The Game of Life 2 is an exciting re-imagining of a classic board game in modern 3D. Enjoy cute animations, a detailed game board, and moving prompts that help guide your choices as you live out your life… in-game.

The original Game of Life was one of the United States’ first popular board games. The first game made by Milton Bradley, a famous board game producer, The Game of Life is a very rough simulation of the life of a person. In The Game of Life, each player starts out as a young person and embarks on a career. As you play the game, they advance along a set of marked squares, with each square corresponding to a different outcome. Based on your die rolls, you land on different squares and have different sets of choices, setbacks, and windfalls on your journey through life.

The Game of Life is not an accurate simulation, but it is designed to evoke feelings. As you play, you get to choose whether or not to go to college, what career you’d like, and whether or not to buy things like insurance. You can get married and have kids, retire peacefully with lots of savings, or go broke when your house burns down. It’s a chaotic experience that’s useful as an educational tool to help kids understand concepts like insurance, stocks, and the value of education. These things aren’t identical to their real-world counterparts in the board game, but they’re close enough to start the discussion about many difficult topics.

The Game of Life 2 is a digital version of this board game. It’s based on a modern edition of the board game, so the references, jobs, salaries, and concepts are much more up-to-date than an old physical game from the 1990s. In The Game of Life 2, you roll digital dice and advance your digital figure around a digital board. Everything is well-animated and looks great, making the entire game seem like a cinematic experience.

The Game of Life 2’s digitization helps to streamline many of the slower parts of play. There’s no searching for cards or trying to read the rules. Instead, dilemmas and choices are simply presented to each player as prompts to tap on. The game keeps track of your money, so there’s no stealing from the bank, Monopoly-style. 

One of the big draws of this digital board game is that you can also play with lots of players on the same device. This means that the Game of Life 2 is perfect for tablets or other devices that can be shared with friends or family members during a gathering. You can still do it on a regular phone, but you might not be able to see the board when other people are playing.

The Game of Life 2 has a lot of customization options. This is a neat draw that helps the app appeal to kids, but it also means that you might have trouble actually playing the game. If all of the young people in your family want to spend a half hour finding the right hats and outfits for their characters, there won’t be time to play! Luckily, this stops being a problem in online mode, since you can simply match with strangers as soon as you’re done customizing your character.

Overall, the Game of Life 2 is a well-packaged adaptation of a classic board game. If you enjoy The Game of Life, it might be worth checking out this app-based version. If you’re not a fan of dice-driven party games, you’re looking for something to play alone, or you want something with a bit more of a story, you’ll want to look for a different game.

There are a number of strategic choices that you can make during a game of The Game of Life 2. Unfortunately, the relative value of these choices is largely up to chance. The numbers that you and the other players roll on your respective die will have a much bigger impact on any individual game than your decisions will.

First, consider college. It’s almost always a good idea to shell out big for your education in The Game of Life 2, but this changes a bit based on how many other players there are. The player who chooses first should definitely go to college, but things get a lot murkier for the fifth and sixth player in large games. These players might not be able to choose a good career, since four or five other players will have picked first. In other words, the choice of whether or not you go to college is complicated by the game’s very first die roll, the one that determines who goes first.

The same concept applies to things like insurance. Is insurance worth it if your house burns down? Absolutely. What if you avoid tiles with mishaps and nothing happens? In that case, it was definitely a waste of money. The best advice here is to consider your situation and how other players are doing and play to win. If you’re in clear first, it’s a good idea to spend some money to maintain your position. If you’re losing, taking risks to try to pull ahead might be the better idea.

The Game of Life 2 is a paid purchase with lots of in-game purchases for cosmetics, new boards, and more. At the time of this writing, you can buy literally everything for less than $40. If you’re just trying to play some basic Life with your family members, however, you’ll have everything you need in the core purchase. The addons are mostly cosmetic and don’t influence gameplay too much.

While The Game of Life 2 is a good way to spend time with a group of friends or family members, it’s not quite as fun when you’re playing online with strangers. A big part of the appeal of board games is the cross-talk that happens between players when they’re gathered together in-person. This happens a lot less when you’re connected online. It’s even worse when you’re playing against the AI. The AI doesn’t talk, nor does it have feelings, and it tends to get very lucky at inopportune times. It’d be one thing if your little brother was the one getting lucky, but it’s very annoying when it’s a robot.

Are you a big fan of The Game of Life 2? What are your favorite maps and outfits? What do you think about the game’s modernizations? Let us know in the comments below!