Players spawn randomly into the world either as a child, with another player as mother, or as a young adult, an Eve, if the number of babies is already too high. To the right are two babies, who must be cared for by others. Rohrer has stressed the continued development of the game until at least 2020. The game has had a positive reception, with critics comparing the game favorably to Don't Starve and praising its social aspects. The main ideas influencing the game's design are player cooperation, sustainability and the prospect of developing a civilization. It is almost exactly the same as the PC version, other than slightly different graphics and a different creator.

Separate from the servers hosted by Rohrer, an independently developed, unofficial fork of the game created by Dual Decade exists for iOS and Android devices, titled You Are Hope. Originally available only on the website, it was later released on Steam in November 2018. The game's source code and assets are placed into the public domain, and are freely available on GitHub, with accounts being sold for access to the primary servers hosting the game. They must gather and grow food, craft tools and build societies in order to survive. Each player lives for, at most, 60 minutes in a large, persistent world, with each minute representing a year of life. One Hour One Life is a 2018 survival massively multiplayer online game developed and published by Jason Rohrer.

One hour one life free