What are the best life games on PC? Well, it depends on what you’re looking for and what kind of fantasy you envision. Daily life might be demanding and exhausting at times, but life games offer a chance to unwind and have greater control over someone else’s existence. As we look ahead to the likes of Life by You and The Sims 5, there are plenty of brilliant life games to fill the gap.

It’s more than just farming and dating – though there’s plenty of that as well. Some of the best PC games that imitate life probe what it means to be alive, while others simply let you bake, date, or live as a witch. So, like life itself, life games come in all forms, and while your mind might leap to games like The Sims 4 and other stalwarts when the genre comes up, there are a host of inventive takes on the formula. Be they adjacent to management games, farming games, or dating sims, here is our list of 12 of the best life games for peaceful – or crazy – escapism in 2023.

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