Paralives

25 articles

Paralives news

Paralives' latest update throws out its wonderfully awful homunculi babies and makes it so that dead bodies should no longer litter the streets

The beauty of an early access game is being able to look at something funky, say "that's not right," and as long as you're correct and not an irritating know-it-all making feedback that's not actually helpful, see it changed in (very slow) real-time. Paralives' latest update is here, and with it comes an improvement (?) to the life sim's babies after a number of people complained at how they looked.

Rock Paper Shotgun / Oisin Kuhnke

Update

How Paralives sold a million copies in its first month...

Also: lots of game discovery news, innit?

GameDiscoverCo / Simon Carless

Business

Tracing blueprints in Paralives is so easy it freed me from 25 years of The Sims' grid-based tyranny

One tiny mod for Paralives has finally made my childhood dreams of more realistic life sims floor plans possible.

PC Gamer / Lauren Morton

Culture

Congratulations to the Paralives community for immediately making its most popular mod something called 'Parapenis'

It does roll off the tongue, you've gotta admit.

PC Gamer / Joshua Wolens

Culture

Paralives is home to the kind of architectural creative freedom I haven't felt from a life sim since The Sims 2

An amateur architect's dream.

PC Gamer / Mollie Taylor

Review

Unlike The Sims, early access hit Paralives will "never" have paid DLC and will stick to free updates, devs say

Though we'd known about it for quite some time, breezy life simulator Paralives has managed to become one of this month's surprise hits. With over 250k copies sold in less than eight hours, it was off to a great start on Steam earlier this week, and now the developers are promising no paid DLC will be released.

Eurogamer / Fran Ruiz

Business

Paralives received 'over 100,000 bug reports' in less than a week, as its creator reminds us that life sims are really hard to make

Life sims are basically giant machines with a gazillion tiny moving parts.

PC Gamer / Mollie Taylor

Business

Developer of Steam Hit Life Sim Paralives Explains How It Can Manage Without Selling Paid DLC

The development team behind The Sims-like Paralives has answered various community questions in a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA), revealing more about its priority fixes, expanding the team, and why there will never be paid DLC.

IGN / Vikki Blake

Interview

Paralives Early Access Review

A rough-around-the-edges life simulator with a striking art style and some promising ideas.

IGN / Tom Marks

Review

Paralives is possibly the first ever videogame with a character editor that gives people motion sickness

Cosy life sim Paralives launched into early access this week, sweetening the initial reception with a roadmap full of free goodies. I've been looking forward to the game, if only because there has been such disappointment of late on the life sim front – Paradox Tectonic's Life By You fell foul of funding cuts, Inzoi is a horrible haunted Botox catalogue, and EA's plans for The Sims 5 remain nebulous and live-servicey. Paralives? It appears both throwback and forward-thinking, a game of rosy chee

Rock Paper Shotgun / Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Release date

Paralives charmed me on day one, but the roadmap outlines the real life sim of my dreams

Count me in for a houseboat.

PC Gamer / Andrea Shearon

Update

Paralives players are getting jumpscared by a naked chap called Charlie glitching into their games and now I too have been Charlie'd

This unsettling, naked para is bodysnatching our characters and honestly, I want to keep them.

PC Gamer / Lauren Morton

Culture

Paralives has done the one exact thing I was begging life sims for

I was on my knees pleading for a scrap of strategy gameplay and Paralives has laid me a feast of fun simulation effects.

PC Gamer / Lauren Morton

Preview

After seven years of development, Paralives is out in early access

The day has come. After first being announced all the way back in 2019 by then solo dev Alex Massé (a small studio has been formed since then), Paralives is now out in early access. Being an early access release, that means you shouldn't expect something as refined as its biggest source of inspiration, and now competitor, The Sims, but it does seem like there's plenty to get started with.

Rock Paper Shotgun / Oisin Kuhnke

Release date

9 cool things about Paralives you won't find in The Sims

Paralives is stuffed with cool details that have me falling in love with the life sim.

PC Gamer / Mollie Taylor

Preview

Is Paralives worth playing in early access for life sim fans?

After a lot of hours spent in Paralives, here's my breakdown on how you can decide whether it's your type of life sim or not.

PC Gamer / Lauren Morton

Preview

Paralives money cheats: Every cheat code you need for easy paradimes

A get-rich-quick scheme for your parafolk.

PC Gamer / Andrea Shearon

Guide

Paralives cheats: Every cheat code your parafolks need for living the easy life or causing a little chaos

Sometimes it does pay to cheat, especially in a life sim.

PC Gamer / Andrea Shearon

Guide

Paralives feels like the perfect tranquil tonic to the chaos of The Sims

Paralives gets off to a lovely start. We fade up to see the camera tracking a moving train as it winds serenely across a bucolic landscape. Slowly it moves in for an aerial view and the roof pops off, revealing the guard inside. And this is your movement tutorial; you'll guide the little fella into the next carriage, where a cluster of passengers leisurely watch the world go by. One handsome man slumps blissfully against his girlfriend; a group of friends laugh together across the aisle. Another

Eurogamer / Matt Wales

Preview

Paralives launch times and release date

Here's when we can finally get our hands on the latest life sim.

PC Gamer / Lauren Morton

Release date

Paralives continues to sound promising with a roadmap outlining free updates The Sims would normally charge for

While I've never really played all that much of The Sims (does maybe four hours of My Sims Kingdom from when I was 11 count?), my partner certainly has, expositing all of the surprisingly deep lore to me from time to time. Yet nothing shocks me more than hearing both the cost of expansions and the contents therewithin. What do you mean you have to hand over legal tender for bloody seasons? I'm supposed to pretend that this simulation of life exists in a post-weather world right up to the point o

Rock Paper Shotgun / Oisin Kuhnke

Update

Paralives is the very definition of early access, but it's already a promising Sims rival

Paralives still feels very early in development, but its potential is blinding.

PC Gamer / Mollie Taylor

Preview

Paralives ready to take on The Sims with new footage ahead of release

Looking for something like The Sims but not from EA? Paralives arrives May 25th and there's a brand new trailer, along with 45 minutes of gameplay. Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

GamingOnLinux / Liam Squires-Hand

Trailer

Take a nice long look at some Paralives gameplay ahead of its early access launch next week

Paralives, originally slated for release in 2025, is now right around the corner with an early access launch slated for May 25th next week. So what better a way to whet the appetite than with a nice lengthy look at the game in action, right from making your own Sims- sorry, Paras, through to overseeing their entire lives.

Rock Paper Shotgun / Oisin Kuhnke

Trailer

Paralives looks packed with tiny features I've been desperately wanting in The Sims for years

I'm giddy for all these features I could never get from an unmodded Sims.

PC Gamer / Mollie Taylor

Preview