How to Play BitLife: A Beginner’s Guide
BitLife works on one loop: create a character, check what’s available to them at their current age, make your decisions, then tap Age Up. There’s no map and no combat, every choice happens through menus and short pop-ups. This guide walks through each part of that loop in the order you’ll actually experience it.
- Check your stats and current situation.
- Look at Activities, Relationships, School, or Work for anything worth doing.
- Make whatever decisions you want to make.
- Handle any events the game throws at you.
- Tap Age Up.
- Repeat, with your character a year older.
You don’t need to optimize every single year to have a good playthrough. BitLife doesn’t have one correct way to play, and skipping a year here and there won’t ruin anything.
How to Start a Life in Bitlife
- Open BitLife and tap New Life.
- Review the name, birthplace, and starting family the game generated.
- Reroll if you want a different name (available in most versions).
- Confirm your character.
- Check the stats bar at the top of the screen.
- Tap Age Up when you’re ready to begin.
You don’t choose your starting stats or your parents’ income. Some characters start wealthy, some start with almost nothing. Working with whatever you’re given is part of the game.
How to Play BitLife on PC
BitLife is built for mobile, but you can run it on a PC through an Android emulator or Google’s own Play Games app. Either way, you’re still playing the actual mobile game, just on a bigger screen.
Using an Android Emulator
- Download an emulator such as BlueStacks, MEmu, or NoxPlayer.
- Install it and complete the setup.
- Sign in with your Google account.
- Search for BitLife in the built-in Play Store.
- Install it and open it from the emulator’s home screen.
Using Google Play Games Beta
- Check that your PC meets the requirements: Windows 10 or later, at least 8GB of RAM, an SSD, and hardware virtualization enabled in your BIOS.
- Download Google Play Games Beta from Google.
- Sign in with your Google account.
- Search for BitLife and install it directly.
Beginner tip: if your PC doesn’t meet Google Play Games Beta’s requirements, an emulator like BlueStacks is the more forgiving option.
The Core Stats
Your character has four visible stats. They shift a little every year, and certain activities or events push them up or down more sharply.
| Stat | What it affects | Beginner priority |
| Health | Physical condition and long-term survival | High |
| Happiness | Overall mood and how your character handles bad events | High |
| Smarts | School performance and career options | High |
| Looks | Dating options and some career paths | Medium |
Beginner tip: check all four stats before every Age Up. If one is low, use an activity to raise it before moving forward instead of letting it slide for several years.
Hidden stats
Karma, discipline, willpower, and fertility exist too, but they aren’t shown by default. You can view them from around age 12 by meditating at the Library.
- Karma rises with good actions and falls with crime, cheating, or cruelty. Low karma tends to bring worse random events.
- Discipline affects school and work performance, and how easily your character develops addictions.
You don’t need to track these closely as a beginner. Just know they respond to the kind of choices you’re already making.
What to Check Before You Age Up
Before tapping Age Up, it’s worth glancing at a few tabs so you don’t miss anything:
- Health — any low stats to fix
- Relationships — anyone you should talk to, message, or visit
- Activities — hobbies, mind and body, or job-related tasks available this year
- School or Work — assignments, studying, or job performance
- Events — any pending decisions the game is waiting on
If you’re ever not sure what to do on a given year, running through this same list works as a default routine. There’s no wrong order to check them in.
How School and Education Work
Once your character is old enough for school, education becomes the main driver of their Smarts stat and, later, their career options.
During primary and secondary school:
- Tap Study Harder each year if it’s offered. This raises Smarts faster than attending passively.
- Keep an eye on Happiness. Struggling academically or socially can drag it down.
- Decide whether to pursue extracurriculars if your character has the stats for them.
After graduating high school, you’ll get options for community college, university, or entering the workforce directly. University costs tuition and requires decent Smarts to get accepted, but it opens up higher-paying career listings later. Going straight to work is faster but limits which jobs are available.
Beginner tip: if you’re aiming for a specific career like law or medicine, check what education it needs before you finish high school. Some paths require a specific degree.
How Relationships Work
Open the Relationships tab to interact with parents, siblings, friends, and partners. What you can do depends on the person and your history with them.
Common actions include:
- Talking or hanging out to build the relationship
- Giving gifts
- Asking for money or a favor
- Starting or ending a romantic relationship
- Having children (from adulthood onward)
Neglected relationships don’t just sit there quietly. Family members you ignore for years are less likely to help you out financially or emotionally later, and partners you neglect can leave.
Beginner tip: you don’t need to interact with everyone every year. Focus on two or three relationships that matter to the life you’re building.
How to Get a Job and Build a Career
Job listings appear under the Occupation tab once your character is old enough to work. What’s available depends on:
- Your age.
- Your education level.
- Your Smarts and Looks stats.
- Some randomness.
To apply for a job:
- Open Occupation.
- Browse the listings shown for your current stats and education.
- Apply to any you qualify for.
- If nothing appealing shows up, age up a year or two and check again.
The listings refresh over time, so the exact job you want might not appear immediately. This is normal and isn’t something you’re doing wrong.
Once employed, working harder most years improves your odds of a raise or promotion, but it takes time away from relationships and hobbies. That’s a genuine tradeoff, not just flavor text.
Your salary is what funds everything else as your character ages, like tuition if you go back to school, a place to live once you move out, or supporting a partner and kids. Early on there usually isn’t much to manage. It matters more once your character is working and starts making bigger decisions like buying a car or a house.
The Activities Tab
The Activities tab is where most of the game’s optional actions live. It’s separate from the story events that pop up on their own, and you can use most activities as often as you want each year.
- Mind & Body — the gym and meditating raise Happiness and Health; the library raises Smarts.
- Crime — options range from petty theft up to more serious offenses, with a real risk of getting arrested and sent to prison.
- Casino — gambling games like Blackjack. Wins add money, but repeated play can lead to a gambling addiction.
- Plastic Surgery — procedures like Botox or a face lift raise your Looks stat, at a cost that depends on the procedure.
Beginner tip: you don’t need to touch most of these in an early playthrough. Mind & Body is worth checking regularly since it’s a free, low-risk way to keep your main stats up.
Different Ways to Play
BitLife doesn’t have a set win condition, so most players end up gravitating toward one of a few general playstyles:
- Model citizen — focus on school, a stable career, a healthy relationship, and a long life. This is the safest path if you’re still learning the game.
- Criminal path — get involved in theft or organized crime, with the risk of prison (and the option to attempt an escape) always in the background.
- Celebrity or wealth-focused path — chase fame through acting, music, or social media, or focus purely on building a large net worth.
None of these are mutually exclusive early on. Most first playthroughs naturally lean toward the model citizen path just because it’s the most forgiving while you’re still learning what each tab does.
Common Beginner Mistakes
- Aging up without checking anything first. You’ll miss free stat boosts and relationship opportunities that don’t come back.
- Ignoring Happiness because Health and Smarts feel more important. Low Happiness affects how your character handles bad events, not just how they feel.
- Restarting the moment a dream job doesn’t show up. Job listings refresh over time. Aging up and checking again usually works better than starting over.
- Neglecting family relationships early on. They matter more later, especially if you need financial or emotional support.
A Simple First-Playthrough Strategy
If this is your first life, a straightforward approach works better than trying to optimize everything:
- Keep Health and Happiness from dropping too low.
- Study harder consistently through school.
- Pick an education path that matches the career you want.
- Don’t panic when a random event derails your plan. Adjust and keep going.
What Happens When Your Character Dies
When your character dies, the game doesn’t end. You can:
- Continue playing as one of their children, if they had any.
- Start a completely new life.
There isn’t one correct way to play BitLife. Check your options before each Age Up, make decisions that fit the life you’re going for, and let the random events shape the rest.
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