Paralives gives a deep look at its Sims-like gameplay in a hefty trailer

Paralives, a The Sims-like life simulator from Alex Massé (and crew), has an over 7-minute-long trailer to show off its gameplay. It’s planned for Early Access in 2025.

Life is hard, which is why my therapist gets paid so well. If you’re like me, you have probably been hoping to one day have a life simulator of reasonable quality that isn’t funded by a megacorporation that would try to monetize Hell if it had the ability to do so. That looks to be what Paralives is aiming to provide.

The trailer focuses on things I wouldn’t do in real life, such as exercising and having friends. It demonstrates helping a singular “Para” navigate through the obstacle-filled trials of social interaction. It shows off the group interactions, where you can assemble herds of friends to do things like drop on the spot and do push-ups.

It also shows off a bit of the character creator and job system. It doesn’t really show how you’ll be able to change the looks of your Para, but it does demonstrate the personality system. I’m hoping there are going to be more categories than physique, mind, creativity, and charisma. Those things cover a lot, but I’d like to see self-control, laziness, and hatred thrown into the mix.

The job system has been outlined previously, but in the same way that The Sims (normally) handles careers, your Para goes to work, and then you don’t really see anything until they emerge tired and defeated. However, the trailer does show how you upgrade your job. You can put upgrade points (?) into getting paid more, being more skilled, or being able to slack off at work.

Obviously, there’s still a lot of work to be done leading up to release, but it seems like the team has things under control and shaping up. They promise that all updates to the Paralives will be free and that it will continue to grow as long as it’s financially viable for the small team. That is in contrast to EA’s tendency to put out a barebones base game that only shapes up as more paid (and sometimes free) content comes out. 

Speaking of which, there isn’t much competition in the life simulator space. The Sims is a pretty complex game, which makes it difficult for smaller developers to take on the concept compared to, say, farming sims. Another title taking a crack at it is Paradox’s Life By You, which launches into early access in June. Both games have a lot to prove, however.

Paralives is planned to release into Early Access on PC in 2025.