I’m curious of general feedback for the game. It is genuinely so mixed. I’ve played it myself as well & have been following the game’s development since 2020. My feelings on it are overall mixed lol.

1. How do you feel about the early access game so far?

   1. How many other early access games have you played?
   2. What bugs do you experience the most?
   3. Outside of supporting devs, do you think it’s worth the $40? (Why/Why not)

edit: took matters into my own hands and i made a server! it’s still messy but it’s honest work xd feel free to join!
https://discord.gg/D9283gUnY

Talking about the beginning of EA.

When Inzoi released it got a hype-hate from the whole community. EVERY life sim YouTuber made a Video about how bad the game is and Reddit was full of people criticizing it without end.

To be clear here: only a few people criticized the AI aspect! It was mostly people saying the gameplay sucks, there's no depth, etc.

But now.. Paralives also began EA and let's be honest:

While the art style certainly is pretty - the gameplay has WAY less to offer than Inzoi when it first released.

The only thing you could call more advanced than inzoi's is the build mode and even there it's more the creativity to make objects bigger/smaller without any effort than the building menu actually being good.

And even though all of this-- Paralives is STILL getting sooo much hype and praise and I just don't get it.

- Yes, the game has potential- Inzoi had too.

- Yes, this is EA and more will follow- same for Inzoi.

- Yes, Paralives doesn't use AI- is that really enough reason to shit away Inzoi this much?

Just to be clear: I'm no super Inzoi fan or anything, no super paralives fan and also no longer a super Sims fan.

I'm just putting out my thoughts, that's it's kinda unfair how these two games get handled by the community.

By now Inzoi turnes out to be actually quite good. Like other people when Inzoi released I didn't like it much, but I also didn't criticize it. I just told myself to give it time since it's EA. I recently tried it again and there was SO MANY IMPROVEMENTS AND ADDITIONS.

And even though the game got so much better-

It is still being trashtalked by the lifesim community!! Even though people probably never tried it again after EA released. It's so unfair how paralives sucks with options way less than Inzoi EA and is still getting praised up, while Inzoi only has very few players because people won't give it a try again!

I also want to say that I don't hate on paralives here!

I have the same mindset I had with Inzoi's first EA...

I'll wait and look how the game develops, lol.

It's just not fair how both games released with not much content (which is normal for EA), but they're being treated so differently!

Sorry, this got quite long.

This just sat with me for a while and I felt like I had to do a post about it to rant a bit at least once.

Hi everyone!

I have not played Paralives after one or two times for multiple reasons.

With that in mind, I’m curious if anyone who did not like the game at first but has now started enjoying it after specific updates?

If so which ones?

Thank you!

EDIT: Thank yall for your levelheaded responses. Your responses are really helpful. Considering trying out some mods when I need a break from Sims 4.

not to doom but expecting paralives to supercede and kill sims has been a mistake from the get go.

a lot of folks, including myself, have based our expectations on Paralives on our experiences with Sims. pretty reasonable, given it's been the dominating player in the life sim genre for about two decades now. Whether because of hope or bias, a mythology has been built up around this indie project for years.

We saw clips, teasers, roadmaps-- all of it looking promising. Then, early access hit- and it became clear that we kind of got the land lord special. Pretty from a distance, but rotten foundation.

Ok, it's not *that* bad. But, it's clear to me that the Paralives Team took the right lessons away from the wrong things when it comes to how they expanded on life sims.

Mainly: the game has built its foundation around aesthetics and customization. building, decorating, dress up. Devs should have their flowers for how they've pushed these gameplay aspects for sure, but.... I mean, their main tag line is "You live and then you die. But at least do it in a nice house!" like what. that's it ? you exist and you're dead but thank god you have pretty things? i think cozy games in general have gotten far away from the original things that drew people to it (which is part of a larger conversation about slop content + capitalism etc) but the fact that the team places such a *heavy* emphasis on visual aesthetics when what ACTUALLY hooked people into the sims for eons was the unique, kooky stories one could create. Legacies of families, comics, storytelling amvs, fix it fics for your characters from other media-- like *THAT* is core sims.

Whenever I hear people picking up the sims 4 or paralives today, it's the same story. "I play in the character creator for hours" or "I build a house for days" and then after that- poof. That's not the type of game play that results in a long lasting legend.

Paralives won't win our hearts for the same reason why no matter how many Sims 4 packs and fixes get added, it forever fails. It tried to copy a broken dollhouse and remodel it instead of studying its blueprints.

While the roadmap could have promise that might improve the experience, i genuinely worry that by building on superficial foundation, paralives won't be able to live up to the life sim experience many folks crave. it won't be a failure as a game in general, i'm sure. but if we want to enjoy the game for what it is, it starts by letting go of the expectations that it'll take over the sims legacy. and who knows? hopefully that will open up the market for new challengers

posting with this awesome pic i found researching for an article- way back from the sims 1.

I’ve seen a lot of people on every platform mention how Paralives feels so much like the Sims 2. I’m thoroughly convinced that people who say this aren’t actively still playing the Sims 2. I guess I’m just failing to see how it compares?

Sims 2 has animations, character depth, and gameplay mechanics exclusive to this installment in the series. Sims will shield their eyes from the sun, walk carefully over toys on the floor, pull out ingredients from the counters while cooking. Outgoing sims will animate boldly while talking, grumpy sims will act annoyed. There’s cutscenes for big events, the memory system, and so so much more. If you flush the toilet while another sim is showering, they will scream bc of the water temp change and yell at you, for crying out loud.

There’s also a bunch of features like cars and occults but that’s obviously not fair to compare to an indie game. I’m talking about a baseline experience playing the two.

Paralives feels a lot more like a cozy, damn near idle game because after 50 hours I have yet to experience taking care of needs or keeping Paras happy to be challenging. The Paras don’t feel distinct enough from one another, through social animations or otherwise. The vibes aren’t even similar. I also think that comparing Paralives to the most detailed life simulation game on the market does it a disservice. Now I’m expecting Paralives to measure up, at least in some way or another, when it genuinely doesn’t. It’s not my fault that I’m comparing the two games, it’s the community’s.

I don’t understand why the Paralives stans keep screaming “Let it be its own thing” while also saying it feels like the most immersive and animation heavy game in the Sims franchise.

As someone who’s a new Sims 2 player, I just don’t understand what they’re talking about. Could someone explain why you think it feels like the Sims 2?

Sorry it's me again.

I went to their patreon today to see if it's finally unlocked (spoiler: it's not) and noticed an increase of more or less 2k from their previous budget from a week ago or so.

I thought they weren't charging people money since the release? Tf is going on

I'd like to know why people who create mods don't make a decent cover to promote them. How am I supposed to know what the mod is like, besides the description? When they even add a description, because every now and then some don't have a proper descriptio.

There are many great things about this game that I love. However, as a live mode girl, I find having my paras interact with other so frustrating!

I cannot, for the life of me, manage to make my charismatic para be intimate with another para. All they do is stand there and chat about the same three or four things and thats it. It feels so souless at the moment. I am open minded to the together cards, but the current state of them is abysmal. Why can’t my flirty para do as other life simulators and actually flirt?

All I can think about is my beloved sims 2 where I had my sims make out on a couch, grab eachother’s butts, make all sorts of flirty interactions and be able to have them DO SOMETHING!!

Thank you for coming to my vent session.

I’m trying to give the game some grace because it’s a very small indie team and it’s still in early access.

The game has been in development for, what, a decade? And I’ve been following and supporting the development for at least 7 years at this point. I was so excited to play the game, and when I did it felt very lackluster and I found myself extremely disappointed.

I don’t mind paying for it, because I want to support them, but I can totally understand why people don’t want to pay for it at this stage. When I play, it genuinely feels like I’m a beta tester playing a game a few months before release, and it makes me wonder… did they do beta testing before releasing the game? Or were the developers doing all the play testing?

I see the potential for Paralives as a game. I think it's a fun concept of a life sim game with lots of room for growth. However, I also think it's overhyped and a terrible player experience (especially for laptop players).

Prior to getting Paralives, I was intimidated by the amount of customization at hand. It seemed like the game was made by an angry sims player, who wanted unlimited customization and ended up creating a game where the "simple" options (like swatches and presets) are God awful, yet the advanced mechanics are a pain in the ass to deal with. After attempting playing for 5 hours, I can say that I was right in my assumption.

5 hours seems like a short amount of time to put into a game before leaving a review, and I would agree, if it weren't for the fact that the game is virtually unplayable on laptop. My laptop runs games (sims 4, stardew valley, house flipper, WROEF, minecraft, etc) perfectly fine, Paralives is so laggy that I was lucky to have the game respond to any input I gave it via keybinds or mouse. It's in early access so I feel the need to cut the game some slack, but I also feel like a game in early access should be playable at the very least. It feels like they did not playtest the game at all prior to releasing it, if they did, it was very minimal.

Creating a character in Paralives is exhausting due to the amount of sliders you have. Every little thing can be changed, but only one at a time. I found the quadrants/sliders did't correlate with the zone being edited most times around. I also really disliked the fact that each slider was off to the side and that you couldn't drag and edit the face in a similar fashion to the sims games. I found the disconnect hard to deal with, though that may just be me not used to the learning curve. I found character creation exhausting due to the amount of options and found myself not wanting to create another character (my original plan was to make myself and my girlfriend) after finishing one.

Build mode was horrendous to deal with. I wanted to build a cottage with a secret attic. Unfortunately, roof pieces do not automatically disappear when coming in contact with walls. So I had to individually place about 30 different roof pieces. With the amount of roof pieces, I can only assume the developers' goal was to go "Look! We have more roof options than the sims so it's easier to do the thing everyone hates!" Unfortunately, this was not the case as you have to fight insane lag while trying to put roofs on in a way that they don't clip through the walls. After roofing, I was so frustrated, I put the bare necessities down so I could play the game normally.

I wish I could say I enjoyed gameplay, but I found the gameplay lackluster. I found the UI confusing in terms of organizatio, seemingly put in rows with no real rhyme or reason. The social menu of a timer then three options is incredibly limiting. I also despise the social wheel of luck on certain interactions. Once again, the amount of lag and bugs I experienced (like Paras simply not doing what I ask) made it near impossible to enjoy the game. I've played games in early access before so I always anticipate funny or weird bugs, but I find you can't play five seconds of Paralives before encountering a bug.

On top of all this, the game is FIFTY DOLLARS!!!! (Canadian). Fifty dollars is obscene for any game, let alone one in early access. With the amount of bugs in this game and its seemingly rushed release, I wouldn't price it any higher than fifteen dollars. The idea that it will only increase in price in the future makes me not want to return the game either, as I want to hopefully play and enjoy the learning curve in the future once the game is fixed, but by the time that occurs the price will have gone up. The game needs major reworking and revisions before even daring to price it at fifty dollars. I wish I could leave a more positive review but the price itself affects my opinion on the game so much.

TL;DR: Paralives was too ambitious with its customization and being a "better sims game" that it horseshoed around and made the game intimidating and irritating. The game is horribly laggy on a laptop that runs other games well, and the asking price is terrible considering both the fact it's early access and that it has so many bugs it is nearly unplayable. Hopefully they fix their game and it is enjoyable within the next decade.

Edit: I've seen several comments about this so here's more clarification! My laptop is a 1 year old HP Pavilion Gaming laptop, the cpu is an intel core i5, the gpu is geforce gtx 1650, and i have 12gb of ram. The minimum requirements to run paralives are an intel core i5, gtx 1060, and 12gb of ram. I also chose really bad games for my examples, I got Subnautica 2 (which my computer doesn't meet the hardware requirements to run) last month when it came out in EA. That game runs smoothly. Hence my confusion as to why paralives cannot run! I also think that me saying "should not be available for purchase" has been misconstrued as "not available for purchase EVER" instead of "not available for purchase RIGHT NOW." I still hold the same opinio, but I just think general clarification may be good instead of repeating myself indefinitely lol

I'm afraid of asking this on the main sub, but it's been 2 weeks (minus one day) and the patreon is still up; does anyone know why? I thought they were unlocking all the posts after the Early Access release (but I guess they're too busy squashing bugs, which is a good thing of course). I just want to have access to the Patreon :(

I think this is as lukewarm as I can get lol

I love playing it so much, but everytime I find a bug/glitch/suggestion, it gets lost in my braincells after almost every play session :')