Paralives, the indie life simulator that's taking plenty of cues from The Sims franchise, just got a development update video revealing that the game is planned for an early access release in 2025 on PC and Mac.
The video highlights a number of newly-announced features, showing off jobs and careers, relationships, the game's personality system, and how needs and wants impact playable characters, called Parafolks. We also learned that Paralives will have free expansions, but will not have paid DLC - something that has been an ongoing criticism of The Sims franchise.
We first got wind of Paralives way, way back at E3 2021, where it was one of the stand-out indies of the show for us. The gameplay will look familiar to fans of other doll house life sim games like The Sims, but Paralives seemed to include a number of detailed furniture and design customization features we haven't seen in games like that before outside of modding. In addition to building tools, Paralives includes a simulation mode where the Parafolks explore cities full of events and people, build families, pursue careers, and try to live fulfilling (or not) lives.
One standout feature from the development video was Together Cards, which is basically a guided way to help customize the ways in which Parafolks' relationships with one another develop over time. It's a bit like a cross between a simple branching path dialogue tree and the robust action wheels of The Sims 4, but the end result is getting to choose how you want to define relationships between characters.
You can watch the full development update here. Paralives is coming to PC and Mac in 2025 in early access.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
