Stick RPG

Stick RPG from 2003 took the life-sim genre and dressed it up in utterly minimalist stick-figure graphics, yet it still ran a surprisingly full-fledged simulated life with all its worries. The player woke up in a virtual city with no money and had to find a job, show up for shifts, invest their earnings in education or real estate, and gradually work their way up from nothing to a comfortable life — or, if they preferred, enjoy the darker side of the city's underworld and riskier ways of making a living.

The magic of Stick RPG lay in the contrast between simple, almost childlike graphics and a fairly complex system of stats, jobs, and shopping that felt more like an economic simulation than a classic RPG with monsters and bosses. Thanks to that, XGen Studios created a relaxing game you could play for a few minutes on a break, but equally spend hours planning the ideal career of a stick figure rising from nothing to riches. The freedom in how you guided your character made every playthrough a slightly different story.

The game got a sequel with an expanded city and mechanics, and it remains an example of how far minimalist visuals can be combined with surprisingly elaborate systems and freedom of choice. Thanks to its undemanding graphics, Stick RPG ran without any trouble even on older computers, making it a popular choice on school computers with limited performance.

Why play it: For players who enjoy easygoing life-sim simulations and will appreciate that even with stick-figure graphics you can build your own version of a virtual life just the way you like it.