Games Like Stick Life: The Daily Grind

One life and twenty-five dollars

You start in a tent with $25 in your pocket. Every day in the city lasts 24 real minutes, from six in the morning round to the next, and the clock stops when you alt-tab. Shops keep hours, rent comes due, and fifty people go about their own day whether you show up or not. There's no script. Get a job, go back to school, sell fake watches, adopt a dog, or blow the lot at the blackjack table. Nothing ends your run. If your health runs out you wake up in the hospital with a bill. Miss rent and you get five days before the eviction. You can lose money, never the save.

Work your way up

Get famous

Stadium West has five venues, and any of them will give you a night's work. Every gig is played by you, not rolled, and the better you are at the skill it runs on, the more it pays:

Fifty people who remember you

Everybody in town has a name, a job, a home, a schedule and friends of their own, and a few of them are already dating each other. Talk to people and they warm up to you, or they don't. They notice things. You picked a fight with them last week. You've got a new car. You got a face tattoo. You've worked five days straight and look it. Make friends, ask somebody out, go on dates, move in, get married. Or make a rival. Some locals run something on the street. Beth and Vernon will play you at chess. Crispy deals three-card monte and cheats people he doesn't know. Buster sells seats for tonight's fight.

The other way to make money

Kody keeps counterfeit watches in his coat on Main Street. Buy a batch and sell them to people you talk to. The shady ones buy. The honest ones say no, and every no adds heat. Past 50 heat the police start coming for you, and they run faster than you walk. Reach your own front door and they'll leave you alone until tomorrow. Get caught and they take 5% of everything you're worth, plus what you were carrying. A knife or a gun from the pawnshop gets you a better price on watches, and with a gun the drunks stop jumping you on the way home. Fights are a combo system: ten strikes, and the more Combat you have, the more you can chain together.

Spend it

Animals

Adopt a cat or a dog from the Second Chance shelter. Strays live rough in three parts of town: crouch down, hold out the right food, and see who comes forward. Up in the Galleria, the Menagerie sells a monkey, an anaconda, a wolf, a tiger and an elephant. Dress them in hats, sunglasses and gold chains, buy them beds, bowls and toys, and set up an aquarium, anything from a 2-gallon bowl to a 500-gallon reef. Keep as many animals as you want. The elephant will sit on your furniture now and then. The dog will eat your shoes.

Nights out

Dice, slots, blackjack and the wheel at the casino. Bet on the horses on the TV at the Salty Soup. Bowl league night at Rolling Thunder Lanes, then play pinball and VOID PATROL in the corner. Win trivia night at the Decanter. Or stay in and play MICRO LIFE, a tiny life sim on your own computer.

Quests

A starter road shows you the basics. Finish it and twelve more open up: climb to the corner office, run the watch racket, fall in love, fill the garage, win the belt, get every stray off the street, and more. Every step tells you which door to go to, and the map shows you where it is.

Play with friends

Up to four players over Steam, with friends or in public games, or over LAN. Everyone gets a house on the same street in Cash Money Oaks. Walk over to a friend's place, sleep on their couch, give them furniture when they move, bail them out of jail, spar with them, or put your money on the same horse. A whole quest road only works with friends.

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