Our Life: Beginnings & Always
A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android
A nostalgic visual novel where you design your own character and grow from childhood to adulthood with the lonely boy next door. Create an experience that’s all your own in this near-fully customizable, choice-heavy story.
Our Life: Beginnings & Always is a feel-good simulation, as well as a “feel-better” one, where painful emotions such as sadness, anger, stress, and worry can all be expressed, then met with reassurance, understanding, and support.
It’s a wholesome experience that faces large steppingstones of life, while having a focus on familiar everyday moments. With notable amounts of customization for even tiny details, you can enjoy pleasures as simple as having a preferred type of drink and a neighbor who cares enough to remember what it is.
| Price: | Free-to-Play, with optional paid DLCs |
| DLCs: | The first batch of DLCs are $3.99USD each with three available, a fourth DLC that is $2.99USD released in 2022 |
| Rating: | 16+, for swearing, crude humor, and suggestive content during adult-aged portions of the game |
- 4 different periods of life to experience: childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, and fully grown
- Name, appearance, personality, and pronoun (he, she, or they) customization for your character
- Change your character's details however you like as you grow, including transitioning to new pronouns
- Shape your personality, feelings, and preferences, then see them reflected in the story as characters remember who you are
- 1 love interest, Cove Holden, whose personality, interests, and appearance will develop in a custom way over the years based on his experiences with you
- Decide for yourself how quickly or slowly the relationship with Cove develops by setting a unique dynamic; from love at first sight to last minute confessions to always being friends and more
- A welcoming, sentimental story that can easily be enjoyed over and over using new main character qualities or different connection types with Cove
- Font style and size customization. Hit the "A" key to open a screen that has text appearance options
- 397,000 words, 16-24 hours of content in total
Plus, an optional feature of having a preset name for the main character that the love interest says out loud through voice lines. Download the free DLC to add that to your game build!
The main story of Our Life from beginning to end will always be free, but if you'd like to support our group and get new scenes you can purchase optional DLCs!
And if you want even more Our Life content, you can consider joining our Patreon! There's sneak peeks for future game expansions, extra update posts, bonus art, a private backer-only Discord, and so on.
Jamie Last (changeable name) has spent the last couple weeks on a summertime high. At eight-years-old, nothing is better than what feels like endless days of school-less adventures, especially when you live walking distance from the beach. While coming home under a scorching sunset one fine evening, Jamie is approached by a stranger. The man is looking for a kid who can do him a favor, and he’s even offering to pay for it. He wants Jamie to please be friends with his only child. The person is Mr. Holden, Jamie’s new neighbor, as well as the father of the odd, and oddly named boy, Cove. Whether Jamie wants to play along or not, Cove isn’t going anywhere. He's present in Jamie's life for far longer than they ever would've guessed.
And then the long days of vacation finally come to an end. Summer may not be able to last forever, but Jamie can take comfort in knowing it will come back again someday…
Download
Development log
- Our Life: Limited Time Cove Pin Set!Mar 03, 2025
- Cove Step 1 Plushie Now Available for Limited Time!Nov 24, 2023
- Our Life: Beginnings & Always - The Last Major UpdateJun 23, 2023
- Our Life: 2023 GoalsJan 01, 2023
- Our Life 1.6.1Oct 06, 2022
- Our Life Version 1.5.4May 22, 2022
- Cove Plushie Now Available (Limited Time Only)!Apr 29, 2022
- Cove Plushie Coming Soon! + GiveawayApr 22, 2022
Comments
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New update available!
Updated version is here → https://www.patreon.com/file?h=143687493&m=565600309
Please download only from official links (like this one) to make sure you get the correct and safe version.
how do I install on iPad?
I’m super into visual novels, been playing ‘em for a while now.. but dude, I’d never played one this good before. This game’s insane, like amazing! You can play it a bunch of times and it still feels like the first run. I didn’t even finish it yet and I was already restarting just to feel it all over again! You really get attached to the characters, it’s like you’re right there with ‘em. When you finish, bro, that EMPTY feeling hits hard, you’ll 100% wanna dive back in. Straight-up masterpiece, easily the best visual novel I’ve ever played <3 I LOVE COVE MY OCEAN BOYYY <33 (((warn tho; u will cry, nojk 🩵
this is so reall lmao
coveeee
I don't really like visual novel games (save for class of '09) but this is SUCH A FIRE GAME!! i love this game so freaking much! i also really liked picking songs from different game soundtracks and playing them over certain scenes, it was so fun! (in case you were wonding i mainly picked; persona 5, persona 4 and timespinner's OST's). also this game really helped me get better with wording certain things and flirting with my boyfriend which i (formerly) sucked at! the story is compelling, the characters are likeable and deep, i LOVE the amount of choice you have in this game, the customization is amazing, the amount of heart and world building this game has is amazing! would recommend totally!!
omg my heart <3
Why other devices has less downloadable size than the Android?
I literally just made an account to write a review and holy shit hands down the best visual novel I've ever played. I spent almost 7 hours playing this and I don't even know HOW to explain on how much I love this game sm I really wished I could deleted my memory and play this game for the first time again
this game is so good I cried and I'm definitely gonna cry again
This game is so amazing and I love everything! I appreciate all the work that was put into the game and all the DLCs! I wish I could go back and play it all again for the first time or lose my memory of it just to rediscover and play again <3 Cove is so precious 😢
This game great thanks !
Hi! Are you looking for translators? I’m a native Spanish speaker with a B2 level in English, and I’d love to help with English ↔ Spanish translations
We are unable to do any translations for the game, but we appreciate your offer. Have a great day!
Game so great it changed my life, it's genuinely peak. Once you start, you don't want to stop. You can see the love behind it. I spoke again to a friend I hadn't spoken to in a really long time to recommend this, and we reconnected asjdjaj.
Buying the DLC is totally worth it. I finished it months ago, I did all the possible combinations and routes and even from time to time I say "wow... I want some comfort" and I come back to Cove.
That's such a beautiful story about reconnecting with your friend! It's amazing when a game can bring people together like that. Cove really is such a comforting character, and you can absolutely feel the care that went into creating this experience. The developers did an incredible job making every moment feel genuine and heartfelt.
I don't mean this in any offensive or uncomfortable way, simply because the game and love interest were AMAZING and there was some mature dialogue, it got me thinking. Some popular VN's I've recently gotten into have made NSFW DLC, out of genuine curiosity, are you planning on coming out with anything like that? I tried to word that as appropriately as possible lol! (╥﹏╥)
If you support the GB patch patreon, you can access nsfw content ^^.
There are two downloadable playable nsfw moments : one set after step 3 and one after your wedding night in step 4. Both are pretty charming haha!!! (Both are Cove only)
You have to be 18+ to support that patreon membership tho! but yeah, that's where the our life nsfw content is.
Ahh thank you so much! I had no idea they had a patreon, i'll go check it out! <3
We do have two 18+ DLCs available through our Patreon, yes. Make note that the DLC are only available on alternating months, depending on your membership. But once you've downloaded them, you're welcome to keep them forever. Thanks so much for playing!
im also facing several issues though i use english tts.
Hello! Sorry about that. Our programmers are looking into it, but it may be something only the Ren'Py developers can resolve. Thank you so much for playing, though!
i guess that the features about self or clipboard voicing are different depending on the game.
i am facing similar issues with your other games too, wherein im not able to play because the clipboard voicing feature isn't able to read out certain options etc..
there are some tools which may help.
https://minute.itch.io/renpy-accessibility/purchase
I would like to report a bug / an accessibility issue with this game. This issue may also apply to other games using Ren'Py.
Bug Description: Using Text-To-Speech (Self-Voicing) in game on a German device reads using a German voice (Microsoft Hedda). Since the screen text is in English, the voice is incomprehensible.
OS: Windows 10
OS language: English
Game Version: 2.2
Ineffective solution attempt: Changing the voice in Windows settings under "Speech" and "Narrator" to any voice other than Microsoft Hedda and rebooting the PC does not change the voice used in game.
Cause of the bug: The game files do not set a specific voice for Text-To-Speech (see "tts_voice = None" in file "config.py"). Instead it goes through all available voices and searches for one mentioning the words "default voice" in its description (see file "say.vbs"). No such voice exists on my device, thus it chooses the first available option, which in my device's case is a German voice.
Possible solutions: Setting an English default voice for each platform (replacing "default voice" for Windows with "David" or "Zira" for example in file "tts.py") or developing an option to choose between Text-To-Speech voices in the game's menu.
I love this game and would like to recommend it to a group of peers that includes someone with low vision, but I'm concerned this bug may pose a barrier to entry.
Going through the game again I realized many sections do not have full Text-To-Speech support anyway (such as character selection), so perhaps solving this issue would not make a meaningful difference. I might keep this comment up in case someone stumbles upon the same issue.
Hello! We appreciate you brining this to our attention. I mentioned the matter to our programmers, and we're trying to see if there's anything on our end we can do to fix it. Unfortunately, it might be something with the Ren'Py engine itself that we can't change. If that's the case, you may have to address the matter to them. Sorry about that, but thank you so much for playing!
Howdy again, what's the guide process for getting the steam DLCs to work on the mac version of the game? I cant browse local files on it to find the files because I havent yet downloaded the game on steam due to playing on Mac so I dont know how to access the DLCs from Steam
Unfortunately, the Steam version of the game does not work on Mac devices. The DLCs work across platforms, but if you've bought them on Steam, you probably won't be able to access them, since the base game won't work. If you can get a refund from Steam, you can instead buy the DLCs here on itch.io, and those will work with the Mac version of the game you can get for free here on itch.io. Alternatively, if you can get access to a PC somehow and get Our Life on Steam there, you can actually find the .rpa files and extract them directly, and reuse them anywhere. Sorry for any inconvenience, but we appreciate you playing the game!
Hi! I'm on a mac and somehow all my progress in game was deleted (not entirely sure if this is relevant, but it happened after I downloaded/played the patreon moments.) My saves are still available but I cannot skip seen dialogue and the gallery is now empty. Not sure if there's really anything that can be done about this, but please let me know if there is!
Sorry that happened. Typically there is persistent game data which is stored separately from the game folder itself, which is where stuff like the gallery is kept. On PC this is found in the "Roaming" folder, and then under "RenPy", and "OurLife". I don't own a Mac, but from what I find online, it seems to be located in a path labeled "~/Library/RenPy", followed by the specific game, in this case "OurLife". That might be where the issue occurred, and forgive me if that path is the wrong one. If you find it, when was the "persistent" file in the "OurLife" folder updated last?
I found it! It said it was modified at yesterday at around 10PM, which I'm pretty sure is around the time I was playing it :p
That's what I thought it might be. What probably happened is that the Patreon version overwrote the persistent data from your normal version. I don't think there's any way of recovering it in that case. Sorry about that! And thank you so much for playing anyway.
That's okay! Thank you sm for the help!
WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN'T GET A CHERRY SMOOTHIE! UNINSTALL!!
JK I'm loving this game so far and once i did all the options for part 2 i didn't want to continue without the DLC. Bravo
Edit: Man i got so hooked in this story my first time playing it i played for like 18 hours straight, nearly crying at multiple parts. Taking up an entire day of my weekend. Your Patreon can have my money.
Same!! I literally got to the Road trip of step 2 and stopped midway I need the DLCs before going on. I plan on buying them all as soon as possible going back to step 1 I've never got soOoO hooked to an Itch.io game like this.
Why does the game sometimes kick me out when I try to play it on my Chromebook I can choose 'Continue' or 'New Game'? It sometimes kicks me out but If it does let me into the game, I can get past the tutorial, but then when I try to customize my character, it shuts me out after about two seconds.
Sorry you're having trouble! Do you get any error messages when this happens? Hopefully I can help.
No, never it just kicks me out of the game, or a white screen pops up first, and then I'm out of the game.
Darn, that is unfortunate. Could you send me a screenshot of inside your game folder? It should be labeled "OurLife-1.7.1-pc". Just the inside of that, please. I need a bit more information. Thank you!
Hello sorry for the late reply i am currently on my tablet playing it and it works well. I am almost through playing the game. Thank you for trying to help love the game so far I've been wanting to play this for a while! 💓
That's great! I'm glad to here it's working for you now and you're enjoying it. Always happy to help. Thanks for playing!
I have this game and all of the DLC on steam. Is there any way that I can transfer the DLC from steam to itchio so that I can play the game on my phone as well?
If you're transferring the DLCs from a PC to phone version, those don't always work, unfortunately. The DLCs will all work from Steam PC to itch.io PC versions.
Hi, I love the game, I finished it, it was the best thing I've ever played ❤️Will they ever release it in Spanish?
Unfortunately, there won't be any translations of the game. We're so glad you enjoyed the game, and thank you for following!
I don't know if I can even begin to put into words what this made me feel and how much I loved this story. Rarely does a VN actually have me in tears, not even from sad things but just. I don't even know. At the beginning of Stage 3 and 4 both the second I saw our moms and how they were aging with us I was crying. Seeing Liz at the airport in stage 4 damn near took me out. Such a beautiful game and such a beautiful story and characters.
Sorry to hear that! When you say you can play the other Our Life game, which do you mean? Which ones work for you and which don't? Hopefully we can figure something out.
"Beginnings and Always" crashes with this bug on samsung galaxy android something is definitely causing it to crash with a bug on the first our life game other android users on here report the same bug I've tried everything to fix it but I think something in the game is causing it to crash for android users and needs to be looked at if your team would take a look I and many other android users would appreciate it for sure I'm messed with every setting in the book reinstalled it looked up hidden settings on my phone and messed with it cleared cache and still nothing it's kinda heartbreaking I've never been able to run this game for more than a few seconds.
I don't have dlc installed on it or voices I turn the animation off crashes immediately and closes the game telling me there's a bug every time it crashes I have no VPN I have other site download allowed this is the only game besides an occasional "porn" game I play excuse my language that crashes everytime on android I had one other that did from another developer but they acknowledged that android had a bug causing the game to crash. So I'm letting the team know of my experience with this I've been messing with this sense the last update the day this game updated still nothing unfortunately.
"Now and Forever"works perfectly fine. No issues I've re-download it multiple times and played fine it opens everytime the only issue is the rain making the game lag but that could just be my phone model not handling it properly and I know you can turn that off so it isn't a big deal.
Thank you-
Thank you for so much information, and for being so thorough. Sorry you're still having that problem. I will raise this with the programmers and see what we can find, then get back to you. We appreciate your patience, and thank you for playing our games despite the issue!
Hello again. I had a chance to raise this issue, and unfortunately we're still not certain. Could you give us a bit more information about the device you're using? What kind of Android device is it?
Hello this is my 2nd account I'm on I just saw this now I'll send all of my phone infromation if this helps it's a samsung galaxy.
Great, thank you. I'll pass that info to the programmers and see what they say. Thank you for your patience!
no hablo inglés pero eso me ha detenido a jugarlo realmente amo todo, incluso la historia, lo amo incluso me hice un oc, gracias a el creador por traer esta joya :D
hi! just wanted to know... can I get the NSFW dlc in any way othe than a Patreon sub? I have the money, but I don't have a credit card linked to paypal.
Unfortunately not. Sorry about that, but we appreciate you following us.
Greetings
1. For steam, would it be possible to download it for Mac?
2. For the DLCs, does it have to be in USD? I only have another currency to pay with on card and I don't have a paypal
1. The Steam version doesn't work on Mac, but you can download the Mac version here on itch.io. If you have any DLCs from Steam, those are actually compatible with the Mac version as well. Simply download the ".rpa" files from the "game" folder of the directory and move them into the "game" folder of the Mac version, and they should work!
2. itch.io and Steam should accept other currencies, but I don't know which one you need specifically. If you have issues processing payments, message us again and we'll see what we can do to help.
Thank you for your interest, and we hope you enjoy the game!
Wholesome and detailed heavy. I love it.
literally sobbed so hard in the end, Cove Holden my beloved
Do you support Chinese?
Unfortunately the game does not have a Chinese language option, and we are unable to do any translations either. We appreciate your interest anyway, and have a great day!
I will forever love this game till the end of time I will never forget this amazing experience and they will forever be in my heart
edit: my 10th time coming back to this game but its ALWAYS worth it
I'll be honest in saying I didn't expect to love this as much as I do. This is a damn good story you made, and I really appreciate it. Gonna get all the DLCs eventually as well.
Shit, I just finished my first playthrough. I haven't felt this emotional over a story in so long. Thank you so much for making it.
When will they release the Spanish version? 😭. Cuando ponen la versión en español?
Y si ya existe una versión DONDE LA DESCARGO?!
Unfortunately, we're unable to translate the game into any other languages. We appreciate you stopping by, and have a good day!
Could I ask you a question why every time I open the game I got kick out and I don't know why I mean I didn't any messages at all so I tried installing it and downloaded again but it did the same thing can you help me please I'm using a android.
Sorry about that! One thing that might be causing it is if your device has a virus scanner that is flagging the game as suspicious. You might be able to make an exception that lets the game run. If that doesn't help, message again and we'll see what else we can try.
Hey! Do you need Turkish localization?
Unfortunately, we aren't going to be able to do any localizations for the game. We appreciate your interest, though, and hope you have a good day!
Hi, windows user here. I noticed that in part 3, once it got to the fireworks scene the background started flickering intermittently and certain assets would pop in and out of view. It only seems to happen on fullscreen display, also.
Wonderful game, though, really enjoying it.
We're glad you enjoyed the game! As for the flickering, you can often fix that by pressing Shift + G and changing the renderer. Change it to ANGLE renderer, and that should help. If not that, turning off animations in settings might also do it. Hope that helps, and thanks for playing!
I have a problem, I don't know if it happens to anyone else, but when I try to start a new game it instantly kicks me out, all any start option and it kicks me out and I've already tried deleting the file and downloading.
Tengo un problema,no se si a alguien más le pase , pero cuando intento empezar una nueva partida me saca al instante, todo cualquier opción del inicio y me saca y ya probé borrando el archivo y descargandolo de nuevo,descarga todos los assest pero en si no puedo iniciar una nueva partida
Sorry about that! Do you get any error messages when this happens? Are you playing on PC, Linux, Mac, or Android? Hopefully we can help.
I play on Android, and I don't get any error messages, the visual novel downloads fine but when I touch any option at the start it kicks me out
Is there a virus scanner on your device? Sometimes those automatically flag the game as suspicious. You might be able to make an exception that lets it run.
Sorry in advance for the lengthy, potentially nonsense, rambling to follow.
"I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched." -E.A.Poe
This is one of the most incredible games I've ever played. It feels like standing out in a gentle rain just before the sun shines through and warms your upturned face. It's sitting alone on a beach at dusk and listening to the waves as the tide ebbs and flows. It feels like coming home.
I believe a work of fiction must be truly beautiful to make me homesick for somewhere I've never lived; nostalgic for a place that doesn't exist. This game will live in my heart forever, I think. It has settled there.
I found Our Life during a low point. The joy, warmth, and peace I found while playing carried on even going about my day. The heart bears a lot as you travel through life. It seeks moments of rest and unburdening. Mine found that here. That's a gift I can't repay nor express fully my gratitude toward. Thank you, GBPatch team, from the bottom of my heart.
Sorry again for the length and ridiculousness. And thank you if you read this far. Maybe you'll find rest here too. If not, I pray you find it somewhere.
I'm thinking about playing it, but I can't find out if it has a Spanish language option; is that option available? Or will it be a future implementation?
(P.S., I had to use a translator to write this.)
Unfortunately, there is no Spanish language option for the game, and we will be unable to implement that either. We still really appreciate your interest!
So I got the game and the dlcs, but whenever I open it and select something it closes the game. I've tried to update it by re downloading the game apk. It tells me the game has bugs and I should wait till the developer released an updated version. I'm using an Android and download the files for Android. I got four dlc, the wedding, step 1, 2, and 3, idk if they might have a bug or it's the main file.
Sorry about that! There shouldn't be any bugs, as this is the most up to date version of the game. It's possible there's an anti-virus program that's flagging the game, as this is something that happens sometimes. If there is, you might be able to create an exception for the game. If that doesn't work, message again and we can try something else. Thanks for playing, and hopefully we can figure this out!