1 in 8 Billion modes: eras, daily themes and automatic play

Can I choose my country, gender or family?

The normal settings in this independent browser edition do not let you specify a birth country, gender or family wealth. Birth mode weights included countries by annual births; population mode weights them by population. Both start at age zero. “The country you were actually born in” is only a comparison, and payment does not improve the draw.

Countries may repeat. Switching the weighting does not prioritize places you have never drawn. See data and methodology for the denominators and examples for Japan and India.

How do past, present, future and random eras differ?

• Past: a random birth year from 1950 through 2000 and a random month.
• Present: the year and month from the device date when a new life starts.
• Future: a random birth year from 2030 through 2060 and a random month.
• Any era: first chooses past, present or future, then chooses a birth time within that mode. It is not a uniform draw from every possible year.

Past and future conditions apply simplified game trends to baseline statistics. The country draw still uses baseline weights, not a complete reconstruction of births in a historical year. Future mode does not guarantee wealth, happiness or longevity. Setup changes apply to a new life, not the background of an existing save.

Are 30, 60 and 90 minutes difficulty levels?

No. They set the pace of passing years using the starting country’s life expectancy as a reference. They do not change birth odds or guarantee a fixed session length. Pausing, waiting for decisions, speeding up, skipping to a decision and an early death all affect elapsed time.

Pause to read events. “Next decision” advances through ordinary years but a life may end before the next choice. Continuing a saved life starts paused, so resume playback. Closing or backgrounding the browser is not a promised offline-progress feature.

When do daily themes change? Is everyone given the same seed?

The current 10 themes rotate at the UTC day boundary: 00:00 UTC is 08:00 in Beijing and Singapore, or 09:00 in Japan. The device clock determines the theme, which a new life records when created. A home page left open may not update immediately at the boundary; reload it to check.

A shared theme does not mean identical countries, families, random seeds or endings. Each new life still follows its own random process, and the theme event has a trigger age. A life that does not meet the trigger conditions or reach that age may not show it. Resuming an old save on another day does not replace that life’s theme.

Themes support discussion of topics such as road safety, schooling and air. They are not a daily same-seed leaderboard challenge. The normal interface has no public seed-entry control that guarantees replaying someone else’s life.

Does automatic mode choose the best ending?

No. It responds to decisions and adjusts yearly focus through game rules, making it useful for watching a story. It does not search all possible paths or guarantee university, money or lifespan. Turn it off to make your own choices, then check for pending events. See the choices guide for tradeoffs.

Is gentler wording the same as classroom mode?

Gentler wording changes how some difficult content is expressed; it is not a no-death mode. Classroom mode also changes some event conditions and hides public-content sections on the game home page, purchase cards and the ending’s publish control. It does not make every story appropriate for every age. The classroom guide explains starting a new life in this mode and handling shared-device records.

Start a new life, read the beginner guide or save help. If the interface differs from this guide, contact us.