Campus Life Review: Bully Meets Stardew Valley

Let’s be honest, one of the best periods of our lives is during our college years. Getting piss drunk in a fraternity playing beer pong and then getting up early in the morning for a test never got old. Maybe add all-night gaming runs before a career fair, and turning up with a body full of caffeine for an important class just to meet the attendance quota. Reliving that part in a virtual world is exactly why Bully was such a popular release from Rockstar Games (which was supposed to get a sequel, but was likely cancelled to allocate resources for Grand Theft Auto 6 instead). Combine that with a few mechanics simulators like that of Stardew Valley, and you’ve already got yourself cooking! That’s exactly what the developers of Campus Life wanted the game to be (in my opinion, at least).

Campus Life is a life-sim game developed by GameFormatic and published by Frozen Way. The game came out for PC the PlayStation, and Xbox on Sept 15, 2025. Interested folks can head over right now to play the demo and understand how the game plays before diving headlong into the world. For others, I’d say read on to find out more about the game and then take a call about whether to buy it or not.

Game of Semesters

College Life is a lot like other simulation games. It’s kind of endless, and tries to “mimic” college life to the best of its capabilities. Fresh out of high school, you step through the gates of the campus into a brand new life – a life with newfound freedom and responsibilities. There’s an annoying college representative called Ray who acts as the tutorial master for the mechanics – most of them anyway. Most of the remaining mechanics are left for the player to discover on their own – and there’s quite a list of them. Well, at least you’d have the basics done right – you can go to classes and will have homework to deal with. There are tests that will need studying for, and of cours,e extra-curricular activities that need time to hone, and part-time gigs to earn some extra moolah to pay off the tuition (and other expenses).

There are no personnel who run after you for bunking classes – this is college after all. However, teachers will fail you if there isn’t sufficient attendance in the given class. Classes also need to be attended to improve your proficiency in the subject, which becomes important much later when tests come in. You can choose to put in a lot of attention, or no attention at all, to the classes to save energy. Your progress in classes helps you during tests, as it improves your knowledge of the same (and it also comes in helps during homework as well). Another way of improving knowledge is to study after classes (but no one really does that, right?)

College Life tries to simulate a living, breathing campus filled with activities for students to take part in. Sadly, most of these seem little more than small mini-games to help you ignore the otherwise lack of design space within the campus. Yes, you can do a lot of stuff, but none of this really has a consequence attached to it (except maybe studying or working part-time jobs). This is also reflected in the other students within the campus – there are barely any activities to do with them to spend your time. A simulator lacking key simulation features? That’s a bummer.

The game tries to add social features that anyone can expect in a college campus, like hanging out at the cafeteria, playing basketball, swimming, and a few others. The problem is that these features literally are not in the game (yet)! You can only talk to folks to improve your relationship with them (especially if they like what you are saying). The relationship system in the game tried to be a copy of Stardew Valley, but managed to make only a half-baked copy of it. Even the conversation system seems lacking.

College Life has an irritating feature of requiring tuition payments every week. This basically means you have to allocate time for attending classes and working out a schedule to work a few jobs to make up enough to pay the money. This also involves other expenses on campus, most importantly food and drinks (which help boost energy and mood levels to ensure better work or study outcomes). Things as petty as fast travelling cost money, which means that you need to run from place to place across campus (or take a bike from a stand if you find one) if you want to save that money away for the tuition payment. Negative balances are possible, but staying too long with a negative balance effectively ends the game. I doubt people need reminders about their mortgage or loan repayments in a game that is literally meant for escapism.

The Sights and Sounds of Campus

College Life boasts of an okayish graphical palette but suffers from having a cartoonish style quite like the simulation games of old. The game looks like a cooler version of the metaverse (and with slightly more features than it), but still feels lacking in many aspects. Most of the people look like miniaturized Amiibos, and their animations feel stiff (quite like action figures moving their heads or limbs). I know simulators aren’t generally very graphically demanding, but this quality is really laughable at best.

The game does have some music in the background to make you forget that tuition’s due on Sunday, but it really does nothing else. If anything, the choice of music seems a bit wacky and out of place. The game’s voice acting is possibly the worst – the Amiibo-like people speak some random gibberish, which has subtitles in English (or whatever locale you’re playing in). It’s really hard to immerse yourself when things like this continuously distract you, even when the main premise of still somewhat decent.

Graduating Thoughts

College Life tries to be a decent simulation game by being an amalgamation of many things (including the metaverse itself), and fails terribly at being anything of value. There are other ways simulation games out there which do a better job of impressing their audience (and ones which are more worthy of your money). Of course, if you’re really hungry to get back into college one last time, then this really sounds like the title to play – even though it really needs quite a few content updates to be anything close to meaningful.

FINAL SCORE: 35/100