The new, highly anticipated Paralives was finally released on May 25, and in its time out, we have a “Very positive” rating on Steam, a very active modding community, and a roadmap for the future.
Let’s take a look at what you may have missed from the debut of Paralives.
After seven years of development, within the first eight hours of the game becoming available, they had sold over 250,000 copies. It didn’t take long for the Sims 4 community to notice the long-requested features they’d been denied in Sims 4 and how they shone in Paralives.
Some of the more noteworthy features are the open-world layout that allows players to seamlessly switch between households and travel to different locations without long loading screens. Being truly free to do the builds of your dreams with furniture and fixtures that stretch and walls that curve. Half walls, and of course, we cannot forget the color wheel, rather than selecting predefined colors from a limited list. Builders now do not have to start a new household everytime they get the inspiration to build a new house. No DLC or paid expansion model, but a promise to continue adding to and improving the game.
The reviews, content, and mods began pouring in pretty quickly. Many are also enjoying the collabs that were announced from launch, including:
- Paralives x House Flipper 2: On Steam, there is a purchase bundle for House Flipper 2 and Paralives available.
- Paralives x Kitfox Games: Kitfox Games, the publisher behind Dwarf Fortress and Boyfriend Dungeon, partnered with Paralives to include Boyfriend Dungeon body pillow items, the ability to play both games on a computer for your Parafolk, and more content goodies available from launch.
- Paralives x Outbound: Allowed for you to decorate your build with a mini camper-van model of the Outbound camper that could be sized up or down to fit your build, as well as the ability to have your Parafolk play Outbound on a computer.
- Paralives x Among Us: Dress up as crewmates, fill your home with decorative plushies and statues, play Among Us on a pc and more.
- Paralives x Unpacking: Includes items from the popular cozy indie game as well as the ability to play the game on a computer for your parafolk
Alongside these collabs, we also had unofficial collabs with some of the Sims 4 modding community that got to work adding in new features and cosmetics as soon as the game released. By the end of day one, Steam workshop, Nexusmods, Curseforge, and Patreon pages began to trickle in new creations for the Paralives community to enjoy.
A few mods of note include:
- ParaTwerk – SacrificialMods – Adds a twerking interaction to any Parafolk of any age
- TwistedMexi’s Sims 3 Camera – TwistedMexi – Replaces Paralives’ default camera controls with the familiar Sims 3 camera style
- TwistedMexi’s Automatic Reactions – TwistedMexi – Automatically picks wants and reactions based on a Parafolk’s emotions instead of requiring manual selection
- More Together Cards + Interactions – Plumlace – Adds more phone interactions and new together cards for influencing Para relationships
- Larger Households – RanS – Increases the maximum household size from 8 Paras to 20 Paras
- New Jobs – RuCrip – Adds 11 new jobs across TechStartup, SocialMedia, and Freelance companies
The dev team also took to Reddit this week to answer the community’s burning questions about the game and its future.
Through this AMA, we learned some very interesting things about the game’s plans, including these quotes directly from Founder and Lead Developer Alex Massé when asked about the future of paid DLCs.
“There will never be paid DLCs, only free updates! Even after the Early Access. As life sim fans, we wanted to make a game we would like to play ourselves without the need to purchase a lot of extra content and we are happy to deliver that. Because the team is small (only 15 people) the sales we made so far will sustain us for many years, even if we increase the size of the team so we’re safe and really grateful for that!”
And in a follow-up answer to a similar question, he added:
“Yes, the Patreon is being closed this week and the sales we made from the game so far will sustain our small team of 15 for many years so we are happy to be able to offer free-only updates in the future because it’s what we would like as life sim fans ourselves.”
We also found out that the team has some pretty big ambitions for additions to the game, such as pets, cars, and garages, teen romance, more collabs, and console releases. They also spoke about the estimated length of the game in early access, stating that it would be about two years.
The AMA also gave the community answers to some of the more personally important questions. The team confirmed that there is absolutely no AI used in the development of Paralives. With all of the controversy around AI use, especially in Indie games, this was a refreshing sigh of relief for the fanbase. You can visit the Reddit AMA forum here.
You can grab your copy of this new life sim on Steam for $39.99.
