Format: iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch
Developer: Pocket Gems Inc
Ahh college days. I have very fond memories of my care free days as a student before the weight of the world crushed my spirit. Anyway when I first heard that there was a game called Campus Life I thought this could be my chance to relive my college days virtually I will add just in case my wife is reading this. But as Campus Life is all about being in a sorority I guess that will not be happening.
I have been sitting here for a good five minutes trying to figure out how to describe the way this game looks without sounding like a sexist jerk. But the fact is this is clearly a game designed to appeal to girls. It looks very polished and I think that the best way to describe the game in terms of its visuals is that it is like The Sims for girls. Wait isn’t The Sims played by mainly girls anyway? Well who cares all that maters is this is a fine looking game.
Now the basic goal of Campus Life is that you are playing as a young lady who wants to turn her little apartment into the best damn sorority that the world has ever seen. I guess you could call this one of those town style building games. I will admit part of me had high hopes that it would have been very similar to the movie Sorority Row, but I guess that was hopeful thinking. Who knows maybe one day I will get my mass murder horror movie style town building game.
Anyway as I am sure you have guessed a 31 year old married father of two clearly is not the target audience for this game. So I am going to try my very best to rate this on its own merit as a video game.
The first thing you will want to do is persuade some girls to come and join your sorority. The way the game does this is pretty cool. You will talk to another girl and try and show an interest in her interests. For example if a girl is really into keeping in shape then you can go and work out with her. You also can start up random conversations with girls. They will have these little icons that represent different things for you to talk about. But the fun thing is that you never know how they will respond to what you are talking about. I had a young lady burst into tears because I touched the icon that looked like cake.
The core game play is something that you have seen a million times before in games like this and Campus Life while not really brining anything new to the scene apart from it setting is solid enough. But the game has two major flaws. First of all the game is always trying to get you to make in app purchases. Which is not uncommon for these types of games. And also the amount of time it takes for things to be built feel like it is an eternity. Again this is not a issue exclusive to this game, but it is still annoying none the less.
In all I am sure if you are a teenage girl then you would have a great deal of fun with this game. And I could easily see this being the number one game in this genre for young ladies.