If you've ever wanted to best members of your high school buddies at life, then Life Quest is for you. This new time management game gives you the reins of the life of a high school graduate trying to make their way in the wide world of employment and higher education. Sure, that's probably what you're already doing, but Life Quest will speed up time a bit and maybe even make you feel more successful than you already are.

You begin the game in a dilapidated apartment building with no job and no furniture. Your goal is to finish a set number of tasks before one of your high school rivals. This feature continues throughout the game until you've bested the last person in your class. The goals start very simply, having you find a job, make $20 and then buy a pet fish, but then getting far more complicated, making you find higher-paying jobs, buying your own home and starting a family. You accomplish these goals by using up time units during your day. When you run out of time, you're forced back to your home to go to sleep. You have to eat once a day and keep your happiness high or your time the next day will suffer the consequences. Players can increase their day by working out at the gym, where you complete courses like yoga, bodybuilding, soccer and running to improve your physical condition and thus gain more time.

However, all that time means absolutely nothing if you don't do something with it. You can use your time to work for more money, travel to stores to buy everything from couches to kites to cars and clothing, eat at fancy restaurants or go on dates to movies and even take classes to better your education to get higher-paying jobs. How you spend your time is up to you, which is what makes Life Quest such a great casual game. It gives players freedom of choice in how to accomplish their given goals. For example, you can become an expert in certain jobs to open up new ones, or you can concentrate on gaining key qualities from classes to become qualified for new jobs. You might decide that you want your character to be a huge slacker with very little to offer besides relaxing with video games - ironically, that's an option here.

While Life Quest really doesn't do much differently than other life simulation games, it somehow manages to create an experience that's satisfying and addictive at the same time. Like many casual games, it is quite short - I finished the entire game (even after besting my fellow classmates at life) in about 4 hours. When I finished, I had become an expert at every job, seen every movie, eaten every item at every restaurant and bought the most expensive item in every store. The game is extremely easy to get a handle on and once you discover a way to play that makes you comfortable, the minutes really just fly by. There are a few notable tweaks in the game that keep things interesting - for example, in order to earn some extra cash, you can review movies or participate in a hidden-object type minigame where you get $5 for finding a gnome. Good stuff.

It's clear that the makers of this game weren't really all that focused on the reality of living by yourself and attempting to get a job. You don't really apply for jobs in this game so much as you click on a posting and just get it if your stats are high enough. There's no competition and no real impetus to go to work. You can decide not to go to work for days on end and not get fired. Similarly, there is no reality at all to dating people, as all you have to do is make sure not to neglect them for more than a day and their affection for you grows. Then you get married to them when it's at maximum. But maybe this unrealistic quality of the game is what makes it so addicting.

We spend so much time in the real world succeeding and failing that it's nice to have a world where every action that we take can be quantified and always manages to help you in life. Life Quest does a very poor job of giving people an idea as to what living in the real world after high school, college or even graduate school is like, but it does make for a fun experience that will make you feel as though you've accomplished something - a feat not many other casual games can boast.