Publisher: GB Patch
Genre: Visual Novel
Summary: You grow up in a seaside town and form a friendship with your neighbor Cove.
Gameplay: The game is broken into three summers at ages eight, thirteen, and eighteen, with an epilogue at twenty-three. Each summer has introductory and ending segments but moments in-between can be played in any order (or skipped, for that matter.) All have various decisions that may affect your life in ways big or small.
You specifically choose your interest level in Cove and can choose some aspects of his personality, or just let him develop from your responses.
Style: The game allows for options in styling the character in a great variety of ways from name to gender to earrings, and, except for the name, eyes, and skin color chosen at the beginning, can be changed at the start of a new summer. For all the options in hair and clothes, they are disappointingly rarely mentioned in dialogue, however.
Cove can also be styled, or, again, you can let the game do so. The other characters are well designed, especially considering they must all age over different time periods. The backgrounds are fine, but necessarily limited.
"Our Life" has short phrases or words voiced to go with appropriate dialogue occasionally. I dislike this style, but then I dislike full voicing too. I know this is very much a personal preference! The music is nice.
Story: "Our Life" tells just that, a friendship and childhood in vignettes from three summers, and does it well. It offers great customization, understanding that little details can be fun. Great variety can be found even if the broad strokes of place and character are the same. It's especially impressive how the game adjusts to different orders of summer moments and different relationships characters can have with Cove and their family.
Summary: Although "Our Life" offers no great or tragic drama, growing up carries an inherent drama everyone understands. It's great being able to make all these little decisions and see the variety of lives, especially in a free game, although DLCs offer more summer moments, other romance options, and a wedding with Cove.