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.
Paralives released on May 25 as an early access title on Steam, and has seen an impressive response. concurrent player numbers peaked at 78,603, and it has over 5,200+ user reviews already, with 88% positive.
To celebrate the release, lead developer and founder, Alex Massé, sat down with the rest of the development team to answer questions. A few people asked about autonomy, suggesting it should be a priority “considering it’s a life simulation game and the Paras just stand there doing nothing when not being talked to / interacted with.” Massé agreed, responding: “Autonomy is definitely a big core feature of the game that needs more love, more balancing, and especially more content. The characters are on their phone a lot mainly because those interactions can be done without targeting any other character or item, so these are the ‘easiest’ and most common thing they can do. Adding more autonomous actions and more interactions in general during early access will help, it should make the characters do more various things!”
The team also directly responded to a question about adult content being modded into the game. Asked what the team’s stance was, QA Charlotte replied: “so long as it follows Steam’s guidelines on user-uploaded content and is properly tagged as adult content, it is OK! We also only moderate mods inside of the Steam Workshop, so anything out of there will be out of our jurisdiction so to speak.”
But it’s the commitment to no paid DLC that has a lot of fans excited. Unsurprisingly, they had a lot of questions, too.
“You said ‘Paralives will never have paid DLCs,’ and that’s beyond amazing, but how do you intend to keep development active? It’s a risk, I believe,” said one fan. “Do you plan to offer merchandise, partnerships, or any paid content? (Not a DLC per se, but perhaps a special bundle?)”
“There will never be paid DLCs, only free updates!” said Massé. “Even after the Early Access. As life sim fans, we wanted to make a game we would like to play ourselves without the need to purchase a lot of extra content and we are happy to deliver that. Because the team is small (only 15 people) the sales we made so far will sustain us for many years, even if we increase the size of the team so we’re safe and really grateful for that!”
“I was going to ask this as well,” replied one Redditor. “It’s a great gesture that’s very appreciated but I don’t see how it’s feasible long-term. Sales will slow eventually and the scope of indefinitely supporting a game that costs as much as a single Sims expansion seems huge.”
When others questioned this further, Massé added: “The sales we made from the game so far will sustain our small team of 15 for many years so we are happy to be able to offer free-only updates in the future because it’s what we would like as life sim fans ourselves.”
As for if the team could be expanded beyond 15 people to accommodate the growing wishlist? Massé said: “We would like to expand the team a bit without becoming too big because we like working as a small team! In any case, we will be working on fixing bugs and improving the live mode gameplay in the coming months and the following major updates!”
What we won’t be getting any time soon is multitasking. Though the team answered the question about when Paras will be able to “eat while watching TV sat down,” programmer Anna Thibert said: “That’s not planned for now since it is quite challenging technically, but we are keeping it as a potential option for a future update!” The OP noted their disappointment: “Really surprised to hear this isn’t planned! To me, multitasking feels like a very crucial thing for a life sim to have!”
Programmer Jérémie Tessier also commented on feedback that the Together Cards “got very repetitive fast […] and got in the way of choosing some basic socialization options.” “At the moment we do not plan to have a parallel system to Together Cards, you currently can do certain interactions from the menu after you have performed them via Together Cards,” Tessier said. “We certainly need more cards, just in general and for specific contexts, and we need more ways for parafolks to ‘prime’ themselves to be in some specific moods so you have more cards of a type you want, but we are happy with the Together Card system! Thanks!”
Masse also added an astonishingly complex but very real example of why designing life sim games is so complex:
For more, including questions on fireworks, collaborations, build mode grids, gardening, Steam achievements, the occult, and more, head on over to the (long!) Reddit thread.
We thought Paralives was ‘Good,’ writing in IGN’s review: “Paralives is a rough-around-the-edges life simulator that makes up for its Early Access sins with a striking art style and some promising ideas.” The review returned a 7.
If you’re starting a new life in Paralives, we’ve got a guide to character creation, and Tips and Things to Do First to help you get started – plus How to Move Households, How to Complete Requests, and an in-progress guide to all the Paralives Skills. Like any good life sim, there are also plenty of Cheats and Console Commands to give you a bit more control.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
