Nirvana - Game Of Life is a game released by Gold Tusks, available for Android. Here, you play as a soul that must travel through the cycle of life, from body to body, in order to experience everything life has to offer at the request of the Creator, that intends to devour the soul in the end, and with them all of the experiences they've collected.
The player can chose either to play their role, or to try to break the cycle of life and reach the Nirvana - a place where a soul can live in eternal bliss.
The player must take decisions through swipe mechanics that will affect the body where the soul is living in. In order to ensure your survival, you must mantain a balance between four different needs: health, mood, social and money. If any of the four bars gets full or empty, you die, to reincarnate in a different body.
These tropes can be found in Nirvana - Game Of Life:
- Abusive Parents: Depending on your choices, the player character's parents can have some pretty abusive attitudes: if you chose to show your mom a drawing you made, she'll throw it into the garbage can, and if you wake them up by jumping in their bed they'll ignore you for the entire day.
- If the card where the player character's parents reveal that they're adopted comes up, one of the two possible reactions is being happy for not being genetically related to such sociopaths.
- Exaggerated if you're born a Gangsta.
- If the player character has a child, there may be cards where the player can chose between being a good parent, or an abusive one.
- Anti-Frustration Feature: The game can become frustrating when many of your incarnations in a row end up dying in their 20's or 30's. In some instances, if you die, the game will let you keep on living if you watch a 30 seconds ad.
- If you get a health insurance, you won't die if your Health bar gets either full or empty (but only once).
- Having a best friend will keep you alive if your Social bar gets either full or empty (also only once).
- Back from the Dead: Probabily a developer's oversight, but when the player's body reaches old age, it is possible for them to receive a card telling that their parents passed away, just to a few in-game years later receiving a card telling that their parents are getting a divorce, or about how their mother is getting old and forgetful.
- Big Bad: The Creator. The soul you're playing as is nothing but a mere tool for him. In two of the endings, he either devours your soul, or devours the Lost Soul and imprisions yours.
- Death as Comedy: Most of the player character's causes of death are sources of Black Comedy in some way.
- Death Is Cheap: Due to reincarnation, it's no big deal if you die: you'll reincarnate in a new body right after your last body's death.
- Death Is the Only Option: If two or more of your Life Meters are too high or too low, you may get stuck in a situation where either option will kill you.
- Gold Digger: If you're married and your money bar gets full, you'll receive a card stating that your spouse killed you for your money.
- Haunted House: At some points in the game, you'll come across one, and you have the option of entering there. This house is plot-relevant because this is the place in the world of the living where you'll find the Lost Soul.
- I Cannot Self-Terminate: In one of the endings, the Lost Soul will admit that she just wants her suffering to end, and will let herself being devoured by the Creator, which leads to your soul being imprisioned.
- Lesser of Two Evils: Some cards lead the soul to this. For example, if you're arrested and declared guilty, you can either try to escape (which will lower your health) or lament how you got yourself into that mess (which will lower your mood).
- Life Meter: Here you have four of them: Health, Mood, Social and Money. If any of them gets empty or full, you die.
- No Biological Sex: Surprisingly averted with the Lost Soul and the Creator, that are always referred to with feminine and masculine pronouns, respectively.
- Professional Killer: You can reincarnate as a child born to a cult of assassins.
- Purely Aesthetic Gender: The gender of the player character changes some of the cards received, but ultimately it has minimal influence in gameplay (and over the course of the cycle of life, you get to play both as a man and as a woman).
- Purgatory and Limbo: When you die, you get into the Limbo, the place where you remain until you're reincarnated into a new body. This is the location where you talk to the Lost Soul for the first time and where the Creator comunicates with you.
- Pyrrhic Victory: Getting the ending where the Lost Soul is devoured by the Creator can be seen as this. You avoid being devoured by the Creator yourself, but you get trapped in the world of the living for the foreseeable future.
- Reincarnation: If your body dies, you get a new one (but only for 750 years).
- Riddling Sphinx: You must find a sphinx and answer their riddle in order to be taught the spell that can release a lost soul from their binding place. Failing to answer said riddle leads to your death.
- Superhero: After you unlock one of the unlockable packs, there's a chance of you being born as one.
- Zombie Apocalypse: You can start one by searching the corpse in the haunted house, that will bite your neck, leading to your death and starting a zombie outbreak.
