About One Life
A life simulation where the odds are real: thousands of choices, one life, and the numbers behind every one of them.
One Life is a game about a whole human life, played one choice at a time. You are born somewhere in the world, to someone, with a childhood ahead of you. From there you decide: what to say to your mother, whether to cover for a friend, what to study, who to marry, whether to take the job, the loan, the risk, the drink. The years pass. At the end, the game tells you what the life was worth, by the measures you said mattered to you, and shows you how it compares with other lives that started exactly like yours.
The idea
Most life simulations are built on certainties: do this, get that. Real lives are not like that. Studying hard improves your chances of a good career without guaranteeing one; smoking shortens most lives but not every life; a marriage between two good people can still end. One Life is built on odds instead. Every choice changes the probabilities of what happens next, and the game rolls against them. The tagline on the game’s first screen says it plainly: your choices change the odds, never the certainties.
Where the odds come from
The odds in the game start from what really happens to people: how many new businesses survive, how long marriages last, what a degree does to pay, what smoking costs, how long people live in each of the eight countries the game is set in. Our real odds articles explain many of these numbers in plain English, with their sources.
When the game does bend the world, it says so. A small number of lives are dealt a rare gift for sport, music, performing, leadership or business, far more often than the world deals one, because greatness should be something players get to play. Those lives are told so in their first scene, and every roll on the way up shows THE REAL ODDS, the world’s number, beside the game’s.
Eight countries
Every life is born in one of eight countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, India or Nigeria. Each is played in its own money, with its own schools and exams, its own prices, its own health care and its own pension, or lack of one. The countries pages describe each.
Who makes it
One Life is made by Opeyemi Olufunmi Michaels, the author of the novel Simply Broken. The novel’s story is also one of the ways to play: Simply Broken mode drops you into a life already in progress, with its people, its history and its unfinished business.
Your data
One Life keeps your life in your own browser. Signing in is optional, and only exists so a life can follow you between devices. Anything you write about yourself in the game stays on your device. The privacy page says exactly what is kept and how to have it deleted.
Contact
Questions, corrections and ideas are welcome at hello@playonelifegame.com. If you find a number on this site that is wrong, please tell us: the whole game depends on getting them right.