Gaming🎮 Highly anticipated indie Sims 4 rival Paralives sets early access release window for 2025

[Royal_Lizard]

Paralives, the independently-developed life simulation game suspected to be coming for The Sims 4's crown, has received a long-awaited news update on when we might really get to play it. The development team led by Alex Massé released a seven-minute gameplay video and accompanying blog post last night, which also addressed their plans for DLC (the elephant in the simulated living room), and ended with the announcement that an early access release is planned for an as-yet-unspecified date in 2025.

Paralives was announced back in 2019 and currently pulls in £27.5K/$33K monthly via Massé's Patreon, which is amazing when you consider that these seven minutes are the most footage we've ever seen in one go of the game's all-important Live Mode; to say nothing of the fact that this is the first time the team have let slip a hint of a release window for the game. Clearly there's plenty of appetite among players for a serious challenger to go toe-to-toe with EA's behemoth Sims franchise.

In case there was any doubt remaining, Paralives is clearly squaring up to The Sims with yesterday's announcement that all updates and expansions will be free, including those released after the game's eventual V1.0 launch out of early access, and that the game will never branch out into paid DLC. (Quick reminder that a full complement of The Sims 4's DLC would currently set you back over a grand, with no signs of new content releases slowing down; while collecting every little add-on available for The Sims 3 honest-to-goodness costs as much as outright purchasing a family home in some parts of Wales.)

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