended to be long-term goals. House and clothing upgrades are significant, as they drastically improve your quality of life, and understandably, they're meant to be difficult to acquire. The materials in question will simply accumulate over time if you're diligent, and given that collecting trash is an entire third of the gameplay, I can't imagine why you wouldn't be doing it.
While I could see people with a low tolerance for frustration and repetition bouncing off of this pretty quickly, those people probably shouldn't be playing SWERY's games to begin with, as copious jank is simply part of the package. To that end, The Good Life feels very much like a PS2 game, from the clunky combat, bad camera, and awkward controls to the frustratingly inadequate inventory management, poor quest tracking, and long delays between switching animal forms, so...
... be aware, this is absolutely a niche recommendation, this game simply will not be to everyone's tastes, and that's fine. The gameplay here primarily consists of talking to NPCs, picking up trash, and exploring the open world.
I'm going to narrow the criteria for recommendation down a bit more than other reviews and say that if you were very specifically into the side missions and open world of Deadly Premonition, you should check this out. If you feel like you could've enjoyed Majora's Mask doing only the various mask sidequests, with none of the combat or dungeons, I'd also say you should check this out. And of course, if you found some kind of sick thrill in participating in the hobo economy of Pathologic 1/2, you, too, will likely find something to love here.

The game seems pretty normal at the beginning, obviously there's some mystery/intrigue about certain characters and their motivations/ties to you but nothing too crazy. Until the game gets absolutely BATSHIT crazy for no reason. I remember playing this while streaming ages ago and how much of a fever dream it randomly turned into about an hour or two in.
7/10

This game rips. It's so surprising not to see more about it online. It's a very well written harvest moon game and It's the antidote to enjoying those games but feeling like all of the dialogue and story is just filler. Sometimes harvest moon will throw a curve ball character and it feels engaging for a while before they slide back into everyone else in the town is generally boring. In this game, every character is unique, opinionated, and a part of their own story. An amazingly fresh take on harvest moon and holds the same janky but inventive energy in gameplay that a lot of these types of games had on ps2.

Its, good . Love the characters , Naomi's great, the story.I'm suprised how there's very little known about this game, it's a new take on the life sim genre that i wish more people explored.
I have some complaints as someone whose trying to achieve everything,
My main issue:
Aluminum Chunks. God damn Aluminum Chunks.
You need Aluminum Cans to process aluminum nuggets to aluminum chunks, and if you go through with going to each bin in the town maybe you'd get 12, they require 3 days to spawn.
This wouldn't be an issue if IT REQUIRED 10 ALUMINUM CANS to make A SINGLE ALUMINUM NUGGET
AND 5 NUGGETS TO MAKE A CHUNK
YOU'D NEED 50 CANS TO MAKE A CHUNK, SO MAYBE 2 WEEKS OF IN GAME NON STOP SEARCHING FOR CANS.
This wouldn't be an issue, if aluminum chunks weren't important to a LOT of stuff you'd need to buy.
A lot of the clothing items require aluminum cans, very early on in the game you'd get a quest that require you to make vacational decorations, needing 4 aluminum chunks, 200 ALUMINUM CANS.
i just realized i turned this into a praise into a tangent about aluminum cans. sorry. anyways buy the game

Negative comments
played demo
Instantly bought game + dlc add-ons
Happy

I'm not very far, and frankly I can only play this game in short bursts despite being a SWERY fan. In fact, let's just say that. If you're a fan of SWERY's work then play this. His games are disjointed, broken, weird but captivating in a way no other games tend to be. If you're after polish in your games look elsewhere.
Yahtzee's review on this game is absolutely ace to be honest, it's a great place to start. But honestly I'd play JJ Macfield before this if you're new to SWERY games.
I realise this review sounds negative, but I can't help but recommend a game this weird. I'm also English, and I frankly love this portrayal of rural England.