How will Life By You compete with The Sims? Deeper role-play
The life sim genre, loosely defined, has assumed many shapes. Stardew Valley complemented its farming aspects with relationship-building among its townsfolk. Animal Crossing: New Horizons brought Nintendo’s charm and approachability to an island escape. Second Life, true to its name,comprised a virtual world in which to create an avatar, interact with other players, and build 3D models. Yet for all of its loose criteria and nebulous labels, no series stands as monolithic in the category as The Sims; for 23 years, its god’s-eye-view of AI characters going about their daily lives has become all but synonymous with the genre. Life By You, the recently announced life sim from Paradox Tectonic, is poised to compete, with a deeper focus on language, memory, and role-play between your created characters.
That’s not to say that role-playing is new to life sims; far from it. The Sims 4’s recent expansion Growing Togetheradded a slew of likes and dislikes to characters’ emotional palettes, increasing the likelihood of dramatic encounters and emergent storylines. (Polygon’s Cass Marshall became embroiled in a feud with a baby.) But Life By You is delving even deeper into role-playing. You can customize your entire town. You can alter your belongings, down to the material of the furniture in your characters’ homes. More crucially, though, characters will speak using real languages, as opposed to the fictional language of The Sims.
“We’ve tried to extend the depth of the gameplay at every level,” Rod Humble, head of Paradox Tectonic and lead on Life By You, told Polygon during the Game Developers Conference last week. “And language in human interactions plays such an important part in all of the stories you want to tell. Wittgenstein
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