The first expansion for The Sims 4 in 2023 is here. Growing Together adds a plethora of new gameplay systems to further flesh out the life of a Sim from the cradle to the grave, with a specific focus on the children, adults and Newborns- the new stage of life in the life sim, essentially developing babies.
The content addition is plentiful and welcoming, though some of the new gameplay systems feel more substantial than others. But if you’ve been looking for an excuse to actually play a legacy game and not have Sims not age up, on top of the previous High School Years expansion, the Growing Together expansion pack for The Sims 4 is a decent one to get.
Like most The Sims 4 expansions, Growing Together brings about some new gameplay mechanics and system-wide changes that impact how you play the life sim as a whole. This pack aims to make relationships between Sims much deeper and enrichen their lives, as the name Growing Together implies.
With this expansion pack, family members can develop different dynamics between each other based on the results of social actions between them, for example. The mechanic is similar to how the game can pop up and ask you if a Sim like or dislike an activity based on how often they are in a good/bad mood when doing so.
Family dynamics can range from Close to Distant, from Strict to Lenient and to throw in the joker card there’s also the Jokester dynamic. What this affects is Sims having an extra moodlet when they are around the other Sim. A younger Sim with a Lenient dynamic can get angry because they can get away with it. An older Sim with a Strict dynamic may hesitate and have a moodlet reflecting that maybe they should be more lenient.
In a way, the family dynamic system feels like sentiments and like sentiments, the system isn’t that deep enough to really affect a Sim’s relationship in a meaningful way. At best it adds more moodlets that will swing a Sim’s mood around once in a while and at worse it feels like fluff. Being around Strict parents will cause the child to feel “the stressies” and be tense. While the adults with the same dynamic can go sad contemplating that maybe they should be more lenient, for example.
The relationship tab now displays if a Sim is “compatible” with another Sim based on their personality as well as likes and dislikes, to give you an overview if they would hit off well together or require some effort to get a healthy relationship going.
On paper, social compatibility sounds like it will bring some new dynamism to how Sims build relationships. It’s an opt-in system, as it works by having a Sim declare what they like and dislike. You can have a Sim who dislike Ambitious Sims which means they are more compatible with other Sims with the Slob and Lazy traits. It can also happen naturally, make friends (or enemies) with Sims that have some particular traits the game will prompt if that Sim likes/dislikes other folks with such traits.
There is a cool addition to the likes/dislikes thing, which is that Sims can like or dislike certain social interactions with Growing Together. Social interactions have an additional subgroup with the expansion like small talking, storytelling, gossiping and sharing deep thoughts. That also means the nested loops of social interactions have become even more convoluted, messy and hard to navigate. It took me too much time to figure out which social interaction goes in what category, and the context-based choices don’t seem to be as clever in suggesting the interactions that you would likely want to do. Why do kids like to be mean and call each other a PlantSim a lot?
I feel like the developer Maxis has their heart in the right place with the gameplay additions, but they’re approaching a limit to what the foundations of The Sims 4 are able to support gameplay-wise. The new social layers haven’t really changed how I approach the life sim game in a meaningful way but it does make me care about how I want these relationships to end up shaping. It’s cool that relationships are not just about increasing a green/pink/red bar. Yet I never felt compelled to accept anything the game tries to throw at me that doesn’t align with how I want to play.
There are also milestones, which keep track of the many wonderful (and not-so-wonderful) things have done in their life so far. It’s mostly seen in full when you have babies and toddlers. Milestones make it easier to track what sort of development do the young Sim need to make before they’ll eventually age up to the next stage of life. Has the baby learned to smile and coo yet? Can the baby lift up their head? Can the toddler speak the gibberish language of Simlish or they’re babbling even more incomprehensible giberrish still?
The early life stage additions are okay, I guess. To be fair, I’m the sort of Simmer who never age up Sims and play around the life of adults, because I never find the base game’s family gameplay ever that compelling (plus most of the DLC packs heavily focused on adults in the past- something that’s only being rectified recently).
Raising babies into functional children is a nightmare as expected, but a cumbersome nightmare as you still need to deal with the idiosyncracies that is Sims AI. There are so many actions where a grown-up Sim has to put down the Infant or Toddler they are carrying before asking them that they’ll be teaching something and lift them up again- so stacking queues of actions to be done on a baby Sim is always going to consume time.
And it gets worse if another Sim decides to interact with an Infant or Toddler that already has a queue of actions to be done upon them- the Sim just stands still doing nothing. And the other Sim that has that queue of actions can also be standing still doing nothing as well. I get that raising babies- especially twins or more- is hard. But because of these inefficiencies, you can expect an adult Sim to have barely any free time for themselves (and end up miserable), always preoccupied with taking care of babies.
Legacy AI problems, like how Sims can sometimes just not be able to do dishes but keep collecting in a pile- how long has this bug been around?- further exasperate the issues.
(Side note: The Sims 4 was just not pleasant to play at the launch of this pack. Sure, elongated babies are funny, but there were just bugs galore that made the game not fun, including Sims standing idle for absolutely no reason and refusing to accept any actions until you restart the game. By the time of writing, it plays much better and most of the issues I’ve seen have been fixed.)
You can carry the Infants in back carriers, new to this expansion, but because baby maintenance is so dang time-consuming I couldn’t find time to bring them out and about. For this review, I’ve set the Sim age length to default, and there’s not enough time to do everything you want with this time length. I recommend extending, even pausing, all age-ups if needed, to really enjoy the struggles of parenting with less stress that comes with a ticking timer.
But if you feel overwhelmed with taking care of a baby (or babies), there’s also a new feature where you can have a Sim stay over the house for a period of time. They can hang out and help out with the housework so long as you provide an extra sleeping place (those new sleeping bags can work in a pinch). The way it’s promoted in the lead-up to the pack’s release shows that it’s a way for other family members to come by and stay overnight or two, but it can work with any Sim if you can invite them over. Previously, non-household Sims can stay over for a night, but this allows them to be around for extended periods of time.
Kids get new life moments as well. They can now have a tooth loose, and then lose said tooth, giving them an Uncomfortable moodlet whilst it’s all happening. Kids can also learn to ride a bike using the new children-sized bikes by asking a grown-up (or a teen) to teach them the ropes.
There are not any additions for Teens given they have had a whole expansion dedicated to them recently.
For Adult Sims, they can now develop burnout and even go through a mid-life crisis. Burnout will affect job performance over time if they continue to go to work in this condition, so it’s a nice excuse to take a day off or two to do other stuff.
Mid-life crisis is interesting. You’ll be warned when a Sim enters the early stages of one, and when a mid-life crisis kicks in, it gives you a very long Tense moodlet. The length can be shortened by doing the many new aspiration objectives that appear during the crisis. Some Sims long for relationships.. so they want to befriend Lin-Z (the Sim’s equivalent of the Alexa home assistant). Some Sims long for adventure… so they want to WooHoo in adventurous places (like in the treehouse). It’s an interesting mechanic that effectively keeps you, the player, to not get burnout that is the tedium of micro-managing someone else’s life. Try something new for the Sim just for the heck of it rather than keeping to a tight routine, which I am guilty of doing most of the time. And probably a lot of other players too.
During the mid-life crisis, it’s also possible for Sims to start liking new hobbies and activities out of nowhere, and even more curious, get a new personality trait. It’s now possible for Sims to have more than the four traits can have as an adult. And the traits that have direct opposites can be switched too during this period of self-discovery. It’s a cool way to keep the longest stage of life to still have a curveball or two, and a good way to represent the struggles of adulthood where life can feel too stagnant for some.
The expansion pack adds new social events you can organise as well, like a sleepover party or a family reunion.
Growing Together introduces a new lot type in the form of the Community Center. It’s an all-in-one stop for the whole family. It’s a gym, an arts centre, a place with fun activities to do together with family and friends young and old. It doesn’t have any new interactions associated with it, however, so it’s basically a generic lot but with more object requirements. And because how it’s a one-stop center, you don’t get a lot of pre-built community lots in San Sequoia, the other is a library.
I love how both community lots have an Infants section cordoned off for them to hang out and play while grown-ups do their thing… but why can’t we fence off toddlers as well?
Also, the pack adds the new Soul radio station which includes a Simlish cover of I Will Survive. Having that song blaring out in the gym part of the Community Center while Elders are doing exercise is the sort of whimsy irony I love to see in a Sims game, it all fits perfectly.
San Sequoia as a new world is a really homey place. It is supposed to be inspired by San Francisco, some lots even have the Quake Zone lot trait, but more on the suburbs side of the city. The world doesn’t snow if you have the Seasons pack.
The developers went all-out in making the neighbourhood so lived in, filled with quaint but recognisably American-style homes that it also infuriates me that all of the many houses are set dressing and not playable lots. Even worse, these scenery houses get to have normal-looking chimneys and cars. It’s just jarring that the few lots you have control of are the only ones without a vehicle unless you count bicycles. If the next mainline Sims game doesn’t let you drive vehicles other than bikes again, we’re going to have an issue.
There’s also the neat addition of a rabbit-hole location in San Sequioa in the form of a movie theatre. You can have a Sim go buy a ticket to watch a movie, alone or with a companion, and as rabbit-holes go you only see them enter and leave, with a notification prompt summarising what happened. It’s good to see some ideas from The Sims 3 resurface, but with The Sims 4 not being fully open-world, going to the theatre is a few loading screens too many, unless you live in a lot of the same neighbourhood as the theatre.
Content-wise, you’re paying for an expansion pack quantity-wise. There are at least 123 new Create-A-Sim items added, 17 for the new Infants, with the majority of the new clothing for Teens and older at 68 new items. The new clothing are mostly loose-fitted, some fit perfectly for Elder folk fashion and others are more in line with the warmer climate of San Sequoia.
Furniture-wise, there are at least 166 new Build Mode objects (not counting new wallpapers, windows, floors and other house facades, which the pack also adds a few). It’s a lot of new beds (including more bunk beds), new chairs (including rocking chairs, previously only seen in the Knitting Stuff Pack), bikes for children (plus 1 bike for adults, bikes were first added in the Discovery University expansion) and furniture related to kids.
The new treehouse takes up a massive footprint in size, and requires some assembly from older Sims (the kids can help out as well) and can later be upgraded to add more bells and whistles (including a literal bell) by handy Sims. Kids can play pretend on there (but only in pairs), and older Sims can make use of the seating up in the treehouse to sit and read books on, or use the enclosure to have some shut-eye or some sexy time. Because of course Sims would do the deed up in the tree.
There are also surprise additions, like a new vendor cart serving new food, included with the pack. Some additions are a bit superfluous at least to me. You can buy a suitcase, a peaceable wardrobe that can be placed in a Sim’s inventory or have it splayed out on the floor for the roleplayers of an always-travelling household.
When it comes to the quantity of new stuff, Growing Together adds a figurative ton. Maybe not all of them are game mechanically new, but if you haven’t been buying any of the expansions, it’s one of the best to recommend for new players since it adds a few object types previously exclusive to other packs. But in return, this makes it a harder sell for those who have bought all those packs- but hey, more variants of the same stuff you’ve had your Sims used before.
Closing Thoughts
The Sims 4 Growing Together expansion is one of the better additions to the life sim game. But it’s the sort that I hope not to see again in the next Sims game, hoping that the new systems get rolled into the base game proper.
It adds more turbulence in life, which can spiral into fascinating storylines for your Sims should you pursue the opportunities the new mid-life crisis and burnout effects bring in. It makes caring for babies and having a large family a meaningful gameplay goal. The little spices of life are being sprinkled in with Growing Together, its direct impact isn’t as big but all of it matters.
I easily recommend Growing Together to any Simmer, experienced and newcomers alike. It’s as easy of a recommendation as the Seasons expansion (which I also hoped to not be an expansion but a base game feature in the next entry). I assume it works so much better if you have the Parenthood Game Pack as well as the High School Years and Discover University expansion. The packs plus Growing Together should flesh out a Sim’s cradle-to-the-grave journey in full.
With the life sim genre getting more and more competition, I hope the developers can bring their A-game. They need to deliver more with each pack release after this as well as keep the game steady by addressing the many bugs and issues that have appeared with the new release. If they can attain a high bar as Growing Together, then The Sims 4 can ride it out until the eventual new Sims game arrives.
Reviewed on PC. Review copy provided by the publisher.