Taste Swery's The Good Life in prototype demo
From the director of Deadly Premonition
To Tom and Barbara, the good life means escaping the rat race to farm in their suburban garden and pash. To Kanye West, the good life feels like Atlanta, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, or summertime Chicago. To Deadly Premonition director Hidetaka "Swery" Suehiro, The Good Life is his next game about rural murder and mystery. Swery and his White Owls studio are currently trying to crowdfund the game, which sends an American photojournalist into an English village where people can turn into animals by night and murder is afoot, but it's still short of its goal. So last night they released a prototype demo so everyone can poke around.
The demo is a small one and only a prototype, to be clear - not representative of the game they hope to finish. It lets us potter around the village and take on three quests to snap photographs: of a drunken vicar, two people meeting in secret, and a truck roving around the village. That's the full gamut of village life right there.
If you're interested, download it here and check this document for help. Or just watch Swery himself play:
The Good Life is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter. With 8 days still to go, only around £241,000 of the £446k goal has been pledged - and it needs to get it all, or it'll get nothing. The first crowdfunding campaign, last year, fell through so I do hope it makes it this time. As janky as Deadly Premonition is, it's one of my very favourite games, with so much more warmth and playfulness than I'd expect in survival horror.
White Owls have vowed to find funding for The Good Life one way or another if this does fall through.
Our boy Brendy recently talked to Swery, asking the big questions:
RPS: I have a cat, and she bites my girlfriend all the time, which makes my girlfriend shout. As a certified Buddhist priest, can you give me some spiritual advice to deal with this clash of personalities in my household?
Swery: If you start thinking about how to control and manipulate things other than yourself (your girlfriend, your friends, your family, your co-workers, your boss, your subordinates, your pets, vermin, etc.) I am positive that your life will get worse. How about trying to just accept them as they are? In the end, you can only control yourself.
How about that, Brendan?