Various Daylife

Various Daylife plays as a simplified version for a console-styled JRPG.[1] In it, the player plays as character traveling with a group of settlers on a new land, and joins an exploration team.[1]

The game was first announced on September 10, 2019 at Apple's yearly iPhone event.[2] The game was a launch title for the Apple Arcade paid-game service, which went live on September 19, 2019.[3][2] The game's development was lead by the same Square Enix staff responsible for creating the Bravely Default and Octopath Traveler games,[4][5] including game designer and producer Tomoya Asano.[6] Mfi controller support was added to the game in a March 2020 update.[7] Similar to those games, they key staff lead another development team in its creation; in Various Daylife's instance, they lead the "DokiDoki Groove Works" developers.[8]

The game received a mixed reception from critics. TouchArcade singled it out as one of the highlights of the Apple Arcade service, in its weekly game update column, citing its "interesting battle system".[7] Dedicated reviewers were less positive. Destructoid criticized the game for being "cumbersome", "lack[ing] polish", and "underdeveloped", but still conceded that it can "find ways to squeeze out a small amount of enjoyment from time to time as the world opens up".[8] RPGamer agreed with the notion, concluding that it was hard to recommend playing or avoiding the game; they found the game fun to play in short 10 to 15 minute intervals, but bemoaned how long it would take to experience the game's 30+ hour campaign at that rate.[1] Vice sound it to be one of the worst titles available on the Apple Arcade, repeatedly calling it flat out as a poorly developed game, even pondering if its main purpose was just a promotional effort to show that a major name in video games like Square Enix was buying into the then-new service.[9]

All three reviewers noted that the game was more palatable when approached as a simple, casual mobile game than the big budget games Square Enix releases on home video game consoles.[8][1][9] RPGamer and Vice criticized the interface for not making the best use of the game's screen, both positing that the game may have originally conceived to be played on Nintendo 3DS screens rather than smartphones and tablet screens.[1][9] Destructoid and Vice felt that the game was at least an ideal candidate for the Apple Arcade subscription service; they felt it wasn't a great value proposition as a stand-alone game, but worked better when grouped into Apple Arcade's service, which allows players to play all of the games in the service for a monthly fee.[9]