There's no point in pretending otherwise: this is "Legitimately Animal Crossing," a laid-back village-building game populated by cute and cuddly creatures and all sorts of things to craft, dig, fish, cut, and sell at the local store. But even if I knew how this game was going to unfold within seconds of starting it up, it's good to see more games like this.

For a brief moment, I see potential in Dusty Life. The character creator is simple yet flexible, with a wide variety of skin tones and hairstyles (all customizable in full color), and genderless avatars. The game eliminates any ties to real-world clocks and instead uses a sped-up internal clock, so you can fast-forward an hour or two if you take a little nap, and a week can pass with a few button presses if you take a serious nap. I thought it would be a real relief to spend time in a healthy life-sim that didn't force me to sacrifice part of my real life to play it. ......

As was the case in "A Certain Game," the bridge is a great feature that allows access to open space in the village on the other side of the river. It is something that needs to be learned, collected, and crafted before it is finally placed somewhere sensible for the benefit of the community. In "Dusty Life," this whole process takes about five minutes in effect. It's quick and convenient, but at the cost of the most important thing a game like this should do: do nothing, just exist in this space.

It's a recurring problem in Hokko Life, but this game dares not give me anything to do. If I spend days in a row "sleeping" in order to build my house faster, none of my neighbors notice or seem to care. Trees grow back to their original height in a few days from the stump, and holes dug during the day are filled at night.

It's an unwanted helping hand that makes customization difficult. Perhaps they wanted to scatter a few stumps in a fairy forest style. They might provide a flower bed in one of the grassy knolls. It also means that you don't have to go out of your way to make a personal effort to find a balance between local beauty and useful resources. Because trees and everything else are just good-looking piñatas that can be tapped whenever materials are needed.

Many of the tools needed to perform these tasks are available through "mayor merit" (repetitive small groups that can be worked on freely). Unfortunately, these important items and bonuses are hidden in useless silhouettes in the merit menu, making it difficult to know what to prioritize, and the cause-and-effect relationship between work and reward is not always clear.

One of the requirements for the mining hat is to change clothes 15 times for no apparent reason. Worse, these rewards are haphazardly chained together. In other words, if I want to get the pickaxe upgrade, I have to fish for 10 treasures and plant 25 trees. It's a forced busyness that keeps me from doing what I really want to do.

I think I would enjoy it more if it had a little personality, but the "dusty life" is again lacking. No awkwardness, no friction, no weird neighbors who can't decide whether they want to send you a love letter or throw you in a hole (although neither is possible in Hokko Life). The closest these characters come to a personality is the tiresomely twee line, "I've never had a night so bad that things don't seem to be getting better in the morning." It's as if he's a health guru whose only criteria for "bad" is that the barista gave him an oat milk latte because they ran out of almonds. My avatar is the same way, with most of the dialogue "choices" being versions of "yes" uttered in the least offensive way possible.

The village itself is equally boring, with autumn as green as a summer's day and only winter making a visual effort. Seasonal events fail spectacularly to brighten things up. Mainly, there is one bug catching day and one fishing tournament per season, and apparently nothing else. No spring picnics, no creepy pumpkins at the end of fall, no fireworks at the end of the year to look forward to.

At least "Beikou Life" won't disappoint life-sim enthusiasts with a wide range of hardware, as the comprehensive graphics setup makes it easy to play on a variety of PCs. The customizable interface for crafting, which can only be described as "simple" as conceived by a professional 3D artist, and the tutorial text boxes often fight with the very interface they are trying to explain, accidentally skipping text or hiding icons

"How do you do it?

Games that blatantly aim for the crown of "Animal Crossing" are either a swinging distance away, or at least an experience that is distinct from the inspirational games that "Temtem" and "Multiversus" do in "Pokemon" and "Super Smash Bros." need to offer. Animal Crossing at Home": it's a game. This is a particularly shallow imitation on a platform that is already awash with games that incorporate creative touches into a wholesome craft life.