The Good Life

Developer White Owls Publisher White Owls, The Irregular Corporation Format PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One Origin Japan Release Summer 2021

After the lovable disaster of Deadly Premonition 2, a game that made Cyberpunk 2077 look polished, Hidetaka ‘Swery’ Suehiro’s typically bizarre take on country living has the potential to be an irresistible return to form.

You’re Naomi Hayward, a New York photojournalist and aspiring alcoholic who’s been sent to the rural English town of Rainy Woods to investigate a mystery. (The notion of an American newspaper with the budget to do that is a puzzle itself.) There’s murder afoot, but we’re more intrigued by why the town’s inhabitants turn into cats and dogs at night. You’ll use your feline/canine powers to aid your investigation, jumping around the rooftops or sniffing out residents. Animorphing aside, taking photos for the paper is your main source of income, which Naomi appears to enjoy disbursing at the local pub.

While we’re enthusiastic about a drunken Pokémon Snap, much of the focus seems to be on the more mundane side of country living, such as growing vegetables and learning to cook.

The threat of yet another farming game is enough to have us pouring salt on Swery’s soil, but Deadly Premonition was never better than when you were chatting with its cast of oddballs, so a life sim might be his true calling. Despite recent footage threatening another zoetropelike framerate, there’s also rideable sheep, a berserk badger, and a deerstalker-sporting detective with the wonderfully lawyer-baiting name of ‘Norlock Homeless’ – enough to make us cautiously optimistic that Swery will deliver the goods.