Life By You and Paralives: The Next Generation of Life Sims
The long-dominant life sim, The Sims, will finally face some competition in its next generation. Former Sims developer Rod Humble and indie team Paralives are working on their own life simulation games, offering features they believe The Sims has been missing.
Paralives, originally developed by one person, has now expanded its team and is being developed at a Paradox Interactive studio, known for their deep simulations like Cities: Skylines. Life By You, on the other hand, is being developed at a studio under a publisher responsible for comparable simulations like Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis, as well as Cities: Skylines and the upcoming Coven.
Paralives offers a grid-free building system, while Life By You focuses on customization and moddability. Players will have the ability to create their own rules, worlds, and diverse characters, with options to tweak skin colors and sexualities.
Life By You also provides scripting tools for players to build their own jobs, objects, and potentially expansions. The game already has a first expansion in the works, available to players who pre-order.
While Life By You's visual aesthetics may lack in comparison, Paralives boasts a cozy color palette, soft lighting, and detailed character customization. It offers curved walls, grid-free building, resizable windows, and resizable furniture designs.
Create-A-Simmers will enjoy features like a color wheel, tattoo and scar placement, and a height slider for customizable characters. Paralives also offers a detailed relationship system, allowing for friendships and romances to develop and expand over time.
Although Paralives is being developed by a small team with no planned launch date yet, it aims to compete with The Sims 5, codenamed Project Rene, which will be the next major release in The Sims series.
The Sims 5 is expected to feature extensive DLCs, a cross-platform multiplayer, and cross-saves. It will also bring back the popular Create-A-Style tool from The Sims 3, offering even more customization options.
Life By You and Paralives may be more quaint than The Sims, but they offer greater depth and creative freedom. Stay tuned for more updates on The Sims 5 and check out the latest Life By You trailer below.
