That’s a lot of responsibility
As promised, by way of livestream, Paradox has given us all the juicy, wriggling details on their upcoming life simulator, Life by You. This includes not just how the game will play and the approach it will take but also its goal of releasing in an Early Access state on September 12, 2023.
Life by You is an open-world life simulator that looks to move in on The Sims territory. You create your families, design their houses, and dictate their lives. That’s pretty much The Sims, but Paradox Tectonic is trying to differentiate Life by You in quite a few ways. The most disturbing to me is that conversation will be held using real language rather than the gibberish Simlish utilized in Maxis’ legendary series. Outlined is a conversation creator that allows you to choose how your person reacts in different situations.
One of the features that stuck out to me is the ability to directly control your humans in a third-person control mode. This feature hasn’t been available in any of the mainline games of its closest competitor. However, a few of the console and handheld versions have allowed this, such as The Urbz and The Sims 2. I like the option. I have two modes of playing life simulators, and those are direct immersion and storytelling.
Customization seems to be the central design philosophy. You can build the town of your humans to your liking, including homes and businesses. There’s a variety of different creators built in to allow you to tweak things to your liking. They’re also touting the integration of mods, which has been something EA has always been a bit cagey on with The Sims.
Life by Me would just be a trainwreck
It’s absolutely bizarre to me what a creative monopoly The Sims has had on the life simulator genre. Some of the ways that Life by You is breaking from the formula initially strike me as sacrilege, but upon reflection, I can’t see why. I even had difficulty not referring to the “humans” in this game as “sims.”
Rob Humble is involved, bringing with him some life simulator clout. He was producer during much of The Sims 2’s and was a big player at EA Games during that time.
There isn’t much reason why I shouldn’t love Life by You, but so many of my expectations are hung up in The Sims. I’m definitely going to try and get over that and give Life by You a try when it drops.
So far, Life by You has been announced for PC. It will be arriving in Early Access on September 12, 2023. You can pre-order it for $39.99 on the Epic Game Store, but it will also be launching on Steam.
