Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time has had an unexpectedly strong start for a sequel to a fairly obscure 13-year Nintendo DS game. And developer Level 5 has now thanked fans for their enthusiasm, pledging to release free DLC in response to “popular demand”.
The Girl Who Steals Time, for context, is a sequel to Level 5’s Fantasy Life – a sort of job-focussed mash-mash of life sim and RPG – which enjoyed modest critical and commercial success when it launched for Nintendo DS back in 2012. Eurogamer’s celebrated its “abundance of features” in our 6/10 review at the time, but noted the result was often “less than the sum of its parts”.
But in this post-Stardew Valley world – where you can’t watch an indie showcase without seeing a dozen new village sims jostling for attention – the newly released Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals seems to resonated with audiences. It’s garnered a positive early critical reception and even surpassed 45K concurrents on its first day on Steam (that’s more than Doom: The Dark Ages managed) – and Level 5 is now celebrating its launch with news of more to come.
“In response to the positive reception from players around the world,” it wrote in a message on its website (via Google Translate), “we have decided to release free DLC that will ‘update the world’… so that players can continue to enjoy the game for a long time to come.”
Level 5 hasn’t shared much in the way of specifics, but there’s talk of new recipes and “high-rarity weapons” that can be acquired though dungeons and “other methods”. The studio says it’s working to release the DLC “as soon as possible”, and will share more details at a later date. And it sounds like there’s more on the way; “We plan to continue updating the game,” it adds, “so that you can enjoy the world of Fantasy Life i for longer and more comfortably.”
Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is available now on Steam, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and Switch, with a Switch 2 version coming later this year.