Sims 100 Baby Challenge: 10 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started

The other day I rediscovered this post that I had written way back in October 2021, forgotten, alone and gathering cyber dust in my drafts folder. I was going to delete it but then I thought I may as well share it to tie off my The Sims 4 100 baby challenge posts, even if I never finished it.

The 100 baby challenge is a challenge in the sims where the goal is to have a female Sim give birth to 100 babies in as few generations as possible, if you’re interested then you can see rules of the challenge here. I started the challenge because I love The Sims but I sometimes got stuck in a routine of crafting the same storylines or the same kinds of sims. This challenge helps you to discover new ways of doing things, aspirations and traits you may not normally use, and gives you an end goal. It turned out to be a really good way of experiencing a game that I’ve played since I was a child in a totally new way and while I didn’t finish it I learned a lot and would definitely consider doing it again, I would recommend it to any Sims fan and if that’s you then it’s your lucky day because I have made a list of tips and tricks to make your challenge a little bit easier:

1. Play it on a computer. This is the main point for me. Trying this on my PS4 was a challenge in itself. The slow loading time was particularly painful, even just going into build mode took forever. It also glitched like crazy, and not the funny kind of glitches that make the game more entertaining, the annoying game crashing ones.
2. Make sure you have a lot of expansion packs. You will be playing this for a LONG time and there’s just not enough variety in the base game to make it interesting. I have City Living (my favourite, if you could only get one I’d say this), Seasons, Island Living, Vampires, Magical Realm and Jungle Adventure… Honestly, it’s still not quite enough in my opinion, the things that make these packs initially interesting become tired quite fast in this challenge but it’s the little things that make it better; like the City having events on every so often, new aspirations and traits, the seasonal events, and just having different places to go… I’d like to get more but I can’t justify buying any more on PS4 when I know I’d enjoy it more on PC.
3. Give your lot the ‘Ley Line’ trait. This trait makes the chances of your sim having twins higher. I didn’t realise it was allowed until quite late and it made getting that baby count up way easier. It does make baby management harder though because twins are an absolute nightmare, especially if you have twin toddlers and then twin babies come along, that feels like a survival game rather than Sims. Choose other handy lot traits as well, you can have up to 3.
4. Use the aspiration rewards. I forgot that these were available and allowed, the only ones you can’t use are the ones that extend your Sims’ life.
5. Use the gallery. I am so bad at making houses but there are loads already made by much more patient and talented sim players especially for the challenge. It’s also a good source of handsome Baby Challenge Dads. Just search #100babychallenge to find loads of pre-made stuff.
6. Stream, don’t blog. If you’re a blogger and you’re going to write about this it may not provide you with as much inspiration as you would think. The initial part of the challenge, when all the experiences were new and it was that much harder because there was no money, was fun to write about and share but the longer I played, the more repetitive the gameplay was and the less there is to share. In hindsight maybe just doing a couple of review-style posts about it rather than ‘episodes’ would have been better. It would be more fun and sociable to stream though and then people watching can suggest where to meet people, what to do, baby names, etc.
7. Apparently, if you give a key to ghosts they don’t wreck your stuff. I wanted to have a morbid little graveyard of my previous matriarchs but their ghosts haunted my sims and made them scared and started breaking things. Unfortunately, the more generations you go through the more ghosts you get and eventually I had enough and released their spirits. I never got to test out the key theory because unfortunately there seemed to be a glitch where the dialogue option ‘give residence key’ seemed to just disappear so… Not tested but highly recommended in case it’s true and still available.
8. A-students age up. All through the first generation I had forgotten that once your children and teens become A students they get to have their birthdays early, and once I remembered that the child turnaround was much easier and faster.
9. Don’t bother with high chairs. The toddlers just end up trapped in them because your Matriarch will be so busy doing other stuff. Toddlers can grab food off the side so just have your Sim make a meal and the Todds can just grab it and go sit on the sofa to eat (follow me for more excellent parenting tips).
10. Have fun with it. It’s surprisingly easy to get into a routine but don’t be afraid to let your Sim leave the house occasionally and try some different things, let her go on dates and explore different areas. She deserves it!

In the end I managed 3 matriarchs and 38 children before I gave up. I would definitely attempt it again but I would consider waiting for Sims 5 so that I could buy it on PC rather than power through on the playstation.

Would you play the 100 baby challenge? Have you played it? If so, what was your experience?

100 Baby Challenge – Episode 9: Meet Our Magical New Matriarch

It’s been a while since we had a Baby Challenge update. To be fair there’s only so much I can write about the daily goings on in a Sims life but finally we have made some headway and a new chapter of the challenge is underway: current Matriarch Artemis became an elder.

She had 17 children, beating previous Matriarch Gaia’s score of 14. Not only that but the final baby she had was a girl, the next matriarch: Ariadne. This is good because it meant I had all the time between Ariadne growing from a baby to a young adult to teach her the ways of the Matriarchy: charisma, cooking, repairing and something she can make money doing from home.

In the meantime Artemis gets to mentor her and enjoy her retirement… Well, sort of. I still need her to make money. Being a ‘Meme Maker’ wasn’t the best career route, you have to get 1,000,000 followers to get a promotion! That is so hard when you barely leave the house and all you do is make babies!!! Although, in reality if someone was actually attempting this challenge for real they would probably have a decent following. Don’t do it though, very irresponsible, only try this challenge in a simulated environment. I digress, back to the money issue: there’s not much of it. BUT I realised a little late that every day Artemis can use her platform to promote a product for $3,000, which is rather nice (though it doesn’t always work). She got to work and became an incredible viral granny. Ariadne will have to do something more lucrative though; we want a super big, nice house. 

While the money making was going on a new curve was thrown at the challenge, because that’s exactly what it needed of course: all of the first kids (Gaia’s kids) started dying… Dropping like flies. Every day at least one would pass away and apparently, even if they didn’t know each other, all relatives get a phone call and become ‘Very Sad’. I was really upset at first, especially when some of my favourites passed on (Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, Aphrodite… My babies!) but Sims (understandably) don’t really want to do much when they’re super sad and it started to stunt skill building, so my sympathy quickly turned to frustration. 

The day eventually came where it was Artemis’s time. She lived for a long time as an elder actually, I was wondering if it had bugged out and she just wasn’t going to die. She was an active Sim though so I guess that explains it. I was upset, but I didn’t quite have the emotional attachment to her that I did with Gaia, she wasn’t quite as interesting a character really. I suppose Gaia was the one that had all the ‘firsts’ in this challenge so there was more of a story there.

Meanwhile, I was excited to find that Ariadne has the ‘Weak Bloodline’ magic trait which means she will be a spell caster! A Witch Matriarch! So cool! Her sisters Circe and Megara are also spell casters and I plan to have them all live together in a coven for a while until I have to kick them out for baby space. Despite my excitement in the shake up to the normal challenge routine, which was getting a little monotonous, I will admit I am disappointed with the Magical Realm expansion pack in the Sims. The actual realm itself is gorgeous, the first time I saw it I was blown away by how beautiful it is. It’s very ‘Hogwarts-esque’, there’s a school where you can learn magic from Sages, a duelling ground, magical herbs for potion brewing are scattered about, there’s even a shopping area called Diagon Casters Alley where you can buy brooms, familiars, etc. You would have thought learning magic and exploring this realm would be fun but unfortunately, the Sims seem to view it as a chore, they get no enjoyment from using magic, which is bizarre to me. Even if their aspirations are centred around learning magic they still don’t enjoy it. It’s also disappointing that other, non-magical, Sims don’t react to spells being cast around them, at all. Despite this, magic does come in handy, one of the types of magic you can learn is ‘Practical Magic’ where they can clean, repair, etc. It’s a lot faster than doing those things manually and that will be very handy for Ariadne. There is a risk of setting fire to the things you try to repair but… Hopefully we’ll be alright. Maybe she can brew up some love potions to help with the challenge.

A magical duel, not at all Harry Potter inspired

On top of magical ability, I set about making Ariadne the chattiest, most creative kid around. Kids have 4 skills: Social, Motor, Creativity and Mental. Unfortunately these don’t become other skills when they become teenagers, they just disappear, which sucks. I read somewhere that if you make the kid skills quite high though then they will find it easier to level up ‘adult skills’ in that area in the future, so if Ariadne has high Social skills as a kid hopefully she will level her charisma up really fast as a teen/adult. 

The day after Artemis’s death, Ariadne aged up into a teenager so the skills building could being properly! She got a Matriachal Makeover from this:

To this:

I love her hair (I think red hair is gorgeous).

The real skill building began now for Ariadne, she spent a lot of time chatting to herself in the mirror to get that charisma skill up. Meanwhile, her brothers and sisters were working hard topping up the cash to get a new house. I had my eye set on a 100 baby challenge house that I found in the online Gallery (that is a godsend, I hate making houses on the Sims but I love the creative ones people come up with).

We got enough cash to get the house just as it was Ariadne’s birthday. I moved her into her new house with her sisters Circe and Megara; I had a really cool image of them in my mind being a witchy coven until I have to boot them out to make baby room. It’s a really cool house but it is a little squashed… I’ll have to make sure the next one is bigger. It is however ‘on the ley line’ which means it’s way more likely that you’ll get twins. I thought that might be cheating but apparently it’s not! Wish I had realised that sooner but nevermind.

Finally, let’s take a look at the final traits for the lovely Ariadne:

She wants to be an alchemist so some interesting potions can come into play now.

The welcome wagon came round to welcome the girls to the neighbourhood and Ariadne sprang into action. The Marroquin family came to visit and Ariadne invited the reasonably attractive husband up to her room to seduce him while Circe and Megara kept his wife occupied downstairs. Scandalous… He wasn’t the most discreet, after the deed was done he walked downstairs in his pyjamas like nothing had happened and went home with his wife.

We’ll see how effective the ley line trait is next time…

Gaia and Artemis’ resting places by the ‘baby’ wall.

Baby count : 31/100

• Zeus
• Hera
• Demeter
• Persephone
• Poseidon
• Hecate
• Aphrodite
• Athena
• Boreas
• Hades
• Artemis
• Apollo
• Hermes
• Hephaestus
• Hestia
• Nike
• Ares
• Tyche
• Nyx
• Iris
• Dionysus
• Pan
• Helios
• Helen
• Atlanta
• Hercules
• Pandora
• Ajax
• Circe
• Megara
• Ariadne

100 Baby Challenge – Episode 8 : Back to it!

← Episode 7

There may have been a bit of a break in the challenge there for a while… Mainly because there was an incident with my PS4 involving a flying coffee table and a glass of rum and coke. After rushing it to an emergency bowl of rice and careful cleaning it’s all good, even better actually now that the fan has been cleaned but it set me back a bit.

Let’s have a quick challenge recap: current Matriarch Artemis (2nd in the line) has so far had 7 children, she’s a young adult still so we have quite a bit of time left before we switch to the next Matriarch. I want her to beat previous Matriarch, Gaia’s record of 14 children. So far it could go either way. Unfortunately, when I started playing again we were flat lining. The house is full (8 sims max) and while one child has now become an adult, I was trying to get some other kids to adulthood and out the house in bulk before Artemis got busy again. That way twins/triplets would be a possibility. 

Get. Out. Of. My. House.

A rule I hadn’t really taken advantage of too much before is that when kids become A students, regardless of actual age, they may age up. I didn’t realise though that that doesn’t just mean doing a load of homework, they also need to get a skill to level 4. Simple right? Not really. Unless they get pretty high levelled skills when they’re children teens start with no skills, which seems a but weird to me : You could play the violin yesterday but then you turned 13 and now you have to learn it from scratch all over again? Ugh. I don’t think I have actually managed to have a child max out a skill yet so… Not a great start. As for the teens though, I managed to get Nike, Tyche and Nyx to age up to adulthood but try as I might Ares was incredibly resistant to any skill he was given, often just abandoning it halfway through and he had to age up naturally. Kids these days.

Eventually though I managed to kick almost everyone out and I was left with Iris and Dionysus. It was time to get started again. Totally coincidentally a house with 3 men had moved in right next door and Artemis got to know all three very well. I have the whole process down now, as soon as they come over they’re invited to chat in the bedroom where she has an item with the romantic aura permanently on and so far it has not failed. One of the neighbours came to visit and the challenge was back on!  

The ladies don’t look very impressed with their new neighbor but he’ll do.

Dude doesn’t know how to keep his cool when he’s asked if he wants to woohoo…

Then there was a glitch… Not a terrible one but it was still annoying. Iris and Dionysus were doing very well at school and I was expecting to be able to move both out very soon once they hit A student status. Then Dionysus just stopped going to school. He was not having it. Iris could go just fine but the command for Dionysus simply did nothing no matter how I tried. I restarted the game, I restarted the Playstation, I waited overnight, I tried having him go from other lots. Nothing. There was nothing to do but have Iris age up and move out without him and just watch as his almost A student grade slid down. As annoying as it was he became the resident repairman and Nanny and made Artemis’s life way easier. He also got a job. It was actually quite nice. Then a few days later he decided he could go back to school and suddenly everyone was unhappy again and poor Artemis was exhausted trying to do everything.They were also a bit stuck for money since about 3 fires in 3 days happened (teen sims learning to cook…) and I had to replace the fridge and cooker every time so on top of constantly being pregnant Artemis was also trying to do her job (Meme Maker), it really isn’t the hardest of jobs, one of the tasks was to watch funny videos on Sim.tv for four hours, but if you think she has four hours to spare you are wrong. Once the easy task of “give an energetic speech for 1 hour in Uptown” came up I couldn’t pass it up, we needed the money… Along she goes with some of the older kids for support and she nailed it. As with literally everything in this challenge though there was a downside and right after speaking she wet herself, and passed out from exhaustion in the puddle in the middle of the square. Classy. We got a new fridge though, let’s hope it lasts longer than the previous ones. At the end of play we have an additional 4 babies to add to our list (BUT STILL NO TWINS/TRIPLETS!!!), Pan, Helios, Helen, and Atlanta. We are moving on from Gods and Goddesses to heroes now because I can’t remember what most of the children are called at this point, let alone which names I’ve already used.Finally, Artemis became a middle-aged adult, next stop: old lady. She’s had 10 kids so is very close to the goal of having over 14 kids… Hopefully we’ll find out in the next episode!

Baby count : 25/100

• ZeusHeraDemeterPersephonePoseidonHecateAphroditeAthenaBoreasHadesArtemisApolloHermesHephaestusHestiaNikeAresTycheNyxIrisDionysusPanHeliosHelenAtlanta

Episode 9 >

 

100 Baby Challenge – Episode 6: Saying Goodbye

← Episode 5

Baby free post today! Today it’s all about recognising Gaia for all the hard work she put into this challenge.

A flashback to young Gaia just before the challenge. So innocent and blissfully unaware of the challenge to come…

I originally planned for Gaia to marry the original Victim, Travis (Zeus’s dad, blast from the past!) After a bit of wasted time I realised they weren’t actually hitting it off that well and while they were happy to sleep with each other they didn’t actually seem to enjoy chatting to each other much. Fair enough. She was also just most happy when she was around her family so we decided not to worry about Travis anymore. She’d had enough flirting and men for a lifetime anyway.

I knew her final days were coming so I threw some big parties with the whole family where she got to speak to everyone. I actually got quite emotional.

 

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Finally, the time came. She woke up and immediately collapsed. Grim appeared to take away her soul but Hades ran in and pleaded for her life! Grim relented and Gaia was brought back to life! I may not have been able to have Hades be the son of death but he lived up to his name eventually.

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Your mother is lying dead on the floor, the Grim Reaper is standing in front of you but no, by all means lets focus on the black pit that is your stomach, Boreas.

Gaia lived another 3 days and then took me on an emotional rollercoaster. I had just loaded up the game and the very first thing that happened was she collapsed in the living room and died. For good this time. I was a bit shocked, wasn’t expecting that first thing. I may have been a bit choked up, I had dedicated a lot of time to Gaia and I was really proud of her…

Noooooooo. She died embarrassed and smelly!

I spent some time making her a shrine. This of course now means that every time any of the moved out children come to visit their siblings they just stand in the living room in front of the urn and cry for 5 hours then go home. Whatever they need to do to come to terms with the death I guess.

I’m missing some photos but it’s getting there

Here are Gaia’s stats from the game. I’m very proud that her most prominent moodlet was Happiness, I thought for sure it was going to be Uncomfortable (though that was a close second at 556 times). She also wet herself a record 24 times and passed out 22 times… Ouch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was a quiet and sombre day in the Olympae household but then Hades got a text from Ghost Gaia saying she needed some ‘retail therapy’ and could they go to the flea market together. You know… As ghosts do… I guess she’ll be hanging around a bit.

Finally, Artemis aged up and I got to randomise her final personality trait. It is my honor to present to you the new Matriarch as an adult: Artemis! Active, wannabe chef, outdoors lover, and kleptomaniac. It could have been much worse.

We’ll finish this post with some flashbacks to moments throughout Gaia’s life…

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RIP

 

100 Baby Challenge – Episode 5: The Clock Starts Ticking

← Episode 4

I’m going to skip the Olympae family ahead here a bit as I’ve been playing this A LOT and I haven’t been writing fast enough to keep up. When we last saw the Olympae family they had moved into their new, 2 bathroom home and had a lot more space. Since then Hades and Artemis have also been born and another baby is on the way, the lovely Poseidon (one of my favourite children) had moved out to make some room for potential twins and I was waiting for Hecate to come of age too. I was toying with the idea of letting her stay on as she’s magical and that makes repairing and cleaning stuff very, very easy. Here she is repairing the fridge and oven that she set fire to trying to cook lunch.

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We got an answer to ‘Who is the most beautiful Greek Goddess?’ from the old myth Judgement of Paris. Aphrodite and Athena became teens and look at how gorgeous Aphrodite is. Hera was the prettiest but she’s been de-throned. Not only is Aphrodite gorgeous but she’s super chill and helpful too. Athena is a bit alternative and also has the evil trait so she was often happy just because she enjoyed being around sims that had negative moods. Aphrodite was the clear winner in both looks and personality, in this universe anyway.

Aphrodite in her Winter finery, she looks like she’s about to hit the slopes and slay the snowboard competition.

I did move Hecate out in the end as having twins would be amazing and I guess the more space in the house the higher the chance? Spoiler alert: twins have not been a thing since Demeter and Persephone and annoyingly they continue to not be a thing for the rest of Gaia’s matriarchy.

Speaking of our next Matriarch I suddenly became acutely aware that Gaia was approaching retirement. The rules state that the youngest daughter has to continue the challenge as the new Matriarch once their mother has become an elder. If only it had been Aphrodite… At that moment Artemis was the youngest daughter but Gaia had another baby on the way and enough time to have another one. Ideally the next Matriarch would be Gaia’s final baby then you have a nice gap where everyone else gradually gets out of the house, there’s a break where there’s no babies and you can just focus on the Matriarch’s development.

The next Matriarch?

The baby was born and unfortunately it was a boy, named Apollo. Gaia was straight on it finding a new victim ASAP and I crossed my fingers… I was working on Artemis already just in case, getting her good grades and getting her skills up nice and high. Also letting her have some fun though, she potentially has quite a life ahead of her, let’s give her a fun childhood.

Next baby was born and it was… Another boy! Crap. This was Hephaestus. So… Artemis, the maiden Goddess who in mythology is chaste and virtuous, is going to be the next Matriarch. Ironic. On top of that she has 2 younger siblings that won’t be moving out before she’s started the challenge. Not the best outcome but never mind. Time was up and Gaia aged up into an elder.

Silver Fox!

Good news for Gaia though, she just needs to enjoy her retirement now. I think she did pretty well in her Matriarchy career with 13 kids. Or at least I thought I did until I watched an episode of Single Girl’s stream of this challenge (which inspired me to do it) where her first matriarch becomes an elder and she had 33 kids!!! WHAT?!?!?! HOW?! Maybe I let Gaia rest too much. I was too concerned with making her happy. Honestly that depressed me a bit. My girl doesn’t even have half that amount of children… I’m going to be really mature and say that Single Girl owns way more expansion packs than me, therefore she has more stuff so maybe it’s easier, and she got incredibly lucky with twins. That’s totally it, right? Also my PS4 is really struggling with this game sometimes and it bugs out quite a lot… I do wish I had a gaming PC for it instead but nevermind.

My future Matriarch needed a new look…

Much better

To sour my mood even more and make me want to curl up into a ball on the floor and reevaluate my choices in life I decided to calculate, based on Gaia’s 13 kids, how long it would take me to get to 100 babies… 7.5 GENERATIONS! … I can’t do that… I have to step it up… Is teen pregnancy a thing in the Sims?  Oh no…

Gaia is finally having a great time now that she is unburdened with upcoming children and men

Baby count: 13/100

• Zeus
• Hera
• Demeter
• Persephone
• Poseidon
• Hecate
• Aphrodite
• Athena
• Boreas
• Hades
• Artemis
• Apollo
• Hephaestus

Episode 6 →

100 Baby Challenge – Episode 4: The Seduction of Father Winter and The New House

← Episode 3

We’ll start off this episode with the arrival of baby number 7, Aphrodite. She’s a very good and quiet baby. So good that we were able to very rapidly seduce Victim 7: J Hunnington III who just appeared on our doorstep and rang the bell with no prior introduction, maybe word is going around town?

As time was going by I was very aware that the house itself was really not helping the situation. Everyone is constantly smelly, in need of fun and tense. I decided to make a new house that they could move into, just an empty shell that they could populate with furniture and decor gradually as time goes by. As you can see I’m really not the best Sims builder and what was meant to look like a large cosy cabin looks a bit… Prison-like?

Nevermind. The inside will be nice when they have stuff in it. Unfortunately, the house I made ended up costing $18,000 which the Olympae family really can’t afford. The teens all got jobs, we got the magic bin that converts your food and crockery into $$$, Gaia also took on a couple of big freelance programming jobs and we started doing some serious saving.

Christmas time came around and Father Winter (a character suspiciously similar to a certain Father Christmas) came to give presents to the family, an interesting variety of gifts; there was a globe, a tea set, and a spice rack. He also gifted one of the twins with a $7,500 painting!!! WHAT?! All of that was sold instantly and the savings for the house went right up. I also noticed you could flirt with Father Winter… Hmmm… 

Baby on the way included this would take us to the max household number so we were going to have to get rid of Zeus, who had just become a young adult. I was actually quite emotional saying goodbye, he’d been a good first baby. We still had Hera and the twins to help out with bills and chores though so not all was lost.

As soon as Gaia had baby number 8: Athena, she invited Victim 8: Father Winter on a date to the park. As you do. They got along splendidly and had a wonderful date.

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So successful in fact, they were very into the try for baby thing very quickly but where do they go to make the baby? Should they go back to the crowded house? But the date is coming to an end, can’t they find a nice bush or something? No, I had to go into build mode and put a little room in the park with a bed in it.

The epitome of class and convenience.

The next few Sim days were pretty torturous, everyone was tired, no one was ever happy, it was filthy. I couldn’t wait for my teens to age up as there was constantly something not right with them. I got Hera out the house ASAP, I wasn’t very emotional about her leaving as I had been with Zeus. I don’t remember the last time she has the green aura of satisfaction. A bit later the twins also aged up and were swiftly kicked out, especially after one randomly got the ‘hates children’ trait, their moodlet was already permanently bad let alone with that to drag it down even further.

Poseidon was now the only teen and bread winner though so we still had some money coming in. Gaia also had baby number 9: Boreas (god of the North Wind and Winter), son of Father Winter. The palest baby Gaia has had so far.

Money saved, the Olmpae family moved to the new house and it took a bit to settle in but they finally found their groove. The difference two bathrooms makes is just incredible. Seriously. The game has been so much easier ever since. They say money doesn’t make you happy but… I haven’t had all my sims happy at once for a very long time.

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Well… Almost all.

Despite the new home comforts Boreas proved to be a ridiculously annoying demon toddler.

Stare into the face of the devil

He has the trait of being Father Winter’s child which means he may have magical powers… So far all I have seen that could possibly resemble magical powers is that he has a stomach like an endless void. Like the Ever-Peckish one from Overcooked he is CONSTANTLY hungry. Being constantly hungry means he was also constantly angry and… I hate him. This is hard enough without your black hole stomach and anger issues, Boreas! This made it so hard to get his skills all up to 3 and I don’t believe I actually managed it which, while it’s not a deal-breaker for the challenge, I am annoyed at myself. If it hadn’t meant failing the challenge I would have been very tempted to let Child Services take him away.

Let’s take the end of the episode to a happier note where A NAKED MAN randomly arrived on Gaia’s doorstep. You know what? It’s bold move and maybe it’s because Gaia’s minimum requirement for a partner is ‘able to provide children’ but yeah, she went for it and Victim 9: Naked Man’s baby was on the way.

Baby count: 9/100

• Zeus
• Hera
• Demeter
• Persephone
• Poseidon
• Hecate
• Aphrodite
• Athena
• Boreas

Episode 5 →

The Three Year Sim Cycle

I’m sat at home playing a game and suddenly I notice I’m impatiently tapping my foot… Hmm… I get a bit comfier and think no more about it. Later I notice my palms are sweaty and my hands are shaking, am I sick? I get a glass of water and have an early night, I’m probably just tired… All through the night I toss and turn, unable to sleep. I can’t quite pin down what’s wrong with me. I did eat a lot of cake maybe that… No, it’s not that sort of feeling. This is more… Psychological. Eventually I drift off to sleep where I have the strangest dream: my other half and I are talking but I can’t quite understand what we’re saying. Suddenly our neighbour, who we barely know, knocks on the door, takes a book from our bookshelf and reads it on our sofa, ignoring us. Dan tells me a joke about engineers… I don’t know anything about engineers but it’s the funniest thing I’ve heard for a while. I realise I’m late for work, stand up and spin around very quickly and I’m in my work clothes. I head out the door shouting “Dag dag!” behind me to say goodbye… Suddenly everything starts to click… My eyes widen in fear and I look up to see a floating green diamond rotating above my head.

I start awake covered in sweat and shaking. Dan is horrified and asks if I’m alright, “WHAT YEAR IS IT?!” I scream.

“2018… What-”

“My God… It’s been three years already. It is time.”

“Time for what?! You’re scaring me!”

“I have to play The Sims.”

I’m pretty sure every one has played The Sims at some point in their life. If you haven’t that is quite an achievement. My personal big Sims era was when Sims 2 came out. I had three expansion packs for it: Pets, Nightlife and University and I would spend ages playing it on and off throughout the years. While it’s immensely popular The Sims is one of those games that you play religiously for a few weeks and then don’t touch again for ages. Eventually I built up a huge sim empire from my on-off relationship with the game and I think back to their adventures fondly. Was I a cruel creator? I think I was better than some but I could have been a little more gracious…

Since leaving for University my time between Sims sessions inevitably widened but every few years I get the itch to play it. It’s like a craving that starts off small, just a little thought of “I’d quite like to play the Sims again…” then the feeling builds in intensity. It can be temporarily satisfied with new games or other simulator-esque games to an extent but eventually you just can’t stand it any longer.

That is how I came to download Sims 4 on my PS4. I had a few reservations about this, mainly the fact that I remembered Sims 4 being akin to a spoiled child with a huge amount of potential that you can only unlock by shoving more money at it in the hopes that it will get a good education and realise its’ full potential one day, the most progress it makes though is staggering to the nearest McDonalds, getting a job there where they do the bare minimum, eat all the food and eventually get fired, return home and live in your basement surviving off the fish heads you throw through the door occasionally as you focus more on your preferred children, Nintendo and Activision. In other words: the base game is pretty shite after a while. Sure, all the Sims games are like that to an extent, that’s why they make so many expansion packs. I don’t remember feeling so disappointed with the base game of Sims 2 though, or maybe that’s just rose-tinted nostalgia glasses working their magic. With this in mind I got a bundle in the PS4 sale which included the base game and the Deluxe Party Bundle all for £20. The party bundle is definitely not the add on I’d have chosen if I had more of a choice but hey, now I can have a flaming Tikki bar and Animal Hats (none of which I’ve actually used yet…).

Another reason I’m more bothered by the Sims 4 is the start up screen:

“Welcome to  the game! Spend more money! Yay! We’re online now so we can bombard you with adverts!”

Go away, I literally just downloaded you! Unfortunately throughout the game you’ll occasionally see some stuff that seems pretty cool buuuuuut you can only get it with a certain expansion pack. What a shame… $$$

Obviously that was not enough to put me off and I spent a happy Sunday getting back into the game. First of all I created myself and my other half, obviously. Unlike when I was a teenager I could actually base my boyfriend off a real person so that was a nice little high five to past me. Here we are:

Living out our wildest fantasies like being able to afford our own house…

Things got a little too real when Dan’s default autonomous activity turned out to be playing video games, even over showering or eating “HEY I’M DYING OVER HERE!!!… Ooh a computer…”, while my Sim started getting bored/tense because there was so much she wanted to do but she couldn’t because she had a job. She’s a little high maintenance needing exercise, geeky activities, and a huge assortment of other random things to keep her happy. I didn’t realise how exhausting I am until Sim-me came back from work bored, then after playing games for a bit declared herself tense from lack of exercise, then after a jog shifted to tense because of a lack of nerdy interactions… I finally thought I had the balance down then she decided she wanted to start a different career. Starting to regret the Renaissance aspiration but I can’t deny that it’s not true to life. A little too true to life… It’s almost creepy.

One of the designers for the Sims was – understandably – a little pissed at the How I Met Your Mother finale… Or just Ted Mosby as a person (don’t get me started)

I think there’s been a few changes since I last played. There are more things available, not a huge amount but there’s a few more hairstyles, furniture, clothes, etc than I remember there being. I don’t remember toddlers being a thing before either and I’m not going to lie… I don’t really like children but these toddlers are kind of cute, I’ve not managed to get the balance right for them for food and sleep though, I keep getting warned they’re going to be taken away for some reason or another… Oops.

Awww, so cute, soon she’ll be taken away from her family because she’s always too tired to eat but never actually hungry when she’s awake.

It’s a lot harder to kill Sims without cheats. They can simply climb out of a pool now, they don’t need a ladder! To add insult to injury stuff just doesn’t catch fire quite like it used to. I didn’t enable cheats straight away because if you do that it disables trophies and while I’m not a huge achievement chaser… I did want to try without cheats at first. For one of my families I decided to re-enact the Disney movie Princess and the Frog because there are a lot of collectable frogs around in the game and the option to practice voodoo, so it just seemed like the next logical step. For that I needed Tiana to experience the death of her beloved father so that she could continue his legacy becoming the best chef in Willow Creek, eventually getting together with aspiring musician, and voodoo victim, Naveem. I didn’t just want to shut him in a room and starve him to death though, I wanted it to be relevant and witness-able for maximum effect. Despite putting carpets, plants and any other horribly flammable objects around their horrendously cheap oven the bastard just wouldn’t catch fire and got really good at cooking instead, so I started getting him to fix dangerous objects with absolutely no handiness experience and now he’s great at repairing stuff too! Finally, I lit some candles around wooden and fabric objects and had him sit in the middle of them. Nothing. At that point I decided the bugger deserved to live and Tiana got to keep both parents. Fine, I guess she can have the well-adjusted life she deserves. See if I care. What was super annoying though was that I made a new family a bit later (who I didn’t want anything nasty to happen to… yet) and their oven caught fire and set fire to one of them literally on the first day. Maybe it was karma.

The nightly kill attempt ritual…

Next, I don’t know if this was a thing before but there are settings you can use for transsexual sims, so for example, if you’re creating a male sim you can give them a preference to wear female clothes, female characteristics and they can even use the toilet sitting or standing. The Sims has always been pretty progressive what with their being no limits on choice of partner, no discrimination on race, no pay difference between genders, etc. literally everyone is equal, so this adds a nice little touch like that.

Finally, I suddenly noticed that some meals were showing that they’re vegetarian friendly (they may have done that before, I’m not sure). I didn’t notice “vegetarian” as an available trait, and that is because you have to buy the City Living expansion to have a veggie sim! I would like to have the choice of making vegetarian Sims but I’m not bothered enough to buy an expansion pack for it. I guess I can just have a sim only eat the veggie options but I know that at some point when my guard is down they’ll go to the fridge and eat a whole cow or something.

About a week after I bought the game I was still going strong, baffling my other half who hadn’t actually seen me get so intensely addicted to a game before. Yes, The Sims looks boring as Hell, and watching other people play it is like watching paint dry but damn… It is so addictive and the laws of time seem to alter when you play, making 1 hour seem like 5 minutes. You sit down at 6pm just to play for an hour, you just want to get a few things done… Suddenly, not only is it now 12am but it’s 12am five days later and people have had to break into your home to see what’s happened to you.

A few weeks later I can say that I’m safely out of the Sim zone and the game has returned to its’ cave for a three year slumber where it will slowly regain power and fart out £25 expansion packs every now and again.

 

Are you a big Sims fan? Do you also have the strange three year addiction gap? What’s your best Sims story/mishap?

30 Day Video Game Challenge! Day 12: A Game Everyone Should Play

I assume this means literally everyone, non-gamers included? If so then I think that The Sims is the way to go. It appeals to everyone on some level and it’s strangely addictive. You can have the Sims do whatever you want, build whatever you want, etc etc. Plus there are so many funny stories around of what people have done with their game (one of my particular favourites is someone that had their swim drown then made all the guests show up to the funeral in swimwear). I find that almost everyone, non-gamers and gamers alike have played The Sims at some point and it’s often a nice starting point in a gaming-based conversation.

Have you got any funny Sims stories? Which game do you think everyone should play?

Nostalgia Moment: The Urbz, Sims in the City

I’m at my parents’ house at the moment and I uncovered my old GameCube while I was digging around some of my old stuff. I loved that GameCube so much, in fact, to get us going let’s just have a listen to that start up bit…

Aaaaaaaah… That, dear readers, is the sound of my childhood.

Anyway so we uncovered a game which, when we were young, impressionable, and tasteless, my sister and I thought was brilliant. My other half, who is with me while I’m at my parents’, took one look at the cover and was unsure what to think so we decided to give it a go… I don’t know how many of you are familiar with The Urbz: Sims in the City but it’s… Interesting. To explain to you the concept of this game please enjoy the intro video for the game. Do watch it, it’s amazing.

Confused? Yeah. So was Dan, I believe his words were “The right drugs have not been invented yet to make this make sense”. You may also have recognised the song in the background was ‘Let’s Get It Started’ by The Black Eyed Peas… In simlish. Yup. In case that didn’t blow your mind enough let me tell you the best thing about this game: The soundtrack is mostly music by The Black Eyed Peas but sung in simlish. It’s hilarious. As you heard in that video the words ‘Let’s Get it Started’ sound more like ‘Let’s go rattata’ and I just can’t get enough. The band are also characters in the game with Will. I. Am. as your bestie who gets you set up in the city.

So what’s the aim of the game? Basically you need to build up enough reputation in the city to get into loads of clubs and get a penthouse, don’t stop that party though because if you do your rep goes down and you start to become a nobody again. You start off in a shitty flat with a small amount of money and super convenient subway access, you also choose a zone to start building your rep up in and each zone has a different style, so for example Central Station is full of punks, Kicktail Park is skaters, Neon East is sort of Asian themed with eye assaulting colours… That sort of thing. You have to learn social gestures and moves (I don’t really know how to describe it) that are specific to each zone and you also have to dress like everyone in there to get in to the local club and have the time of your life. When you get into the club in each zone the current city big shot will teach you a Power Social move (the weird break dance thing they did in the video is one of these) and you can use them to become super popular, complete missions for other sims or awe bullies so much that they can’t compete with how sociable you are and leave the district forever (seriously). We tried out the Power Social ‘Blastikiss’ on a punk that our sim barely knew where our sim confidently swaggered up to him, grabbed him and kissed him. They soared into the air, fireworks went off,  Rather than report our sim for sexual assault the punk seemed to enjoy it and boom boom pow, we got put on the guest list for the local club.

Something that I never really noticed when I was younger was how deformed the sims are, the girl has a waist so small you could just hold it in your hand and the male sim has shoulders so big they look like 80’s shoulder pads on steroids. It’s hard to rock that body when you look like a Barbie doll/deformed rugby player. All ladies of course have rather generous humps (what does that even mean? I guess no one knows what it means but it’s provocative) and no matter what body shape you make a man, from your limited choice as it is, they will always have abs and weird arm muscles.

I did always find it a bit weird that once you have loads of rep you can’t dress the way you want to by mixing clothes from different districts and everything, I would have thought being individual was a good thing but no you must conform, where is the love guys?

If you were hoping I would shut up with my Black Eyed Peas puns throughout this post (if you spotted them, and I hope you did otherwise you may have just thought I have a weird writing style) then sorry not sorry, I love bad puns. Imma be playing through some more GameCube games while I’m here so I gotta feeling I’ll put some nostalgia moment posts up. Stay Tuned!

Are there any games from your childhood that you would find weird to play now? Have you played this game before?

 

30 Day Video Game Challenge! Day 4: Your Guilty Pleasure Game

While I don’t actually consider this a guilty pleasure… In fact I don’t really consider many games at all guilty pleasures … I suppose The Sims is quite a guilty pleasure? I’ll get hooked on it occasionally after a long break and I’ll usually go with the following sort of structure: Making a couple where one sim will work their way up honestly (very little cheating for money) from the ground up and the other sim is a total dick to them, not working, cheating on them and just generally being super mean to everyone. Then I either kill off or move out (depending on future levels of drama wanted) the nasty sim when the good sim starts to flourish and make loads of money. THEN the good sim meets another good sim and they start dating but then oh, hell no, nasty sim is back and they have a huge fight. Then the two good sims get married and live happily ever after and I try to make their family tree go on for as long as I can until I get bored and stop playing again.

Re-reading all that, yeah maybe it is a bit of a guilty pleasure!

What’s you guilty pleasure game? If you play The Sims, what drama do you unleash on them? I love hearing other people’s funny Sim stories.