Underrated ‘slow life’ role-playing game Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time – which stole a lot of my time last year on Switch 2 – has just received an exciting new year content drop.
The update, free and available now on all platforms (PC, Xbox, PlayStation and Switch), is called Sinister Broker Bazario’s Schemes, and it adds a new location to the game called Snoozaland, where Fantasy Life i becomes a roguelike experience – one life, one attempt, see how far you get.
There, in Snoozaland, you’ll always start as an unequipped level one character, and the world will rearrange itself every time you reattempt it. You’ll learn new lives – the game’s job/class/role system – on the job, and gather equipment as you explore.
A powerful end-boss and powerful rewards await, and there are alchemy robots you’ll find that will potentially spit out powerful items, providing you fill them up with various unwanted materials and equipment first.
The game’s website makes it sound like a self-contained experience, which presumably means the character you build while adventuring in Snoozaland only lasts for as long as your run does, and that there’s no actual permanence there.
I found Fantasy Life i to be one of the Switch 2’s most alluring launch titles. It’s a sort of cross between Animal Crossing and Dragon Quest – a game that’s part town building and resource harvesting and crafting, and part role-playing adventure. It’s bright and colourful and uplifting.