The articlegameplay, story, development, reception
Gameplay
Various Daylife plays as a simplified version for a console-styled JRPG. In it, the player plays as character traveling with a group of settlers on a new land, and joins an exploration team.
Development
The game was first announced on September 10, 2019, at Apple's yearly iPhone event. The game was a launch title for the Apple Arcade paid-game service, which went live on September 19, 2019. The game's development was led by the same Square Enix staff responsible for creating the Bravely Default and Octopath Traveler games, including game designer and producer Tomoya Asano. Mfi controller support was added to the game in a March 2020 update.
Similarly to those games, the key staff led another development team in its creation; in the instance of Various Daylife, they led the "DokiDoki Groove Works" developers. In July 2022, almost three years after its release, it was announced to be one of the first titles to be removed from the Apple Arcade service. In September 2022, it was released on the Nintendo Switch and Windows, with a PlayStation 4 release on September 16.
Reception
Various Daylife received "mixed or average" reviews according to review aggregator Metacritic. 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". 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".
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. Vice found it to be one of the worst titles available on the Apple Arcade, repeatedly calling it flat out 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.
