Agency Life beginner's guide: your first life

Choose how to start

You can start as a baby, a child, a teenager or at 18. Starting as a baby lets you experience a whole life, starting at 18 takes you straight to jobs, love and the city. Until 18 you live with your parents, so childhood is about school, friends, hobbies and your first small jobs.

You also choose how you want to play: online, where your life counts for the leaderboard, standard, or the free sandbox mode where you set the rules yourself.

One year is one day

Every year of your life is one day in the game. During the day you go places, work, meet people and decide what to do. Most activities take time, so you cannot do everything in one day. When the day ends, a year passes and your yearly report shows what happened.

Your phone runs your life

Almost everything happens on your in-game phone: messages and contacts, jobs, the bank, the stock market, dating, the map, social media, your crew and more. Take a minute to open every app once, many of them hide options you will want later.

Your first job

Your first jobs are simple, like delivering newspapers from 13 or helping out at the kiosk from 15. At 18 the real choices begin: delivery driver, waiter at Club Velvet, mechanic at the harbour or IT support at NetCore. Better jobs need skills, respect or a degree, so school is worth it. Our career guide lists every job with its salary.

Your stats

Keep an eye on health, mood, money and respect. Health falls if you neglect yourself, mood affects almost everything, and respect opens doors in the criminal world. On top of that you have five skills: driving, lockpicking, hacking, fighting and charm. You train them through courses, jobs and practice, see the skills guide.

People remember how you treat them

Every contact has a relationship with you. Text them, visit them, help them. The people in your life reply to your messages with their own mood, a good relationship opens doors and a bad one closes them. Even a rival can become your best friend if you put in the time.

Crime is optional, consequences are not

You can stay honest your whole life or try your luck with crime. Small crimes come first, big heists with minigames later. The higher your wanted level, the more likely the police are to catch you, and court and prison take years away from you. The crime guide explains how it all works.

Rewards that help you start

Open the game every day for a daily reward, and during your first weeks the rewards are especially generous. There is also a daily task and weekly challenges. Time machines let you turn back one year if something goes badly wrong, so save them for the moments that matter. More in the rewards guide.

Play with friends

Agency Life also has online play: add friends, join a crew, check the leaderboard and pull off heists together, with crossplay between iPhone and Android. See the multiplayer guide.