Screenshots
Watch trailer on Steam ↗Artist Life Simulator
Interactive Fate · Published by Interactive Fate, Placeholder Gameworks
Very Positive — 81% positive (196 reviews) · 26 achievements
Last updated 27 Sept 2026
Live the life of a starving artist in 19th century alternative history. Survive poverty, alchoholism, madness, depression, and 67 different feelings. Paint masterpieces by combining inspirations, sell them for riches (or scraps) and create a painting that will change the world.
£16.99
Lowest price we've ever recorded
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Price history
Indie, RPG, Simulation, Casual · 2022 · More £15 - £30 games
Dive into "Artist Life Simulator," where you navigate the highs and lows of an artist's life through intricate inspirations and market challenges, all crafted by Interactive Fate.
About this game
"Seek inspiration from people, city streets and poisons of the mind. Grow your passion, but take care of your sanity or succumb to madness".
A new life
Welcome to exploring the decadent 19th century alternative history, and a roguelite game about surviving as a classical artist in 19th century, while painting masterpieces.
A survival game, featuring feelings
You will be challenged by 66 unique feelings (each with a different effect), along with poverty and other wordly troubles. Hundreds of cards represent the psyche of your artist's mind, and life in Oportunia, the city known as the world capital of contemporary art.
A rich variety of interaction mechanics
All these artistic, amusing, horrible or lustful details of life are presented as hundreds of lovingly painted cards that can be combined, collected, talked or thought about, visited, read or interacted and so on, resulting in a vast diversity of results, creating new cards and new opportunities of interaction. The creation of this game was inspired by a cult classic of similar format, but different vibes.
Mortal challenges
Life of the artist is not easy. Poverty, physical ailments, sanity loss and other challenges regularly result in permadeath (a variety of permadeaths, beginning with dying to disease and ending with drinking oneself to death), followed by a tactful overview of your life (often miserable, addiction-fuelled, yet passionate) and legacy.
During your life, unpleasant feelings will evolve from bad to worse if not dealt with. You will have to battle conditions like frustration, anxiety, anger, guilt, sadness, suicidal thoughts, and multitudes of other issues, including habits, addictions and temptations of various kind.
Painting, and other pleasures
As an artist, you can paint your sufferings into spectacular masterpieces, or counter them with pleasant feelings such as love, pure delight or peace. If all else fails, you can always seek solace in the Bar Avenue establishments, hoping to drown the bleak thoughts in drink or more exotic soothments. Roguelite fans may enjoy the iron person mode.
18 different endings
You may win numerous minor victories and a selection of grand victories. To win the grand victory, you must create a painting that will change the world.
As your life evolves, unravels and expands in Nova Oportunia, life-changing secrets, ideas and experiences reach you. These can be thought about, developed, and in time, turned into the paintings that will change the world for thousands or millions of people, leaving a truly majestic legacy of your life.
Above illustration created by T. Viikman by hand (and without any AI), like the most of all ingame graphics (and images on this Steam page). Read below about the game's limited use of premade procedural visual variations based on historical free-use-licence art.
Free-use-licence-sourced 18-19th century art & procedural variations
Being professional artists ourselves (including traditional painters) it is extremely important for us to stress that we’re against unethical use of ai.
While every other part of Artist Life Simulator is drawn and painted by hand during multiple years of the development by a small team of three devs, the game contains also limited reproductions of historical 18/19th-century illustrations/paitings/materials and (in accordance with their licence, just like memes) their procedural versions (and versions of versions) for illustrating ingame oil paintings and situations that inspire the paintings.
The world was simpler when Artist Life Sim was in development. Practical “ai visuals” didn’t exist yet because they were too primitive to be considered problematic by anyone - but they did work as messy impressionist oil painting illustrations (while still needing months of manual work to become usable).
We hope - even if there’s a justified rage burning in your heart against ongoing misuse of AI- you differentiate our old indie passion project from products that (unlike ours) use AI unethically, irresponsibly or predatorily.
System Requirements
Will my PC run this? →Minimum
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS *: Windows 7 (SP1+) and Windows 10
- Processor: x64 architecture with SSE2 instruction set support
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Any old card at least DX10 capable and supports 1280x720 resolution.
- DirectX: Version 10
- Storage: 2500 MB available space
Recommended
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10
- Processor: x64 architecture with SSE2 instruction set support
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: any card that's DX10 capable, 1920x1080 or better
- DirectX: Version 10
- Storage: 2500 MB available space
Supported Languages
*languages with full audio support
Latest news
AnnouncementsOfficial
6-year recap and a new feature
Helllooo!!! The world is going crazy but we are back! This update allows you to give names to your paintings! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40742116/ee291d9071df7071487f4553459db60a3f40bbd4.jpg And by the way, here's a little recap of our doings the past 6 years: We released our debut title, the space-exploration roguelike Shortest Trip to Earth in 2019 (roguelite spaceship sim focused on exploration, ship management and tactical battles). {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40742116/8d52e87d1d172a48bc94f6153a596149cdbf9dde.png While working on Shortest Trip we also created the cute graphics for Circle Empires and Circle Empires Rivals (cute and accessible, fast tactical RTS titles). {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40742116/825622c2419d353c1873589762b8d8ba5b3d459a.jpg We started working on Artist Life Simulator in 2020 and released it in 2022. thank you for playing it! Hopefully, we can bring you many more interesting updates :3 {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40742116/868a821f72c6aaaebdeb1c7583f86b675a4036d6.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40742116/49494357929630bb7e1eff2f7802d3eb684776c4.png Our latest project, Monster Run: Downfall of the Empire is also a roguelike, and a pretty unique one, as you embody a giant house-sized firebreathing cat, fighting against massive medieval armies of tiny but evil humans). We are still working on Monser Run (ported version), but have also started working again on our old favourite games, including Artist Life Simulator! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40742116/924d8145d89d6e22ee24690ee5027fe309eebbb7.png Today’s update for Artist Life Simulator: New feature: naming your paintings (when the painting is finished, in the message window) Erotic paintings now only need 2 characters and 1 red feeling Increased painting value of some red feelings Shady Business Opportunity now needs 3 alcohol instead of 5 Changed numerous descriptions and texts into more accurate Fixed a bug with the “Distant Aquaintance” upgrade for Charles Smaller fixes Upcoming plans: New music New content/feature updates Difficulty will b...Read full article on Community Announcements (Nova Oportunia)AnnouncementsOfficial
Hello Arstist Life Simulator players!
This is a small Spring-Sale update that mostly rebalances and improves some existing content, including our DLC Guns & Cakes. We’re currently super busy working on our next game, an action roguelite called Monster Run (where you’re a giant monster cat fighting against armies of humans), but we aren’t done with Artist Life Simulator yet. Have a merry spring and a happy new approaching summer! Increased painting value of ideas and some memories Increased painting time penalty of some crimson conditions (like frustration) Updated painting value of some generic memories Changed Temptations to have more interesting effects Opportunities to buy guns in Cakes & Guns DLC last longer before vanishing Smaller fixes {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40742116/49494357929630bb7e1eff2f7802d3eb684776c4.pngRead full article on Community Announcements ((IF)Taavi)AnnouncementsOfficial
Happy spring sale!
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40742116/3274119d2122eca04a9a665fc8bbf2cc3bffed65.pngRead full article on Community Announcements ((IF)Taavi)Patch NotesOfficial
Balance update with new content
We are currently doing our first -50% off sale, so the best time to recommend Artist Life Simulator to a good friend is today. Thank you! This update rebalances (and fixes) numerous chances and stats across the game. There is no greater pattern of increased/reduced difficulty. The most noticeable change is a minor reduction of the chance to get willpower from the Ocean, but this is counterbalanced by other changes. We also added a number of new results to various events accrosse the game. Fixed: Charles not having "Sculpting of Physicue" upgrade. Fixed: Some gun buying opportunities of the Guns & Cakes DLC never vanishing after their timer runs out. P.S! In case you missed the news last time, we recently released our first DLC Guns & Cakes: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2358550/Artist_Life_Simulator__Cakes_and_Guns/ Good things can happen when you buy cake: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40742116/3274119d2122eca04a9a665fc8bbf2cc3bffed65.pngRead full article on Community Announcements (Nova Oportunia)AnnouncementsOfficial
Cakes & Guns: extra content DLC released
The Cakes & Guns extra content DLC is ready! This fresh DLC adds 9 Pistols, 14 Cakes, 200+ new events, new painting illustrations & a lot of other content to the base game, check for yourself: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2358550/Artist_Life_Simulator__Cakes_and_Guns/ Visiting the cake shop (click to enlarge) {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40742116/8cfb81aa7045b36ba8912b8c16182ce26a056fc1.png Buying a gun (click to enlarge) {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40742116/434af40d177f4115a908ca15f10ef6cf69454b2a.png New content for version 1.1.5 Added new events across all locations Added new injury type: The Allergy (cannot visit Park or Mountains). Quality of life changes New DLC available, steam link also in the game main menu (fully save-compatible) Ultrawide monitors can now use fullscreen mode Windowed mode is now resizable Added “hover text keepout” hint Upgrades panel can now be panned to the top regardless of zoom level Escape keys now only opens/closes the main menu Added more (start action) functions to Enter key Fixed highlighted cards sometimes showing relation when there was noneRead full article on Community Announcements (Nova Oportunia)
