Paralives is the New Life Sim that looks too good to be true

Since 2004, The Sims has been the most popular life simulator to date and with little competition it has stayed that way for a long time, but now the market is shifting and we are starting to see more Sims-like life simulators being announced to be released in the upcoming years such as: Life by You, coming out this June, and inZOI due later in the year. But by far the most followed and anticipated game to come out in an effort to take the throne from the gaming publisher giant EA, is Paralives. 

Actively being developed by a small indie studio with a team of 11 people working to make the next, best life sim on the market and beat out The Sims after two long decades, it will be no easy task. The game is being funded primarily through their fans on Patreon where those willing to fund the creation of the game are given incentives for their support, with over 7200 paid members they gain nearly $30k of donations monthly. With Paralives, it feels more of a collective and a community journey with some donators and followers being around from the very start of their announcement in 2019.

Paralives took to social media to show off their brand new 7 minute 33 second video reveal, showcasing their live mode and how the game mechanics worked in real time gameplay. We've already had a glimpse of the building features earlier on in development but, gameplay is a massive conversation among life sim fans with complaints about The Sims not being the best for this. It gives us a look at the Paramaker character creation screen giving a look at the features available to give your para (known as parafolk) a detailed personality like their sleeping habits and stats. We are able to see that these stats are able to be upgraded and improved upon through gameplay giving a chance to evolve.

The trailer shows a para called Anisa going to the coffee shop to look for a job, clicking on a job advert in the window brings up a menu with different jobs available depending on your skills giving that real life experience due to needing to have reached certain levels across different skills for what is called application points. As she works she gains upgrade points which can go into her work to either increase money or skill. The example shown is that Anisa can add “Listen to music while working” which goes under extras and boosts her music knowledge. Everything is intertwined with each other, making skills easier to increase and allows a more realistic approach to having a job in a life sim.

We next get to see how group interactions work. We follow Alisa through the small open world as she is walking through the street when she comes across two NPCs that you can interact with. They showcase their selection tool to group together sims to get interactions, we don’t know how many sims can be in a group at this point but it seems like there will be the option for big group hang-outs. When interacting with other NPCs, the “Together Bar” fills up and unlocks different “Together Cards” available to select depending on the situational context, allowing parafolk to converse without the player queuing them to gain relationships faster. They have also seemed to adopt the infamous nonsense speech that is in other games like The Sims with “Slimlish” but the developers here are calling Parli. By meeting townies through different buildings more opportunities arise, for example, we see that job offers can be given when relationships are built with the townies. This could lead to many more exciting ways players interact with the townies.

This look into the game has made it evident that Paralives are trying to break the solid mold that The Sims have created, listening to what players have been complaining about with other life sims and making their wants a reality in their game. We can see this when they added curved walls (which are still broken in The Sims), a colour wheel in character creation, and they added at the end of the video that there will be no paid DLC! They are stating that all content added after release will be free expansions. To see all the features they have added and plan on adding, they have an in detail roadmap which you can check out here.

Lastly, they have finally given us an estimated release and Paralives will be yours sometime in 2025 in early access on Steam, the devs will announce the date closer to the date. In the meantime, you can follow along with their journey on their Patreon, X or their website here.