Your Personal Chill Apartment Review (PC) – Vibes, dude. Vibes.
Your Personal Chill Apartment got me by the title. I like this concept. I could totally do with my own chill apartment to well, chill within. Oh and I get to design it myself? Count me in. A very quick download later (this game is less than 800mb in size) and I was on my way to creating my own little slice of ambient paradise where I, presumably, don’t have to deal with downstairs neighbours and landlords chasing me for rent by throwing pizza at my window.
The first thing to get into then is that Your Personal Chill Apartment isn’t really a game. It’s more of a reward for actual life stuffs. If you’ve had a hard day adulting and you simply cannot one more time – I get it -, Your Personal Chill Apartment literally rewards you for completing real word tasks by being there for you with additional unlocks once you’ve ticked them off your list.
That list is available in-game where you can create a task list for yourself, put in some chill-ass music and slowly unlock goodies for your own little peaceful square. Each task rewards you with in-game currency of up to 150, which you can spend on furniture, art, kitchen utensils, computers, beds, you name it – you can continue to add to your dream apartment as your real life continues without you.
It’s a nice mechanic, and one that I certainly appreciated but it also showcases the fundamental issue with Your Personal Chill Apartment. If we’re going to compare it to say, Unpacking, which provides a reason why you’re doing what you’re doing, a narrative that runs throughout each level and leads to a beautiful ending, YPCA (as it will be referred to from hereon-in) offers nothing of the sort.
There’s no narrative, no real compelling reason to keep yourself involved in moving forward. The apartment never gets bigger so you have a single room to fill up until you’re completely out of space. Then that’s it. If you’re here to get lost in the lo-fi ambience of it all you may leave a little unfulfilled.
And yes, if you’re so inclined you can abuse the task list and simply tick it off over and over and over and over and over to build up the cash you need to get that thing you want, without ever having to do anything on the outside world to have earned it, but it’s sort of missing the point of this experience. It offers perhaps the most zen feeling of all the ‘cozy’ games in that it strips back what could possibly others down and offers the full gamut of simply designing an apartment and rewarding yourself with new digital things when you’ve done the dishes. That’s a nice idea and a conceit I can get behind, lord knows the world is troublesome enough right now. Let’s just make some bloody nice apartments for no reason at all other than why the hell not, eh?
It’s funny that my thoughts on the game have somewhat changed whilst I’ve been writing this review. Any real issue I had has kind of turned into -yeah, but who cares?’. That isn’t what YPCA is meant to be, it serves as a reason to get stuff done, if you wish to experience the game the way it was intended.
Away from the task reward mechanic the game offers you full customisation of your apartment, including the colour of just about everything, so you’ll be able to mix and match your favourite styles with little fuss. My pure pastel apartment sure looks good right now, as I look out the window at a car and a bin.
We can move into these apartments once we’re finished designing them, right?
Visually the isometric aspect works really well and the game is certainly no slouch in the visual department. The design tools are easy to decipher and the menus are clean. The lighting from the outside can obscure a little bit of the colour work you’ve spent your time customising but it’s barely there, and the sun and moon rays are only really featured for screenshots. The overall vibe is just soft and chill, much like the YPCA itself.
It’s tricky to review this one as a game, because it is in one sense, but it also isn’t. It’s an experience that certainly offers up the chance to just kick back and relaaaxxx, which so many ‘cosy’ games are ones to do these days, but YPCA offers a game that is so chillax it’s actually a detriment to the ‘game’ of it all. You can’t ‘complete’ the game or beat it, you just have to live it. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that as an experience, but don’t go in expecting different levels and a huge swath of options, because you’re simply not going to get it here.
Oh, and it has a cat. Just lying there doing nothing at all. It’s very cute. That will probably sell you on this game more than my review will, won’t it?
Your Personal Chill Apartment is available on Steam in Early Access.
Developer: Indovers Studio
Publisher: Indovers Studio
Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.
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