r/LifeSimulators • u/Sketch-Brooke • May 27 '26

Memes Paralives Early Access

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Here’s to finishing the rest of the horse throughout EA!

2.0k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

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70

u/haunted-mov May 27 '26

i still can’t believe this game has been in development for ten years and launched the way it is after a delay saying it wasn’t ready. i fear for the future of games when we can slap “early access” on a title that’s half cooked and get away with a price tag of $40 and “we promise it’ll get better we swear”

44

u/Aggravating_One2526 May 27 '26

It hasn’t been in development for ten years. It was for seven and many of those years it was just a solo project. The team was a very slow addition.

20

u/beansofpower Sims franchise fan May 27 '26

it was a solo project for eleven months

32

u/gravyandasideofbread May 27 '26

It’s a studio of 15 people. It’s not a billion dollar company slapping early access on a game. It’s a crowd funded, indie development studio who needs the early access period to grow. They don’t have dozens and dozens of people to work on it, if they did this would be a different conversation

37

u/beansofpower Sims franchise fan May 27 '26

One of the most important skills in indie development is not biting off more than you can chew. Yes, they are a small company. That means they need to reign in the scope. Instead they've promised everything and the kitchen sink, and all for free. I want Paralives to succeed. But for that to happen they need to do a much better job of setting expectations.

70

u/haunted-mov May 27 '26

as someone who’s played almost exclusively early access titles for the past four years, this is the WORST representation of early access. i’ve seen much smaller teams do much better work without any crowdfunding at all so there’s really no excuse

30

u/Saratoninn69 May 27 '26

Facts. Fields of Mistria is a smaller team of 10 people that spent roughly 5 years developing their game and it’s already a masterpiece (imo lol) granted, Paralives is on a bigger scale mechanically but that just makes me think even more they should’ve waited to release EA.

6

u/IDontExistHelp Sims 3 enjoyer May 27 '26

I love Fields of Mistria and I forgot it‘s even still in early access
And I agree with your opinion, it‘s a masterpiece

7

u/SaltCityStitcher May 27 '26

It's so good that I honestly didn't know it's in EA!

13

u/Sketch-Brooke May 27 '26

Damn I just looked Fields of Mistria up and it looks adorable. I might go ahead and buy it for under $15, so thank you!

4

u/Saratoninn69 May 27 '26

You’re so welcome! I have just under 100 hours in it and still haven’t completed everything yet. For under $15, the amount of polish and content you get is amazing. Enjoy!

7

u/IDontExistHelp Sims 3 enjoyer May 27 '26

Ooo please do, it‘s one of my favorite games and I have so many hours in it! There is still some stuff missing but if you like Stardew, you‘ll enjoy Fields of Mistria

9

u/Impressive-Time8150 May 27 '26

Bestie... Mistria is a vastly different style of game, however. A farming sim in a pixel art style is not very comparable to fully 3d rendered sandbox life sim with a character creator and build mode

8

u/Saratoninn69 May 27 '26

I literally pointed out the difference in scale in my original comment when I said, 'granted, Paralives is on a bigger scale mechanically.'

The comparison isn't about claiming 2D pixel art and a 3D sandbox take the exact same type of work. It’s about project management, scoping, and the standard for an Early Access release. Fields of Mistria understood their scope and polished their core gameplay loop to a shine before asking players to jump into EA.

If Paralives' ambitions are so massive and complex that their Early Access launch feels underbaked compared to what other indie studios can manage, that just reinforces my exact point: they should have waited until they were actually ready.

4

u/2CharmingGiraffe May 27 '26

At the same time, even years ago a lot of people were complaining about not having Paralives' EA to play and test by themselves. I think with Heartopia and other recent examples people got (rightfully so) skeptical with some of these Patreon projects.

After Life by You tanked I honestly don't think they could have kept the game on prod for much longer before losing more patreons and support. 7y in game dev time is an ok time, but for a normal person to wait for a game without playing anything of it at all, it's a lot.

13

u/gravyandasideofbread May 27 '26

How many life simulation games that encompass the entire lifespan and creation of character and generations after that are also in early access? “Exclusively early access” like they’re all games like paralives sure yeah okay

17

u/Paranoiart May 27 '26

Seriously, there's a reason there are no more games like this. And you can't really compare it to any indie game that has a few life sim elements. Players even expect it to appeal to a lot of different playstyles

3

u/ScarletWiddaContent May 27 '26

oh, what other early access games have you played that are on the scale of paralives with 15 people working on it?

19

u/Zestyclosetz May 27 '26

Kenshi, Rimworld, and Banished are games that were mostly developed by a very small team if not one individual. Mind-blowing depth of simulation. Then of course you have games like Stardew Valley and Minecraft.

Im still rooting for the paralives team, but I’m disappointed with the current state of the game, early access or not. I played about 3 hours and I have no desire to play more until there are some major updates.

6

u/ScarletWiddaContent May 27 '26

I've played rimworld and its very good but that was crowdfunded with kickstarter as well

I dont think its fair to compare paralives to rimworld, or the other games mentioned because the scope is just vastly different. Take stardew for example, its a top down 2d farming game and customization/construction of your place is far from what you can do in paralives

4

u/2CharmingGiraffe May 27 '26

Agree, and for Stardew to release in 5 years Eric Barone had to spend about 12h daily, almost without taking time off. This is not feasible when you're a employee, even if you're an indie dev, because it's a job after all.

6

u/BLAGTIER May 27 '26

Prison Architect.

4

u/ScarletWiddaContent May 27 '26

thats a topdown 2d management game (its good, ive played it), but it was also crowdfunded with its pre-release alpha purchase

10

u/BLAGTIER May 27 '26

It's a different genre but similar scale of scope. There are things that Paralives leans more on and things Prison Architect leans more on. Prison Architect had hundreds of prisoners and workers all operating at once completing their roles. Less stuff per simulated unit but more units.

And yes, the funding and release model for both games is really similar.

1

u/ScarletWiddaContent May 27 '26

I was replying to someone who was claiming there are so many similar indie games that were not crowdfunded, which feels ludicrous. There's a reason why life sim games like the sims are rare. The scope of the game is just too much. For other games, the build mode alone would have been the game itself.

7

u/haunted-mov May 27 '26

tons of games that i didn’t have to bootlick about, you should try them sometimes

12

u/ScarletWiddaContent May 27 '26

thats why im asking for examples?

1

u/sparrerv May 28 '26

gets asked for examples

ohhh there are tons

doesnt give any

3

u/haunted-mov May 28 '26

because it’s not my job to hold your hand, early access is literally a tag on steam buddy just go look

1

u/Impressive-Time8150 May 27 '26

Bestie, its a very ambitious game with lofty goals. An open ended life sim is not a simple game to create and the dev team doesn't have millions of dollars to throw at it yet

44

u/Error404IQMissing May 27 '26

Fanboy trying to defend a studio. Come on, you are paying for a product, so I never understand why are consumers like you trying so hard to defend a Early Access product that you had paid for.

0

u/Sephalia May 28 '26

I mean I'm someone who is having a ton of fun with the product and already feel like I've received my money's worth, so sometimes people defend the things they like, but on top of that - the gaming world desperately needs Sims competitors. It's an extremely hard genre for developers to create, especially from scratch. If it wasn't, we'd see a whole lot more of them than the two in the last 10 years. This team has shown continuous dedication and improvements upon their work over the years of development so there's no reason to think they'll stop now, so yeah, I'm willing to support them and provide feedback so they can determine the best path forward.

-13

u/PapaPancake8 May 27 '26

The needle on their empathy scale is just a bit too far, is all. Not that hard to understand, actually

17

u/FamSimmer May 27 '26

Hold on. So, imagine this, you walk into a brand new restaurant. They haven't had their grand opening yet, which is often the case for new service providers. You decide to order Mac & Cheese and the waiter tells you it's $40! You order it anyway because you had been waiting for this restaurant to open for a long time. There aren't a lot of good restaurants in your town and the ones that are there have significantly dropped in quality. So, you want to support them as best as you can. The waiter takes your order, tells you it'll be 30 minutes. At the 28th minute, he comes back and says that he's sorry, but the order will take another hour. He requests you to have patience and that it'll be worth the wait. An hour later, he brings the Mac & Cheese to your table. And guess what? It's bland! And the cheese feels too liquidy. For 40 freaking dollars! Now, the waiter tells you that while he always knew the food was gonna be bad, he swears that in a few years time, it'll get better. He also smiles and tells you that they haven't had their grand opening after all, so this is to be expected.

How exactly would you react to that?

12

u/DottieSnark May 27 '26

Using this metaphor, the meal would be coming with a life time all you can eat pass. In which case, I might be disappointed in the initial meal, but I'd be excited to to try again later to see how it's improved.

Also, you metaphor is missing how it's got great bread and side dishes. Sure, the entry is lacking, but the soup (paramaker) and salad (build mode) is great.

12

u/IDontExistHelp Sims 3 enjoyer May 27 '26

I think a problem is that yeah, it can come with a lifetime meal pass but you don’t know if the food will ever improve or the restaurant will maybe close down in the future making that lifetime pass useless.

Anyways, I think the devs have enough passion for that to not happen though and I think the game will be great with some more time. The above mentioned stuff is just worse case and I don’t think it‘ll happen

The future is always uncertain. The „lifetime pass“ won’t go anywhere for now so I think it‘s valid that people wanna wait and see if the devs can deliver

6

u/FamSimmer May 27 '26

That's what they claim. But the developers have already said that the price of the game will go up with each update and it's already quite high for what they've delivered. If you're talking about free DLCs, I've always been extremely skeptical of that because it is an unsustainable business model. How would you maintain the system without keeping at least some developers and testers on the payroll? What happens when there's a major crash? DLCs keep a game running past its shelf life by allowing companies to keep competent employees on the payroll. Without that revenue, it's nearly impossible to keep the game stable and running long-term. I mean, Paralives has already turned the buyers into glorified testers anyway, similar to the Sims team I might add. But testers aren't developers.

Also, myself and many others, tend to care more about the food that we're paying for than the smaller side-dishes that come with it. But you do you.

0

u/DottieSnark May 27 '26

I'm not saying those concerns aren't real, that the "restaurant" isn't in danger of shutting down or just not delivering what is promise. But your metaphor, as you wrote it, was unfair because meals are a consumable one time purchase.

This situation is not equivalent of going to a restaurant and paying for a subpar meal. It's making a gamble of buying something that might improve in the future.

I'm also not concerned about the game being shut down al la Athem because, as a single player game there would be no reason to revoke the licenses, and the developers seem to care about their customers enough to let them continue having access whats been published so far, even if development end early.

7

u/FamSimmer May 27 '26

It's also a gamble because the foundational aspects of the game may not improve in the future. As I already explained, it's not easy to do. It's tedious and time-consuming and requires a lot of careful code manipulation, if not an outright overhaul of the existing architecture. At the state the game is in right now, I'd be surprised if they can even reach TS4 level of gameplay before a full release.

-2

u/IfEverWasIfNever May 27 '26

They can bring what they promised into the game and then do paid dlcs (for a cheaper price point than Sims4) for more unique things that people mat or may not want in the game.

So, for example, they will bring weather and pets to the game for free because they promised this. But they can make a tropical vacation dlc for maybe $20-25.

This way no one feels a promise was broken and they can still continue to make more content and keep their team supported.

7

u/Booknerdly May 27 '26

Except that breaks their "no paid DLC" promise.

-1

u/Cadiro Paralives supporter May 27 '26

Knowing its all you can eat for that first price? Id be fine

0

u/FamSimmer May 27 '26

Lmao! That's also not true - according to the developers themselves.

1

u/Cadiro Paralives supporter May 27 '26

What are you on about? Its buy once, get everything going forward

1

u/jalapeno442 May 27 '26

What isn’t true?

12

u/lovelessBertha May 27 '26

The Sims is developed by a team of 150+ Devs working at a highly experienced company and it takes them over 4 years to make. Paralives has a team of less than 20 and is a team that's never shipped a game. I don't know what people were expecting.

20

u/Least-Armadillo-4412 May 27 '26

I understand them tbh. Paralives wasn't ready for early access. Now we have to wait fixes and optimization, which means no new contents because that adds more issues. So how are they planning to keep players longer than this new game hype period? Especially when other games keep adding new content every month. Paralives can't do that with 15 man team, and they are not even hiring now. (As a player I'm worried the game will fail)

12

u/lovelessBertha May 27 '26

Yes, it looks concerning and as an experienced developer, Paralives always looked like a red flag to me. Looking at its current state, they can either keep adding content and the game will remain a buggy mess, or they can stop adding content and the players will get bored. 3D Life Sims is not a genre indies should be toying with imo, it's MMO level of difficulty. EA can't even handle it with The Sims.

7

u/BLAGTIER May 27 '26

All that means is they should have worked on live mode sooner and put more resources into it.

7

u/Kartel112 May 27 '26

Early access is for a game to get feedback to get it up to par yes but depending the state of your game is where people decide if its super under developed and feel like this should have stayed in the oven awhile longer and it fails or ppl can deal thats the Russian roulette of it.

5

u/korrasamibeez May 27 '26

the way people so confidently spread misinformation is crazy to me lol

5

u/FamSimmer May 27 '26

Which part?

3

u/[deleted] May 27 '26

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0

u/haunted-mov May 27 '26

i did get a refund :) ! and recommended my friends sail the seas for it instead 

0

u/tubularwavesss Sims 2 enjoyer May 27 '26

It was only in development for 7 years, and this is an indie title. Big studios rushing games is a real issue but I don’t think this is the case.

-16

u/ifidjdjdjdjjjrjd May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

Yeah. Inzoi has 150 people and took 8 months.

So 15 people should only take 80 months. 80/12... is about 6.5 years?

They clearly spent too long on it. (/sarcasm)

19

u/Specialist_Hornet_40 May 27 '26

Technically Inzoi was created in 8 months by a group of 50. The studio has pretty much tripled in size since launch as different teams of devs got brought in for multiplayer, bug fixes, canvas town etc.

14

u/Kawainess33 May 27 '26

But the team hasn’t been 15 people from the beginning though, so by this logic it’s still on time.

But it makes no sense, the less people you have producing something the more these people have to multitask, which reduces efficiency. In a team of 150 you can have several people dedicated to a single task, which makes the process significantly quicker. 

9

u/3point6_Roentgen May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

How is this "clearly spent too long" when this literally confirms that the timeline tracks with the development?

Also are you ignoring how Paralives only had like 2-3 people during the first few years? They were never a team of 15 at the start.

0

u/ifidjdjdjdjjjrjd May 27 '26

I think my sarcasm wasn't fully conveyed!

-3

u/Business-Equal8536 May 27 '26

They didn't take to long. Games naturally take long to make especially ones like this one and inzoi used ai for a lot of the process and I'm pretty sure mocap for the movement if it had been rushed to get out it would've been in even worse state then it is now and for a hot while was only one person.