Your starting hand: place and family
After your era, Life Like deals you two more cards you didn't ask for: where in the world you landed, and what kind of household you landed in. Together they set most of your opening stats. This is the part of the game that does the heaviest thematic lifting — you can be born into a country at war or an old-money dynasty, and neither was your doing.
The nine birthplaces
| Place | What it gives you |
|---|---|
| A roaring megacity | Wealth and smarts up, social down |
| A tidy suburb | Wealth up, slight happiness up |
| A small village | Strong social and some health, wealth down |
| A fishing town on the coast | Health and happiness up, wealth down |
| A remote mountain region | Health up, social and wealth down |
| A country at war | Heavy penalties to health, happiness and wealth |
| A gold-rush boomtown | Strong wealth, health and social down |
| A glittering capital | Wealth, smarts and social all up |
| An off-world colony | Strong smarts, social and health down |
Two of these are conditional or rare. The off-world colony only appears in the far future — it needs a spacefaring era to exist in. A country at war is the harshest draw in the game, penalising three stats at once, and it's deliberately uncommon.
The glittering capital is the closest thing to a clean upgrade: power, parties, and very long knives, with bonuses to wealth, smarts and social and no penalty attached. If you're handed it, you've been handed a good opening.
The six families
Your family sets your starting Wealth almost directly, and the spread is the widest of anything in the game.
| Family | Starting wealth | Other effects |
|---|---|---|
| Born with nothing at all | ~6 | Health and smarts down, social up |
| A poor household | ~20 | Slight health down, social up |
| A working-class family | ~38 | Slight health up |
| A comfortable middle-class home | ~58 | Smarts up, slight happiness up |
| An affluent family | ~78 | Smarts, looks and social up |
| Old-money dynasty | ~94 | Smarts and looks up, happiness and social down |
Why the dynasty isn't the best hand
A dynasty birth hands you roughly 94 out of 100 Wealth before you've made a single decision. It looks like the jackpot. But it's the only family that carries two penalties: happiness and social both take a hit. A surname that opens doors and closes hearts.
That combination — very high wealth, suppressed happiness — is a specific recognised ending in Life Like, not just a mediocre score. Dying rich but miserable is its own result. The dynasty start pushes you toward it by default, and playing one well means spending the run climbing back out of the happiness hole your own family dug.
Why the poorest hands aren't the worst
Both of the bottom two families carry a Social bonus. Born with nothing at all gives the largest one in the family table — love was the only thing not rationed. A poor household gives a smaller version of the same.
They're genuinely harder runs; the health and smarts penalties are real and the wealth gap is enormous. But they start you with something the dynasty doesn't have, and the scoring model reads the shape of a life rather than just its wealth. A warm, connected, modest life is not a failed run.
Reading the combination
Place and family stack, and the interesting hands are the ones that pull against each other. A dynasty in a country at war. Born with nothing in a glittering capital. A working-class family in a gold-rush boomtown, where the wealth bonus of the place partly offsets the modest start but the health penalty compounds a short era.
This is the layer where Life Like stops being random and starts being a situation. You can't change the hand — but every choice afterwards is read against it.
Next: which born gift to pick — the one part of your starting life you actually control. Or read the era guide for the layer above this one.