Revealed earlier this month as the latest game from the creator of Deadly Premonition, The Good Life looks as weird as anything Hidetaka “SWERY” Suehiro has ever worked on. The latest trailer offers a first look at some gameplay and, yup, it’s definitely looking like a SWERY game.
The Good Life is a murder mystery RPG focused on a small English town and how everyone in it turns into cats at night. From the new trailer, released in conjunction with the game’s request for crowdfunding on Fig, we know the protagonist, a photographer named Naomi, really misses New York City, especially Starbucks and pizza.
Also there’s a dead body discovered in a nearby river, because, as hundreds of hours of BBC murder mysteries have taught me, people are always getting murdered in sleepy English towns. and the town’s vibrant feline night life.
The game has a rough, low-polygon count look that gives it an almost paper mache-like quality. It’s almost like a surreal take on Deadly Premonition for the PS1 era with a town full of strange NPCs and small moments in bars or walking the streets providing the bulk of the game’s slice-of-life action. “The following footage was captured from our early PC prototype,” says the creator at the beginning of the new trailer. “This footage is not indicative of final quality. I promise.”
And of course, because it’s SWERY, there’s apparently a lot of day drinking. The protagonist is working to pay off her debts, with scenes of mining and harvesting hinting at some of the game’s many different activities, but also confesses “I just use up whatever money I make...drinKING.”
The game is currently planned for release on PS4 and PC, with other platforms possible in the future depending on how successful the crowdfunding campaign is.