Cart Life is returning a decade later with a new partner

The longtime darling will look to tie off loose ends

If you were reading blogs about games on the internet a decade ago, it was hard not to hear about Cart Life. Made by Richard Hofmeier, Cart Life swept awards and inspired words, but soon disappeared into the wind. Now, Hofmeier is partnering with AdHoc Studio to see it through in a new release.

Cart Life will be released as a partnership between Hofmeier and AdHoc. The latter is an independent studio founded in 2018, by four former Telltale Games developers. No date’s been set yet outside the 2023 window.

If you’re unfamiliar, Cart Life is a retail sim game following street vendors. It’s got a signature greyscale, pixelated look and really hones in on the lives they lead, and struggles they deal with while making rent, budgeting well, and trying to maintain their lives in the process.

It won big at the 2013 Independent Games Festival at GDC, even taking home the Seumas McNally Grand Prize. But after a short life online, the game seemingly disappeared into the ether of the internet.

AdHoc additions

As the AdHoc team tells it, the crew was profoundly influenced by Cart Life and became alarmed when it appeared it was no longer available anywhere. So AdHoc reached out to Hofmeier and offered help. Now, the partnership is working on a “definitive version” of Cart Life.

Many aspects of Cart Life will stay the same; graphics, story, and premise are “more or less untouched,” and only changed if it’s something Hofmeier was “unsatisifed” with in the original. This new version moves Cart Life into Unity, though, and allows for a console port as well as PC. The team is still figuring out which consoles and when, though.

Some new content is also being added, to “ensure that each of the playable characters has a proper ending to their story.” The order you select the stories to play in will also matter.

No date’s been locked in yet, but it does look like one of the long-lost pieces of games history is getting a more definitive, archival version sometime this year.

Eric Van Allen

Senior News Reporter