Exploring Life’s Endless Loop Through an Incremental Game Inspired by Mickey 17 and the Concept of Refreshing One’s Life
Life Simulator
Life’s Endless Loop unfolds through buttons, meters, and whispers — yet beneath each lies a deeper layer.
Will you nurture your Life Energy, or surrender to Sudden Incidents?
Will Conscience guide you toward the safety of routine…
or tempt you with the Fortune Teller’s voice,
where illusion speaks as faith?
Each decision reshapes existence.
Each path is both dream and reality.
How many times can a life be lived—
before the loop swallows you whole?
Let's
Try
It
Yourself
Behind the Scenes
The concept behind this game is deeply inspired by the idea of refreshing one's life—starting anew, breaking cycles, and rediscovering meaning in the mundane. The science fiction film Mickey 17 also played a significant role in shaping this vision, particularly in how it grapples with identity, death, and repetition. In the context of incremental games, this idea of refreshing or restarting parallels the player's experience of uncovering new layers of the game world through gradual discovery.
The feeling of being thrown into a system you don't fully understand—yet must figure out—is itself a metaphor for beginning again, for waking up in a world that seems both familiar and foreign.
Two key resources define the player's journey: Life Energy and Sanity. Life Energy functions much like it does in our daily existence—representing motivation, routine, and purpose. Actions like planning a daily schedule, maintaining a healthy habit, or simply existing in a structured system all contribute to your Life Energy.
On the other hand, Sanity reveals a different layer of experience. Inspired by Call of Cthulhu and Prey, this second axis doesn’t just decrease—it transforms your reality. As your Sanity drops, another world begins to emerge. What once seemed illusionary to others becomes your truth. To those with high Sanity, this altered world is simply madness. But to you, it is real—and it is.
The buttons in the game are structured like branches of a tree, with each path culminating in a final decision: to reset your Life Energy and Sanity to zero, or to restart the entire game. These options symbolize the cyclical, often inescapable spiral of life.
You may feel like you've broken the loop—but the game (and life) quietly restarts itself. The game is called "Life" for a reason. You begin again, and again, and again. That endless loop is not a bug—it’s the core of the experience.
Design Process
I began by sketching a diagram that mapped out the entire system of the game. This included every possible path the player could take, the conditions needed to unlock the next stage, and how Sanity and Life Energy would change at each point. From there, I listed the specific triggers that would allow players to progress—these were tied directly to player decisions and button placements.
To test the internal logic of the game, I built an interactive model in a spreadsheet. This allowed me to simulate the mechanics in real time: What happens if a player clicks this button? How do the values change? Is there enough incentive to move forward? Can someone get stuck? Through this prototype, I was able to playtest the resource system before committing to a more complex digital model.
