"Wow. Ok, I think this is the only game in this comp where it feels like the author has both come up with an interesting new world and implemented it enough that you have a real interaction with it over the course of the game. A New Life has a really skillful blend of the original and the new that pulls you in with familiar-sounding elements, and by the time you realize that they're not quite as familiar as all that, you're hooked. I was really pretty happy for the first hour and a half or so to just wander through the game poking at stuff. It's a small map but it feels very dense and there is a lot to think about and look at. My only gripe with the game came at about the ninety-minute mark, when I started wondering about a plot. And, well, I couldn't really find one. I mean, there were a bunch of threads and peeks at stuff that I could maybe follow up on, but they didn't seem to go anywhere as a group. I read the walkthrough and the hints and neither were totally helpful: some of the things the walkthrough suggested doing I had already done, and I couldn't seem to do them again or get by with having done things in this order. I am willing to believe that there are alternate solutions in A New Life I just didn't find but — well, if I didn't find them, they can't help me any. In any other game this would have been a serious flaw, but here it's more a cause for mild wistfulness. As it is,A New Life is engaging: think how much better it would be if all that content had felt like it was leading somewhere in particular."