BitLife

How BitLife: Life Simulator works

BitLife: Life Simulator (known as ‘BitLife’) is a free roleplaying game. In BitLife, a player can control one or more characters throughout their life by managing 4 statistics:

Happiness
Health
Smarts (intelligence)
Looks

The character’s background, including their national origin, gender, race, family background and wealth are randomly generated. As the character grows up, they will have the opportunity to make life choices. This includes going to university, finding a job, moving to a new country or having a family.

Minimum age requirements

BitLife is rated PEGI 16 due to the mature themes present in the game. These include violence, drug use and sex.

There is no age verification on BitLife. This means users of any age can download and instantly begin playing the game. You can use the controls on your child’s app store to stop them from downloading mature apps.

Features

Activities

This is where users decide on their choices and options in the game. For example, deciding to exercise or visit the doctor.

Assets

This refers to a character’s in-game assets. It includes finances, investments, properties, vehicles, possessions, and in-game social media presence.

Bitizenship

This unlocks a premium version of the game. Users must use real money to pay for Bitizenship. It removes ads for the player, and offers ‘VIP’ features like exotic pets, unlimited generations, and special interactions with characters.

Challenges

These are special tasks that users can complete for rewards within the game. BitLife release these every weekend. They generally last about 5 days. After this time users can no longer earn rewards for completing these challenges.

Encounter

This refers to a scenario where someone of the sex industry is within range of a character. Players can choose to: Ignore them, argue with them, assault them or solicit them. Characters can also contract sexually transmitted diseases from characters in the sex industry.

God Mode

A one-time purchase that allows users to customise the stats, appearance, and names of any character.

Happiness

Happiness indicates how happy a character is. Low ‘Happiness’ can result in characters becoming depressed and needing to access in-game healthcare. Players are encouraged to take part in activities that boost happiness for the overall wellbeing of their character.

Health

Health refers to how physically healthy a character is. It influences how long the character lives. In-game visits to the doctor and gym can help boost health.

Job

This is the what a character does for work. It can be changed at any time.

Karma

This rewards players for choosing ‘good’ or ‘kind’ actions. It also punishes players for picking ‘rude’ and ‘bad’ options, such as committing crimes.

Looks

This refers to the physical appearance of the player’s character and influences the difficulty of finding a romantic partner as well as getting certain job roles.

Mini games

This feature allows users to play additional mini games within the BitLife game.

Money

In-game currency that a player’s character can use to purchase personal possessions or to pay bills and taxes.

Relationship

This refers to the relationships held by a player’s character. These include romantic, platonic and familial connections to other characters in the game.

Ribbon

A ribbon is awarded to a player upon the death of their character. These represent the achievements of the character during their in-game lifetime. For example, an academic ribbon is awarded for academic achievements.

Shop

This is where users can purchase special in-game items, expansion packs, and premium game features with real money.

Smarts

This refers to the character’s intelligence. It influences their ability to go to university and find jobs.

Stats

‘Stats’ refers to a character’s happiness, health, looks, and smarts.

Managing risks

Inappropriate content

There are a range of adult themes and content that your child is likely to be exposed to within the game. These include references to sexualised content, such as pornography, prostitution, genitalia and sexually transmitted diseases. There are also a significant number of violent references within the game, as well as references to drugs, alcohol, gambling and crime.

Preventing your child seeing inappropriate content when playing BitLife is unlikely. However, taking the following actions can reduce the impact of this inappropriate content.

Talk with your child

Speak with your child about the adult themes found in the game and allow them to ask any questions they may have. Ensure your child knows they can come to you for support if they find anything in the game upsetting or confusing.

Be involved

Maintain regular interest in the life-choices your child makes for their character. Playing the game alongside your child will give you a chance to see what kind of content they are exposed to and can help you encourage them to make appropriate decisions.

Overspending

BitLife has in-app transactions which give users access to more content and features.

However, it can be easy for your child to overspend on the app. You can help prevent this through doing the following.

Talk about spending

Discuss the value of money with your child, to help them understand that money spent digitally is still real money. Compare the cost of BitLife transactions to things they could purchase offline for the same price.

Set spending limits

On your child’s device, you can set spending restrictions so that your child must get approval before making any purchases. This will stop them from spending without your permission.

Excessive screen time

BitLife has no natural endpoint for players. Players can play out a character’s whole life until they die, and then immediately start playing as another character. This, combined with the app sending notifications to players, especially when they have been away for a while, can result in excessive screen time.

The following steps can help balance your child’s screen time.

Edit settings

Disabling notifications can reduce how often your child opens the game, as they will not be distracted by alerts.

Set time limits

In the settings of your child’s device, you can set limits on how long your child can play the game each day.

Set boundaries

Agree on when and where your child can play the game.

Settings to support your child

BitLife has no parental controls. However, you may want to explore the following device settings.

Disable notifications

Turn off notifications (on iOS)

Open the ‘Settings’ app.
Go to and select ‘Notifications’.
Find and select ‘BitLife’.
Toggle off ‘Allow Notifications’.

Turn off notifications (on Android)

Open the ‘Settings’ app.
Select ‘Apps’.
Select ‘Manage apps’.
Find and select ‘BitLife’.
Select ‘Notifications’.
Toggle off ‘Show notifications’.

Disable purchasing

Disable in-app purchases (on iOS)

With Screen Time enabled, go to ‘Settings’.
Open ‘Screen Time’ and select ‘Content & Privacy Restrictions’.
Turn on the toggle next to ‘Content & Privacy Restrictions’.
Select ‘iTunes & App Store Purchases’.
Select In-app Purchases and select ‘Don't Allow’.

Disable in-app purchases (on Android)

Go to ‘Google Play Store’ app.
Select the profile icon.
Select ‘Payments and subscriptions.
Select ‘Purchase verification’.
Select ‘Verification frequency’.
Set it to ‘Always’ and select ‘OK’.