Can Paradox beat The Sims at its own game?
Developer/publisher Paradox Interactive (Paradox Tectonic)
Format PC
Origin US
Release March (early access)
Once head of The Sims, Rod Humble seems set on belying his surname with his latest project. The pitch, after all, is essentially the world’s most popular life sim, but bigger, broader and more detailed. As Humble and senior designer Hannah Culver talk us through an extended demo, it feels of a piece with the series Humble left behind, but with a few crucial differences. Paradox is promising an open world with extensive customisation and emergent storytelling, and on this evidence, Life By You has the potential to let players create deeper stories.
“As a game designer, one thing I enjoy so much is working with a game that clearly shouldn’t have any victory conditions,” Humble says. “There’s a lovely Italian folk saying: at the end of the game, the queen and the pawn get back in the same box. There aren’t any winners or losers in life. You just live a life, and life sims are a great equaliser.”
Our demo puts us in the shoes of aspiring gardener-slash-fitness guru Ronnie. The first thing we see as they step outside is a colourful house that wouldn’t look at all out of place in The Sims. But then the camera pans out to reveal a more recognisably Paradox world, with quasi-realistic trees, geography and ambient audio. It’s a visual direction that’s consistent with the publisher’s signature style, but Humble says this aesthetic approach serves an important purpose. “I wanted a more grounded look,” he says. “The tone I really wanted is just this sense of, ‘Hey, I can really tell a relatable story’, and our style isn’t getting in the way of it or hanging over your head.”
Humble doesn’t mention The Sims directly, but the connection is easy to see. Sure, you can try to tell serious stories in The Sims, but when your character wakes up with cartoonish fumes emanating from their unwashed body and greets their loved one with “shalooba farken”, or gibberish to that effect, that style sets distinct limits for the shape your story can take. You have to supply most of the emotional depth from your imagination.
Humble and Culver hope Life By You’s stronger sense of realism will help players to create more meaningful, intimate experiences and explore sides of themselves they might not have the freedom to in their real lives. That desire guides everything from building mod support into the game’s early-access release to enabling players to customise populations so that their cities look familiar and representative of their own lives.
“Making a life sim means bringing games to the most important thing in the world – our lives – and being able to help players tell stories that they can relate to, that are very personal, that they couldn’t in any other me
