Life sim game Paralives showed a new gameplay video, this time featuring the life aspects where you take control of a person. The trailer also confirmed that it will be in Early Access sometime next year.
This The Sims competitor is doing things their way, as the 7-minute trailer shows how similar- yet different- its approach to a life sim.
The trailer follows Anisa as she moves into her new place. Paralives has a personality system that’s a mix of putting points into stats and a selection of Social Perks, Talents, and Vibes. It’s not quite the trait system in The Sims 4, but having these personality ticks in different boxes (vegetarian is a small tickbox) means that not all personality ticks are character-defining. Personality can be upgraded over time, with the Vibe being able to evolve.
Finding a job in Paralives require the person to visit a lot with a job offering. The coffee shop hs multiple vacancies but due to Anisa’s lack of Application Points she is allowed to apply for only the Barista. Jobs can be “upgraded”. Rather than chasing promotion after promotion, jobs can be upgraded with different perks. It can be an increase in job rank (which essentially results in a pay raise) or an ability to further improve oneself- as a barista, you can listen to music while working which improves the music knowledge skill as you do the daily coffee grind.
Paralives lets people, or Paras, learn multiple skills when interacting with an object. Anisa learns not only the Guitar skill, but the music knowledge skill when playing the guitar. Music knowledge skill acts as an umbrella skill for all music-related skills as the higher it goes, the faster other music-related skills will be gained.
Group interaction is as simple as dragging a square, RTS style. This immediately forms a group where the people can talk, sit, and do other relationships as a group.
Conversations work differently in Paralives. You spend enough time for the Together Bar to fill up, and from there you get a choice of what social interactions to do. The Together Cards presented change in context, which includes romance options and job opportunities. Anisa is seen to develop a crush on Carl, and that later led to a job opportunity to work as a music teacher.
Some interaction cards have a percentage rate of success.
You can visit different lots around town, including gyms.
The trailer ends with the Early Access release window, (“releasing with bugs and missing features”) as well as the proclamation that Paralives “won’t have paid DLCs, only free expansions”.
In a post on the developer’s Patreon, here’s the reasoning why Paralives will not have paid DLCs:
“We believe that purchasing a game should come with the guarantee of a fleshed out experience. We aim to make Paralives our labour of love for years to come, continuously coming up with exciting new stuff to experience in the game.
“As a small team without any shareholders to please, we believe the money we make from selling the game alone will be enough to support us and the development of free updates in the long run.”
Everything shown here feels like a response to how The Sims have been stagnating and comes from a team that definitely played enough of that game to know what the series should have improved on. Including that last line on paid DLCs.
Unlike Life By You, Paralives has a strong vibe already that looks inviting.
Still, the next few years will be interesting for fans of life sims or jaded The Sims fans with a few competitors now stepping up to offer different takes on what started out as being referred to as a “dollhouse simulator”.
Paralives is targeting an Early Access release in 2025.