The quest for knowledge is just as valid as the search for love, and each should be applauded on their own merits. Equally, valuable pursuits can be found anywhere, and take any form. Money holds value, but remains just a part of a well-lived life. The Game of Life, and life itself, has changed. Screenshot: GamesHub / Marmalade Game Studio In choosing to change the win conditions, The Game of Life 2 inadvertently makes a bold statement about the circumstances of modern living. It’s now about the experiences you forge – the adventures you choose, the people you met, the fun facts you mastered, and even the pets that crowded your life. Your life is not only about money, as suggested by tradition. Where in the original Game of Life, money was tallied as a marker for a fulfilled life, The Game of Life 2 takes several factors into account.

You can gather personal happiness, too – and this does not rely on financial or family success. Should you choose to pursue knowledge, you can earn points for everything you learn. Romance and friendship play into your winning totals, but you now get points for a variety of life endeavours – and these carry significant weight. You can marry meeples of any gender – including non-binary folks, or choose to stay single, and still have a shot at winning the game. Likewise, there’s more freedom in the overworld. You can be a Web Developer, a Blogger, a Robotics Engineer, or a global Rock Star – all reflective of new pathways forged by social media and technological advancement in the 2000s and 2010s.

The major differences are immediate – careers are no longer the basic, traditional jobs of the past like Entertainer, or Doctor. As a representation of the 2020s, it does a solid job of updating traditional gameplay and reintroducing a childhood classic, with modern values and a fresh cultural lens. In The Game of Life 2, newly launched on Xbox, the latest version of the classic Life loop has arrived – with new sets of challenges, new career paths, and new opportunities that define modern living. Read: The best story-based adventure board games As each generation of The Game of Life reflects real life circumstances, it’s logical to suggest it changes with the times. Life is no longer as linear as the traditional board game suggests – with economic and cultural circumstances presenting new challenges to the notion of the ‘ nuclear family‘, and what happiness really means. You have a career, get married, have kids, and then eventually retire your success at the mercy of dice rolls and strange happenstance. This is the path of The Game of Life – fairly linear and entrenched in traditional ideas of living. Along the way, you collect a monthly salary, build your knowledge, and prepare yourself for a welcome retirement.Īt the end of the game, every player tallies their monetary worth to find out who wins. Your turn starts with an essential choice – do you go to university, racking up immense education debts, and then start a career, or do you pick from a range of alternative career paths, which may net you success anyway?Īfter your choice, you’re given a career at random, and set off along a beaten path filled with random events – including fun parties which may lead to romance and then marriage, and shock circumstances like needing to go to the hospital or getting a promotion. In this winding adventure, you play as a human being on the cusp of breaking out into young adulthood. It was previously a staple of high school classrooms, for its ability to teach about money management and the uncertainty of the future.

The Game of Life isn’t just a board game – it teaches valuable lessons about life choices, where careers can take you, and how odd circumstances may change your fortunes. Specifically, The Game of Life – a classic board game that hails from the 1960s, with each updated edition designed to reflect the changing nature of the world. But when your teacher arrives, they announce something special: today’s lesson is about life. You’re sitting in a mouldy classroom waiting for your Commerce teacher, expecting the drudgery of learning finances, FIFO, and accounting to begin.

Game of life game board