Let's Play Simulator 2016

Playing video games for money was a distant dream a decade ago, unless you were into e-sports. However, that required a lot of skill and dedication, not to mention very long training sessions and the will to continue even after many losses. Nowadays, anyone can become a streamer on Twitch or YouTube, and it all depends on what you play and how you explain it.

Let's Play Simulator 2016 is a fun game in which you play the role of a streamer trying to get one million subscribers. In essence, your task is to read emails and choose whether to play and review the games you are sent or ignore them. Depending on the choices you make, the number of subscribers rises and falls, although it’s pretty easy to figure out which ones are going to be big.

The game is designed to poke fun at various game studios and publishers, although not in a mean way. Every game and studio you’ll find in the game is actually a badly-written version of a real one, such as Pleeezzard or Plota 2. If you are familiar with the industry, then you should know right away which games are going to attract followers and which won’t.

More subscribers also means more money, so that you can pay your rent and various other expenses that appear along the way. Although your desk is pretty rugged and dirty when you first start streaming, it’ll soon be packed with YouTube awards, red lobster and champagne, which denotes success. On the other hand, it gets pretty difficult to nail the right answers after a while, so it may not be as easy as you think.

In fact, things get erratic about half way through, because some of the games get bad result in spite of their actual reputation. There are also jokes you have to watch out for, such as when you are invited to test the exclusive Hack Life 3 demo but you cannot press yes. Many such jokes can help you have a good time, but the experience is still pretty simple and linear, unfortunately.

In the end, Let's Play Simulator 2016 has some pretty neat ideas to work with, but a lot more work is needed. The game is just too linear and simple to be fun for more than a couple of minutes, which is why it doesn’t have a very long life.