Working class life simulator Nobody – The Turnaround demo seeing a large player count on Steam

Written by. Nick Mosier based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2022-02-24 16:33 JST)

Coinciding with Steam Next Fest, the demo for the life simulator Nobody – The Turnaround is reaching peak concurrent players in the tens of thousands.

Nobody – The Turnaround is a simulation game that takes place in a parallel world similar to our own. Players take on the role of an ordinary “Nobody.” You don’t have a distinguished family, you don’t have an elite education, and you don’t have once-in-a-lifetime business opportunities. You’re just a regular person trying to get by. But to make matters worse, you’ve been straddled with debt and must head off to the city with nothing but your work ethic and faith that things will work out to pay it back.

In the game, players will engage in various kinds of manual labor and manufacturing work as the game tries to faithfully recreate a blue-collar lifestyle. Your character has statuses revolving around their health and emotions, and these statuses are impacted by a number of events that can occur such as getting injured on the job, seeing someone else’s paycheck, or sleeping outside and catching a cold. You’ll have to overcome these randomly occurring events as you try to get by in the game’s harsh world.

Since the Steam demo was released on February 21, it has been enjoyed by tons of players. According to SteamDB, it even recorded 37,248 concurrent players on February 23.

I (the original author of this article) gave the demo a try myself and was able to see the game’s unique charm. In the demo, you play through the game’s first scenario “Debt Trap.” In this scenario, your father amassed a gambling debt and disappeared. Your mother is also sick leaving your younger sister with no choice but to care for her. As the oldest son, you have one month to pay back the debt and accumulating interest before any harm comes to your sister. To protect your family, you head to the city and look for work. The game starts pretty heavy.

As for the gameplay, it’s a top-down game where you move with WASD and interact with points of interest and dialogue options with the mouse. When I moved my character for the first time, I was immediately hit by a car and killed. It was a trial by fire at how real this world can be. I also accidentally walked into a women’s restroom and was arrested. When I was released 5 days later, my sister had already disappeared. Then after retrying and finally getting to a job, I was hit with another bit of harsh reality when getting my paycheck. But oddly enough, these events only hardened my resolve.

Your character is stuck in a lot of tough situations where all you can do is smile. There also seems to be great care put into the simulation aspects. This combination of uniqueness and game balance may be what’s drawing so many players in. Streamers on Twitch and YouTube can also be seen playing the game which is likely contributing to the game’s player numbers as well.

Nobody – The Turnaround is scheduled to release on Steam in 2022.