Paralives Reviews

Like most fans who are currently playing Paralives, I followed the game’s development for years. I was beyond excited to play and couldn’t wait to support the Indie team. However, the game that’s currently being sold is nothing like the game that was promoted. I want to preface by saying that Paralives is in early access, and it would be unfair to hold it to the same standards as a finished game. The current state of Paralive's CAS mode is very promising. As is the Build mode, which has surpassed my expectations. However, the lack of any real gaming mechanics makes Paralives feel more like a building sim and less like a life simulator. Let’s start with my biggest gripe regarding Paralives, the card system. Rather than a list of interactions to choose from when interacting with other paras, users are given 6 cards to choose from once the “chat meter” builds up.  The cards do change; however, you have no control over what pops up. You could get 6 friendly cards. Several angry ones with a few offensive jokes. Maybe one romance card, two if you’re lucky. Overall, the “together cards” are incredibly limiting in terms of user agency and storytelling. It’s lackluster and makes building relationships feel like a chore rather than enjoyable. While others may find this feature innovative, I find it to be a dealbreaker. It gives off the same vibe as grinding in an RPG and being forced to go from NPC to NPC. I spent about 20 minutes in live mode before getting bored and finding nothing else to do. Character interaction is almost nonexistent, with every reaction feeling and sounding the same. I don’t feel that my paras' personalities actually mean anything, as they all seem to act and react the same. Hobbies and careers feel unrewarding. Attempting to romance other characters and build friendships is exhausting and boring due to the card system. And the current bugs are atrocious. The world is beautiful, but the personality within it is bleak. It feels more like an empty dollhouse than an interactive one. It’s obvious that Build mode was prioritized in early development. Which, while being an important aspect of life sims, cannot be the core mechanic. I worry that live mode has been placed on the back burner by the Paralives team and is too far behind to catch up with the rest of the game. Especially with the devs prioritizing things like adding horses to the game (which is far more complex and time-consuming than you’d think) over basic mechanics for modern life sims (like multitasking). In its current state, Paralives just feels like an empty RPG with pretty things to look at. It has a LOT of growing to do, and I fail to see how that can be achieved in 2 years with such a small team. Unless your sole purpose is to build houses or support the Paralives team, I wouldn’t recommend buying this game in its current state. Especially not at the $40 price tag, which is equivalent to a fully fleshed game.

KEY ADVICE: Do NOT create a Para. Choose a family and play as that family before your two hour limit to refund the game is up. Try the live mode gameplay and make a decision as to whether you want to keep the game. Do NOT get sucked into spending hours building a house and creating a character like I did, only to realize the live mode gameplay is lacking. As many others have echoed, it is very stale. Character creation and build mode, in my opinion, are great (despite the latter requiring a bit more patience). However, once you actually get into the gameplay, it is incredibly lackluster. It is definitely not worth the $50 Canadian that I paid for it. You go to sleep. It doesn't matter what bed you choose because they don't have stats, so your Para is going to sleep like eight hours anyhow. Then, your Para wakes up and you select one of three cards for the day to apply to you. It could be a temporary buff, could be money, could be relationship perks that might make flirting more successful for a period of time, could be a guaranteed promotion, etc. They become VERY repetitive after a few in game days. Even if they don't match with your character, you can't reroll. Sometimes a deck of cards is one of the three card options--you can open the deck and select one of three cards within it. However, if you don't like any of the options, you can't go back. Then you go to work. You can't alter your hours. You can only change when your two off days are, and you only have three schedule options with respect to that. Promotions are "upgrades" that give you the opportunity to select one of three cards which will impact your career. It could be increasing your rank, getting a money bonus, a perk that lets you increase work-related skills while at home, just generic stuff like that. Your career title NEVER changes. The best you can do is get raises within that title. It's not like the Sims where you're promoted to a new role within an industry. Instead, you stay in that role until you find a new job, usually prompted by your Para having a "want" to find a better job within the industry. You get home. There isn't a lot to do. You're probably looking at grinding out the skills that are related to your career, and the skills themselves are limited with how meaningful they are. If you go to one of the events around town, you can meet other Paras, but they lack autonomy. For example, free yoga at the gym means you go to the gym, pump weights for a while with other Paras, and maybe initiate a conversation with someone (the Paras can't initiate with your Para). Otherwise the townies just stand around, click their phone a bit, and break toilets. Then, the socializing mechanics are stale. You start talking to another Para and wait for a bar to fill. You click the bar once it's filled. You choose a card. Like another player echoed, maybe all three cards don't fit your Para. Maybe your Para would actually have a crush on the Para you're talking to. But you're playing a serious Para, so you're restricted to the RNG rude options to exit the conversation, tell the Para how boring they are, or flirt with a 10% success chance (as a side note, I failed a flirt 8 times in a row despite having a 70% success chance on each card). You just keep clicking until your story teller pops up giving you the opportunity to designate a label, like becoming a friend or romantic interest. And if you're like me and want to steal Jason from Sophia, even recruiting him to your household and marrying him doesn't remove the "exclusive partner" label he has with her. Now let's say you have a kid. Guess what? Everything is exactly the same, except now with a child. You still have to go to work. No maternity or paternity leave. You still socialize with the baby and choose whatever card advances its language skill. But it doesn't seem like the language skill actually helps. What happens if you don't teach the baby anything? Well, nothing happens at all. No consequences. I got bored after a while. I realized fast that the gameplay is not yet flushed out enough to justify the price tag. If this was $20 Canadian, I would say fine, provided you like builders and character creators. But not $53. TLDR: Missing a lot of meaningful and diversifying live mode gameplay. Early access is an understatement. If you like building and making interesting-looking characters, this is for you. If you're looking for life gameplay, I got bad news: go back to the Sims 3. If not, then wait for a sale. It gets boring fast.

I bought Paralives when it came out because, as a long time Sims player, I was eager for something new. All the videos and posts from the developers during the creation of Paralives just had me more and more excited. Now that I've played the game for a while, I feel like I have adequate experience to give a review. The star of this game is certainly the building, in my opinion. They've thought of nearly every way you could possibly customize your home and furniture/items and gave us the tools to do so easily. It feels like whatever you imagine in your mind's eye is capable of being realized in this game. I enjoyed the character creation as well. Being able to adjust your parafolk's features down to the bow of their lips or their height is incredible! I know this game will be early access for a while but they've built such a solid foundation that I believe things will only get better from here. The live mode (or gameplay, or however you want to call it) was filled with things to do, places to visit, and people to meet. One of my favorite features was the daily events that occurred such as the astronomy club, free yoga classes, and the Sunday market. I'm also a big fan of the bus system to get around town. One qualm I have with gameplay is that romancing parafolks is very difficult and you don't have as much control over the things they discuss (only 3 options are given). An alternative for the romance interactions/conversations being any probability from 0-100 could be to offer a base probability of 50% for simple flirty interactions where the para is complimenting, sharing, or flirting. This way it's a flip of a coin as to whether your para will succeed or fail. The probability of suggestions like getting intimate for the first time or becoming a couple, for instance, would remain unchanged. Of course, I'm not a game developer nor a creative director, so take this with a grain of salt. Overall, I had a wonderful time playing all aspects of Paralives (building, character creation, and live gameplay). If you're a fan of life simulation games and enjoy a more relaxed setting with a beautiful art style, this game might be for you!

The sad thing is that the live mode, the core of the game, is very much not ready, not even for early access, yet the developer is confident that they somehow can get to full game in a couple of years. I've seen a lot of praise online and yes, the game has a fun build mode and character creator, but that's not where you play. In my 13.5 hours I managed to get my first Para married, settled, got them a kid aaaand I entirely lost interest. So what are the problems with the game you say? It's a double whammy of "nothing has a purpose" and "the world is socially wooden". So, let's start with "nothing has a purpose". Everything in Paralives runs on a nearly infinite level system, except that majority of the numbers mean nothing. Examples: You can infinitely level up in your career. This changes nothing about your career and just asks for higher skills and provides some money bonus. There are no cool items to unlock through working, no promotions, no cool blerbs. "Just get another job in a higher position on a computer" you say, but that just makes your Para disappear into a different building, otherwise everything gameplay wise will be exactly identical. Paralives runs on a social card system and the system decides what interactions to offer you based on a tag assigned to the other Para. A level 1 friend and a level 20 friend is exactly identical. There is no social decay, so once you get a tag assigned to a relationship you can't exactly lose it. Money is meaningless. A lot of what you do in game is technically to grind money, but once you get enough cash to have the style of furniture you want and you can pay your bills, there's no point in getting more of it - more expensive furniture does not function any differently than the cheap furniture and carries no stat bonuses, so there's no reason to strive for it. Now for "the world feels wooden" Let's start from this fun little fact - there's no need for your Para to ever interact with any other para, even their spouse. They have no social need and their relationships don't decay. You can be entirely isolated your whole life and that is fine. If you switch aging on, the town will depopulate and won't ever repopulate. There are very few animations - that's how the Paramaker gets away with different heights - no matter your relationship status, 97% of your social interactions will be just your Para standing there talking at the other Para. Paras can not multitask, so the animation for talking entirely stops if you're watching TV (though relationship cards still build), for example (however, even better, Paras will eat while standing in front of the fridge and will read by standing in front of the bookcase. Sitting down for a family meal with talking would be too advanced for this game. Another fun fact, the dev stated that they're not planning to implement multitasking). One of the reasons why I stopped playing is that despite having more interesting life stage divisions (there are pre-teens in this game!), your Paras don't really get special animations or things to do as children. I once had my child interact with another child (for fun and roleplay reasons, considering that they don't have social needs and that this other child won't age up with mine, so they'll have to be left in the past) the social cards that appeared were identical to adults. My 7 year old was talking about work that they don't have with another 7 year old. I will revisit this review once we get closer to leaving early access, but for now, the price tag is 33£, which is a double-A game and it is giving me less joy than a 10£ does. This doesn't feel like early access, it almost feels like a tech demo. Until development progresses further and the game figures out if there's any game in it hold off buying.

It feels surreal. I've had this game on my Wishlist for nearly 7 years - almost half of my Steam account's life, and it's finally in my library and I can PLAY it! Wild. [b]Why I'm recommending the game in its current state:[/b] ✦ The [b]dev team[/b] is very responsive, attentive, devoted and NOT greedy. As of writing this their Patreon doesn't accept any more pledges, every update and DLC will be free. They've been putting out patches at least once a week and communicate about known issues + suggest workarounds. ✦ [b]Performance[/b] is surprisingly stable. I've been getting about 40fps in live mode and I've suffered no crashes so far. My PC is significantly above spec though. ✦ There's [b]mod support[/b] from day 1 and there's hundreds of mods/cc, parafolks and houses already in the Workshop. ✦ [b]Mod creation is easy[/b], with guides available on the wiki. I'm not a modder at all yet I've successfully made multiple working custom tattoos! ✦ Most importantly - [b]gameplay[/b] is better than I expected (though my expectations were low). I've been immensely enjoying the paramaker, build mode and live mode. There's so much freedom and customization available when making lots and characters! Live mode is definitely unfinished (obviously, Early Access) but I don't think it's as unplayable as many make it out to be. I'm about 50h into my save (started with 1 para, now I have a little family of 3) and I've been having a blast. I love how significantly personalities affect the para - the needs bar, together cards, wants, interactions with some furniture, some animations and more differ depending on chosen traits. [b]Paras actually feel like individual characters[/b] and I have to play with them differently, which I love. Definitely got my moneys worth out of Paralives and it's only going to get better!

I don't often leave negative reviews on anything, but I felt compelled to do so due to the extreme over-positivity of current reviews. Before anyone gets upset, my official stance is "not yet", not "not ever". To those of you glazing the game just because it's not The Sims 4, I wish you would really stop; it is not ready by any stretch of the imagination, and the developers need to listen to feedback. By endlessly and blindly praising the game that we currently have, we're doing them a disservice in addition to all the people who have already purchased the game. I am aware that it is early access, but I have major concerns with the status of the game as it is. This game has been in serious development for at least four years, and during that time, they have averaged several thousands, if not tens of thousands, of dollars per month in Patreon support. They had been cagey about the Live mode previews we saw, and after playing the game as it is, I understand why: • The animations are extremely stiff (particularly the walking animations which feel both awkward and slow) and lack any real weight or personality. • The current gameplay loop, as it stands, is very shallow and some strange decisions were made in the course of development. Life simulators as a whole suffer from this, but Paralives is in a state where currently nothing feels satisfying to complete or impactful once you do. Upgrading or improving furniture is basically nonexistent in the current state of the game. • The lack of autonomy from other Paras is astounding and, honestly, feels very bad. • The lack of planned multitasking and multitasking in general is another pain point. • The game runs abysmally even on a system that should, in theory, suffer no performance issues from a game that looks the way it does. • The social interactions are a complete disaster and need serious rebuilding. It feels like I have no agency over my Para, despite the lack of autonomy from other Paras. I have supported and played many, many Early Access games and have not had a tenth of the stability issues I've suffered from. I have crashed or soft locked four times in four hours; that's not a good sign. The developers have been transparent about the crashes and have tried their best to iron out the worst offenders, but it is still pretty unstable. The positives: • Height difference support in animations is great. • The Para maker is pretty powerful, but fairly rough in current state (desperately needs polish and changes for clarity) • The warm color palette and nostalgic music/sound effects are a draw for some (I did not enjoy them as much as I thought I would) • A lot of room for potential when it comes to growth; they have several strokes of genuine thoughtfulness here that can pave the way for something truly special. The storyteller system can evolve into something very interesting if they remove the social card nonsense. • The build mode is extremely robust, if currently shallow due to the lack of modifiers on any of the furnishings. The biggest problem I have, and the largest question I have, is where did six+ years of work and development actually go? A lot of the assets (like the cel-shaded art style) they have shown are Unity Asset Store assets. I am sure there's a ton of backend coding and programming work that came into play to get the build mode to work as it does, but Massé has been working on this game since 2019—for something that has been in development for that long, I am struggling to find where the love is. I really hope Paralives does take off, but right now, I'm hedging my bets.

I'm not really a builder, I enjoy build modes, but they're not the reason I play a life sim, same with character creators, I enjoy them, I use them, but they're not the reason I play a game. And at the moment Paralives is missing the 'lifesim' part of a lifesim. I recognize the game is in early access and has quite some time till release, but it just fills me mostly with hesitancy. A life sim game releasing into early access with barely any autonomy and zero multitasking (the latter which in their recent AMA they said they have no intention of adding at this point in time), feels pretty hollow. You don't really think about how much multitasking matters until you load in and your characters can't eat dinner and talk at the same time. Obviously the game has some stellar qualities, paramaker and buildmode, neither which I explored much because I wanted to *play* the life sim aspect. Unfortunately the actual life sim aspect had so little substance that I got bored incredibly quickly, even while trying to actively find more things to do. A short list of things I found that made the world feel empty: - npcs will not strike up conversations or interactions with you, every time you want to interact with an npc, you have to initiate it - it is for some reason harder than it should be to have a conversation with multiple characters at once, it would take sustained effort for me to not have them cancel out conversations instead of just invite a new character to the current one - zero multitasking - the chance based conversation gameplay mechanic. it is new, and interesting! but sometimes you have to wait several in game hours for the type of interaction you want to even come up. a dual system where the chance based occurs while you're not actively dictating that conversation, and then give you actual options to choose when you want would make things much more bearable. - currently the autonomy is mostly all weighted in the chance cards at night. i chose the 'hardest' difficulty storyteller and still every chance card i got was only positive (give your character a free computer, 1000 dollars, boosts to all skills), and i played through ~2.5 weeks. there are some neutrals, like 'you have a crush on your coworker', etc, but never actually any challenges/negatives. - your character will frequently not leave for work early pre emptively without you're input, and since they don't just disappear into the void, they will start walking across town at 9am and then show up to work a hour late (this might be a bug, I am not sure) - you can't put food in the fridge. maybe i'm stupid, but i tried everything. if you cook a multiperson meal, there is no option to put the leftovers away for the next day, instead everyday you must cook your meals or eat a fresh snack. But overall the big kicker is that the lack of autonomy means that characters don't feel that different to each other, their traits and etc don't stand out that much. At least in my playthroughs everyone ended up having pretty similar whims and goals despite different traits skill points. I hope this game is able to grow and succeed, but the focus from the devs on the visual aspects while letting the lifesim aspect flounder does give me apprehension. This feeling only grows when I read through their AMA with them talking about their future focuses, 'horses, custom towns, etc' all while leaving out the core skeleton gameplay of improved autonomy, better base code, and multitasking (which again, they said they're not planning on adding.) Not building a strong skeleton and instead focusing on 'features', is how you end up making your game just like the sims 4, a dollhouse simulator. Lifesim games need a strong and stable base code before you even start adding bonuses on it. I also know they said they don't want to expand their team, but they have 4 developers/coders, please, please, please add people or contractors to help. Especially if your reasoning for not adding some of these base things in your AMA was that they would be 'too hard to implement'. I really hope paralives can turn it around, but I maintain that hope with an abundance of wariness.

Play if you want to scratch that sims 4 itch without endorsing the horrbile business dealings of EA

This game is honestly really good. It is buggy, though, so beware. It truly is Early Access, and the bugs can sometimes become annoying. However, the gameplay is so much more fun and interesting than The Sims that I can't go back now. I've read some reviews here and would like to address a few things. People seem to be upset about the timeline and how this doesn't feel like a game worth the money. That's partially true — it's priced like a full game, but it still has lots of bugs and not a huge amount of features. That said, it's genuinely fun, and I don't regret buying it at all. I've seen people complaining about weather features. There are none right now, and the developers claim they will be available in about two years. Apparently, some people are not happy about that. As we all know, the biggest competition is The Sims, and naturally people compare the two. But let's remember that weather isn't part of The Sims base game either — it's included in the Seasons expansion pack. That expansion costs more than this game (at least in my country), and it wasn't available from the start. In fact, Seasons was released about 2 years after The Sims 2, 3 years after The Sims 3, and almost 4 years after The Sims 4. Because of that, I don't think Paralives' timeline is unreasonable at all. People who think weather is an easy feature to implement are seriously underestimating how complex it is. I'd love to hear recommendations for games that are cheaper, run better, and include advanced weather systems from day one, because The Sims definitely isn't one of them. I've also seen people complaining about the lack of multitasking features. These weren't available in The Sims 2 or The Sims 3 at all. They were introduced in The Sims 4, but they were buggy at launch and, honestly, still are. Your Sims can spend three hours eating a meal because they're holding a conversation and carrying a plate around the house. It's not an easy feature to implement, and even after all these years The Sims 4 still struggles with it. The build mode is mostly amazing. Don't try to heavily edit already-created buildings, though, because that can become a huge hassle. If a house is placed in an awkward way on the grid, placing and connecting walls can be absolute hell. I tried editing some existing houses and failed miserably. When I built my own house on a normal grid, everything worked pretty well. The narrator, conversations, and social interactions are much cooler than what we have in The Sims. They give you some direction, and conversations aren't just about spamming "Compliment" or "Flirt" twenty times until you get the result you want. You don't always know what dialogue options will appear, and each option shows your chance of success for that particular topic. For me, that's a huge plus. It feels more genuine, and finding love is actually a challenge now, which I like. If you prefer pure god-mode gameplay where you control everything, then maybe The Sims is more your style. One thing that is annoying: you can't place food in the fridge. However, you can click the box icon after selecting the food and store it in your inventory. It basically works like a fridge because the food doesn't spoil there. You can make multiple portions and save them for later. I've seen people complain about this, so hopefully this tip helps someone. All in all, I think Paralives already offers more than The Sims 4 did at its base-game launch. The developers are responsive, communicate with the community, and work on the game constantly. This feels like a breath of fresh air for the life-sim genre, and I genuinely hope it keeps getting better and better because I really don't want to go back to The Sims now.

Lifetime Sims player here. Playing this game is like stepping into your first healthy relationship after a decade of being with your toxic ex. A breath of fresh air, it's so cozy, and it feels good to play it after a long day. Yes, there are bugs, but for such a small team, they're really putting in the effort to bring their players something truly special. I'm looking forward to many memories with Paralives.