Paralives Preview: Like The Sims, but Cheaper and Smaller

For years, EA’s The Sims had virtually no competition. Building a life simulator this detailed is incredibly difficult, and even the closest challenger — inZOI — failed to fully pull it off. But Alex Massé’s Paralives, a project that started seven years ago as an attempt to create “The Sims, but made by your mom’s friend’s genius son,” might finally be getting close.

The game opens with the player waking up aboard a train at sunrise. There, you briefly take control of a ticket inspector and get introduced to several pre-made households. The train cars are filled with Parafolks — Paralives’ equivalent of Sims or Zois — for every taste: families with children, single parents, young adults, teenagers, and more. It’s a good option for players who don’t feel like creating their own character from scratch. That said, the character creator here is impressively detailed. There are sliders for nearly everything, countless shades and tones, and even eyelash color customization. You can create anything from Fantômas to the Hulk — every skin color, body type, and facial feature is adjustable exactly the way you want.

But I — the author of these lines — chose one of the pre-made characters instead. Her story felt strangely close to my own. Also, I probably would’ve spent at least three hours in the character creator trying to perfect my heroine. Unfortunately, unlike in inZOI, you can't recreate yourself by uploading your own face — though if you're curious how that works, we covered it in full in our material: How to Create Yourself in inZOI: Face Scan & Full Character Customization Guide. Still, considering how detailed the facial customization already is, it never really feels like a missing feature.

Next comes the difficulty selection. Unlike The Sims, each difficulty preset here can be heavily customized. If you really want to, you can turn the game into a hardcore survival simulator about a single parent juggling three jobs, coming home exhausted only to collapse onto a mountain of dirty laundry. Or you can set the difficulty to something closer to “cute lil doggy mode” and peacefully stroll through town without worrying about anything at all.

Only after that does the game finally let you into the city. Your starting budget is determined by the difficulty settings, so first you need to choose an appropriate lot and still leave enough money to survive while your Para — basically this game’s version of a Sim — searches for a job. You can either buy a fully furnished house or build one from scratch, though we’ll get to the building editor later.

And then — complete freedom. For players who struggle to entertain themselves in games this open-ended, the developers added quests. You can pick them up through newspapers or community boards. Newspapers regularly announce upcoming events, while bulletin boards are filled with requests about lost items, finding a companion for a party or a theater trip, invitations to various group activities, or simply ads for newly opened venues.

Because of this, pretty much any player can find something that suits their mood. The quests are entirely optional if you already have a clear plan in mind. But if you don’t, they at least help keep your Para occupied instead of sitting at home all day doing nothing.

Even in Early Access, Paralives already includes most of the core features players expect from The Sims: finding a job and a romantic partner, having children, aging, roleplaying as an awful person, and so on. Some major features are still missing — seasons, cars, and pets haven’t been added yet — but the developers have already promised they’re coming later. On the other hand, more absurd mechanics like paranormal activity are not currently planned. After The Sims, where you can literally become the Grim Reaper in The Sims 4: Life & Death — we wrote a full guide: How to Become a Reaper in The Sims 4: Life & Death — that might sound a little tame. Speaking of expansions, the developers also promised that every future DLC for Paralives will be completely free. That alone is a huge advantage in the game’s favor.

The developers have also added full mod support. Sadly, there’s no “Wicked” equivalent yet, but you can already browse the Workshop for additional furniture and other content. If you’re specifically looking for that kind of content, though, you’re probably better off going back to The Sims. With mods, EA's simulator can basically be transformed into a full-blown adults-only sandbox. Our TOP of the best mods for The Sims 4 has everything you need to get started.

At the moment, the game still lacks furniture variety and interior design options — honestly, there’s even less content than in the base version of The Sims. But the house editor is phenomenal.

You’re no longer restricted to straight walls or fixed 90- and 45-degree angles. Paralives lets you build insane curved structures, add practically unlimited floors to a house (although your PC may suffer for it), tilt walls however you want, and endlessly experiment with colors. Take an ordinary vase, for example. If it comes with four color zones — red flowers, a green stem, a white base, and gold trim — you can independently recolor every single part using the full color wheel. Watching this in action honestly scared me a little, purely because of my own perfectionism. Building and polishing a house to absolute perfection could easily consume months of my life.

Maybe future updates will introduce house presets similar to inZOI — where that feature is already well-developed, as you can see in our guide, check this out: Best inZOI House Presets. Right now, choosing from pre-built homes isn’t especially exciting: the cheap houses all look pretty similar, while the expensive ones require your Para to grind for a long time before they can afford them.

But the most impressive feature of the furniture and building system is that objects can be stretched and resized almost without limits. Pull on any part of a window, and you can expand it across an entire wall, turning it into a massive floor-to-ceiling panoramic window. A double bed can become a ridiculous seven-person sleeping platform. You can even scale a plush toy into a three-story monstrosity if you want to. Basically, anything is possible — right up until your computer completely gives up.

I absolutely don’t blame a solo indie developer who spent seven years building their dream game, but the optimization really is rough right now. After the opening train sequence, my framerate never climbed above 40 FPS, and once I entered the city, gameplay often turned into a slideshow. Players with mid-range PCs should be prepared for frequent stuttering and performance drops throughout the experience.

The second major issue — and one directly caused by the game’s insane level of customization — is bugs.

Physics and collision systems break constantly, especially with heavily modified furniture like my custom five-person bed. Panoramic windows sometimes glitch out visually, glass textures flicker, and countless other small technical issues pile up over time. There’s an entire train car’s worth of minor bugs here.

Still, I mostly kept sending bug reports to the developers and continued enjoying the game. Personally, these problems didn’t ruin my immersion. But if you’re the type of player who absolutely needs a stable 60 FPS experience without technical hiccups, you’re probably better off waiting for the full release. It’s important to remember that the game is currently in Early Access.

At this stage, Paralives already feels incredibly charming and genuinely enjoyable to play. Yes, it has flaws, but most of them aren’t deal-breakers. I’d still recommend waiting for at least the first major stability and bug-fixing updates before diving in, simply to avoid souring your first impression. That said, if you miss The Sims and EA’s series no longer works for you for one reason or another, you should absolutely give Paralives a chance. It’s a world worth getting lost in.