BitLife / YMMV - TV Tropes

Game-Breaker:
- Using the "Spend time with all" button when you have enough characters to interact with can allow you to maintain relationship, and while you can only increase relationship once every year this way, you can spam this button to quickly increase happiness. However, this will not work if a character is in another country (you have to visit them or use other separate options instead), and a rejected attempt will drop your happiness instead.
- One of the gifts you can get is the BitLife Bitizenship. It instantly maxes out the relationship and if you are giving it to your partner they'll instantly propose to you. It is the easiest way to date anyone you want.
- Playing pro sports for just a year or two (especially if you get recruited right out of college) is an easy way to quickly make millions of dollars.
Memetic Mutation:
- Being seen by a blind man is one of the most common reoccuring jokes you'll see from the community.
- Asking for an incest update is so common that many players do it just to troll.
Older Than They Think: The DNA for BitLife lies in InstLife, an Android-only simulation game released in 2017 that had a small but devoted following (especially on its official subreddit). After BitLife took off, the InstLife fandom felt their game had been ripped off^note and repackaged for the masses. Mentioning BitLife became a Berserk Button in the InstLife fandom for a while before the game eventually lost popularity to BitLife. Even Instlife wasn't an original concept, the gameplay for both games was taken from the much older Real Lives.
Porting Disaster: The Android version of the game was this for quite some time, due in part to the developers not being familiar with Android coding. While it was always one or two updates behind the iOS version, it eventually fell further and further behind. The developers promised "Ketchup" updates that were supposed to allow the Android version to catch up to the iOS one, but this never happened. At its worst, the Android version was over half a year out of date, while iOS had gotten the Pride Royalty, Sports, Music and Mafia updates in that same timeframe. The developers then revealed that they were going to create a version of the game that would run on both platforms, one that would ensure both iOS and Android could get updates at the exact same time. In April 2021, Android finally got the Royalty update and would go on to get the other updates over the next few weeks.
Scrappy Mechanic: Criminal records can severely hinder your job prospects, relegating you to only taking bottom-of-the-barrel low-paying work. It also keeps you from adopting pets from the shelter. While this is Truth in Television, the game applies this regardless of when or why you got that criminal record, and it's impossible to clear. You may be denied the chance to be a writer because you committed a petty prank with your brother forty years ago. The only way to truly get over this is fleeing the country, which itself is difficult to legally do with a criminal record... unless you have a lot of money, but since you can't get a well-paying job, good luck figuring that out without resorting to crime.
Spiritual Successor:
- The concept and gameplay are identical to the edutainment game Real Lives, only Denser and Wackier and without the educational aspects.
- There are also some similarities in style to Alter Ego (1986), but with the addition of modern-day themes and a higher level of character customization.
Squick: For a certain sector of the community, they do not feel comfortable with the certain age difference that a couple can have, to the point that someone over 90 years old can date someone 18 years old.
Tear Dryer: Sometimes, badly sick characters can be cured out of the blue, after a visit to the doctor or even without one. It is even possible to be cured of rabies.
That One Achievement:
- One of the Secret Ribbons, Model Bitizen, comes to mind, as you must be a total Nice Guy and never get into any negative situation, not even once. Considering the Luck-Based Mission style, this is a total crapshoot to get. You also can't have too much money, or you'll get the Rich Ribbon; study too much, or you'll get the Academic Ribbon; or save people, because you might die with a Hero Ribbon. And all things considered you might just end up getting the Successful Ribbon again.
- ''Fertile Myrtle", which consists of having 25 biological children being a woman. First of all, you need to get pregnant 25 times (unless you have twins or triplets), which isn't easy (the earliest pregnancies can occur from the age of 13, but the "making love" option only appears at 16, and menopause hits at 54 with no exceptions; not to mention that sometimes you can make love many times without getting pregnant or have miscarriages). And on the other hand, having to take care of such a large number of children is usually very expensive, so unless you earn a lot of money, or your husband is rich, it is likely that you will end up in negative numbers.
That One Sidequest:
- The maze minigame used to escape prison. If you can't block the cop with a horizontal wall, which requires precise planning, then you're screwed. Even worse, failing the minigame can result in fifteen additional years in prison.
- The minesweeper minigame that pops up during the military career. Failure can cause your character to get badly injured or even killed.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: In late 2021, Word of God announced the business update. What makes the fanbase upset is that this update would make future special careers, including some of the ones previously free (if not locked behind the Bitizenship already, which will not grant you access to these careers), in-game purchases.

YMMV / BitLife

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