Lifespan.exe

Live the one you've always wondered about.

Lifespan.exe is a text-based life simulator that runs inside a green-phosphor terminal. You open your eyes as a small child, and every year life asks you the same question: "What are you going to do?"

That part's up to you. Will you start a band in the garage and play weddings, or save lives in an operating room? Become the terror of the neighborhood and get mixed up with the mob — or an astronaut who looks down on the whole world one day? You can even be a fortune teller. We don't judge.

At any point in the year you can stop and make a decision. Look for a job, enroll at university, rent a place, ask someone to marry you. If the mood takes you, pack a bag and leave for another city; if the money runs short, knock on the loan shark's door.

None of it is required, and none of it comes in a fixed order. But every decision bends the next one: the time you set aside for yourself this year shows up ten years later — in your salary, or in your health.

Fall in love, get married, raise a kid — or neglect the relationship and end up at a table with two plates and zero sentences. Buy a house, buy a car, put a Swiss watch on your wrist. When the money runs out the loan shark is always there; so is his interest. One bad night can take you to court, and a bad lawyer can take you to prison — though you're welcome to try escaping from there.

Some people collect stamps, some records, some antique watches. But the pieces aren't sold in shops: each one waits for you in a different city. Completing a collection is a travel plan — and one day, telling the buyer at your door "it's not for sale" is its own kind of character test.

The country you're born in bends your fate: same job, same talent, an entirely different wallet. Time runs one way and there is no undo. When death comes, one thing is left in your hands: what kind of life you lived.

And every time, a completely different one.