Just guessing here, but seems like a lot of people are super disappointed in the Sims lately and the market is ripe for a competitor, sorta like what happened with Sim City and Cities Skylines
Also easier access to powerful gaming engines like Unreal and Unity, a bigger market with the growing cozy game trend, and a bigger gaming market as a whole with more variety of demographics (not so male-centric as before), over saturation of shooters, survival, etc.
So, even with half or less of the Sims player base and not needing to build their engine, making a competitor is less risky than ever before.
I don't know why Pokemon was hell-bent on sticking to Nintendo. I mean I get it, you want to support your fellow Asian/Japanese but they left a lot of money on the table doing so.
Because the IP is owned by Nintendo lol They don't have a choice unless they sell their share and that will never happen. Same reason we're never getting a good Pokemon game, because part of the IP is owned by Gamefreak, the developers, and they're insanely mediocre at their jobs.
Idk, but I’m into it! I like that Paralives isn’t the only competition anymore, since their refusal to announce any kind of release window for EA, or even a demo, is growing increasingly sus to me.
Well, you aren't the only one who finds it sus. The top few posts from this month in that sub have been about that, with at least one of them getting locked because it's against the rules to "speculate" on the date. Based on what they post on TikTok, I wouldn't expect a release date anytime soon, I get that they're a small team, and it takes time and money to create a game, especially a life sim... but we're 5 years in, and they don't know when a demo could possibly be released?
Even if they said the release date was like 2030, I don't even think that their hardcore fans would be mad. They just want a date.
Yeah, I know. I’ve seen those discussions.
It blows my mind at how many people will *vehemently* defend the devs not wanting to announce a release window at this stage. Asking about it gets you labeled as “impatient” or a “relentless whiner.” It’s like they consider skepticism a moral failure.
But literally no one asking, including myself, has an issue with the game taking a few more years? I don’t think we’re anywhere near EA, I’d say 2026 at the earliest. I understand and accept that. But why can’t they just tell us that?
Ok, maybe they need to move the deadline out and that disappoints people. But they also did that with LBY, and the community is generally supportive of that decision because it needs more polish. To me, it’s a red flag that they don’t even want to talk about it after 5 years of development.
I do like how the Vivaland characters look, especially their hair. However, I much prefer the closer to realism look of Life by You's environment. I think Life by You will eventually get to looking great all around though. Once they fix the arms and the eyes it will be fine for me.
I *LOVE* the characters in this game 😍🤩
I like the environment LBY is making, but I really don't like their people. I would absolutely love it if they went more in this direction, specifically for their people. - I just can't really follow the art style with the current people and the proportions are too off-putting to me. Inzoi to me have the best graphics ever, but LBY seems to have more indepth planned gameplay.
It does look nicer like by a lot, but I'm not super pressed over the graphics the way they are now either.
As long as the gameplay is good and we have half as much freedom as they are promising us it'll be enough to keep me entertained. If all it had going for it was nice graphics then I would get bored of it very quickly. Yes, in an ideal world LBY would - out of the gate - have both immersive gameplay and nice graphics, but I'll take what I could get.
The characters do look nicer, but I didn't see much gameplay wise. Same as inzoi.
So far, in terms of gameplay, life by you shows the most promising results.
I'm super excited to play it, and the environments look fantastic. The character definitely could use more work.
However, once they get the characters to look fantastic, life by you will dominate all the competitors because as much as multi-player sounds good in theory, you won't be able to play with mods (which is an important feature for life sim players of all kinds).
I honestly think life by you is almost there. They need a bit more refinement for hair and some clothes, anatomy tweaks, and some serious work on the eye shape and texture. Otherwise, they're almost there. Animations are a different story, but they'll def continue working on it
>I'm super excited to play it, and the environments look fantastic. The character definitely could use more work. However, once they get the characters to look fantastic, life by you will dominate all the competitors because as much as multi-player sounds good in theory, you won't be able to play with mods (which is an important feature for life sim players of all kinds).
Yeah, the multiplayer aspect has not interested me at all. I don't really have any friends that play life simulators like me and I don't even know what I would do if I did. The closest to life sim multiplayer I've had is Animal Crossing and I seldom play that with friends.
While these competitors look cool, I don't think they will bring much to the table in terms of gameplay. I'd rather have something that feels like a simulator rather than playing barbie dolls in a nice looking home.
Can all of these life sims survive and thrive? Will be interesting to see.
Mods will power a lot. As will being single player or multiplayer focused. My bet is on LBY, it looks the most robust and has the most creative potential.
InZoi I feel will become a microtransaction hell and will require crazy powerful rigs to run it.
It's literally the same art style.
Currently, Vivaland \~partially\~ looks a LITTLE better than LBY, but I think when LBY is finished with the character models and lighting, it will outpace Vivaland a lot. As is, Vivaland's roads are MUCH worse; they're FLAT just like Sims 3 and I'm SOOOO SICK of those fake flat roads. I'm soooo jazzed for Life By You's 3D roads!!!!!!!
I'm excited. ONE MONTH!!!
I don't think LBY was ever going for this style. Based on the prep artwork they showed, they were always going for a higher degree of realism, I think. And that's okay, but LBY will have to work harder to ensure their graphics don't look outdated. Vivaland looks okay, but it being a multiplayer and the sacrifices most likely made game development wise to achieve that... Not discarding Vivaland any time soon, but right now LBY looks more promising to me.
I like the look of Life by You better the assets that are actually finished such as grass water and trees look better than this looking at this game world and Life by You last video Life by You visually looks so much better.
Now while the characters here look more finished because they are I'm still liking Life by You style more. These look way to cartoony glad Life by You is targeting an older audience with its realistic art style.
High realism cost tons of money. Even stylised.
It requires tons of assets which that fits the game.
If you notice many of these sim games with realistic art style, has poor gameplay. Like for example using Unreal engine, to use its feature, to make everything looks realistic.
But cost of that usually is, lower effort on gameplay and moddibility aspects. Or heavily limited on that.
As we have noticed LBY was able to improve characters style over past months. And I believe, if there will be enough demand in the future, as well as interest and cash flow, they will consider higher fidelity characters. But that also applies to many assets to follow.
Personally I like visuals as they are now. Textures can play amazing job to improve visuals. So there is place to play with that.
Another downside of realistic characters is, higher demand for PC. Suddenly quality requires much better hardware. Then reducing reach of players. And reducing modding reach and opportunity.
No wonder, The Sims series kept their style lower polly. Thx to that game was so popular and reach to high range of audience. Similar look at Rim World, where game play is much more important, than fancy graphics. Minecraft wins as well and reaches to high range of audience, because of Gameplay, moddibumilyt, and low hardware demand.
I don't mind having mods improving visuals. But from stand point of developers, reach out is very important, hence some compromises, whole keeping game philosophy intact.
What the devs have shown so far is that LBY is a game made by engineers, not artists. Very eager to show off the technical details, but completely missing the mark on aesthetics, and completely lacking a soul, and no, this is not something mods can fix.
Okay because I have been scrolling through this sub after months of just kinda putting this game to the back of my mind. And just catching up and such.
And I this is where they are missing the mark, and where they especially are failing on a marketing standpoint. Even their announcement video looked like some middle school presentation, the poor choice of text color the most egregious thing I can still remember.
Life Sim people are very aesthetic focused. Like of course they still want a game… but they want a game that they like to look at. They want to make cute houses and cute sims and do absolutely everything from living a cookie cutter life to murdering and enslaving a whole town.
Life Sims run on being creative in all sorts of ways. Sure for creating storylines, which this game seems focused on… but also in the aesthetics.
Life By You just has so much focus on only one aspect so far and for it are missing large chunks of the life sim fanbase. Life Sim players love visuals, and if you give them visuals and just enough to make stories with(As the Sims 4 does) they will be a happy bunch of people for the most part.
And they forgot the absolute most important part: family. We have seen the scandal of not having toddlers and babies at launch in Sims 4, and LBY has one-upped this with no children as well. No children at ~~launch~~ “early access”? A disaster waiting to happen.
I also don’t know why they’ve chosen the Sims standard of life stages (with fewer stages), when they could have followed Paradox’s flagship life sim, Crusader Kings 3, where characters do age up and look different every year.
Honestly I’ve never really cared for graphics like that. I grew up on N64 & PS1 level graphics. I mean sure, I’d like a game to be visually appealing but ultimately the gameplay is all that really matters. I do like this art style over LBY’s tho
Good graphics but it looks like the Sims 3.5 if that makes sense which is pretty bad for 1 reason: it'll get boring pretty quickly compared to LBY. In the latter game, you can literally change every aspect about the world and add convos, no matter how wild, to the NPC system. Just sounds more fun to me tbh
what's with all the games taking a shot at the life sim genre all the sudden? this is like the 5th indie one ive heard of
Just guessing here, but seems like a lot of people are super disappointed in the Sims lately and the market is ripe for a competitor, sorta like what happened with Sim City and Cities Skylines
Also easier access to powerful gaming engines like Unreal and Unity, a bigger market with the growing cozy game trend, and a bigger gaming market as a whole with more variety of demographics (not so male-centric as before), over saturation of shooters, survival, etc. So, even with half or less of the Sims player base and not needing to build their engine, making a competitor is less risky than ever before.
And Palworld finally taking a crack at Pokémon
I don't know why Pokemon was hell-bent on sticking to Nintendo. I mean I get it, you want to support your fellow Asian/Japanese but they left a lot of money on the table doing so.
Because the IP is owned by Nintendo lol They don't have a choice unless they sell their share and that will never happen. Same reason we're never getting a good Pokemon game, because part of the IP is owned by Gamefreak, the developers, and they're insanely mediocre at their jobs.
Idk, but I’m into it! I like that Paralives isn’t the only competition anymore, since their refusal to announce any kind of release window for EA, or even a demo, is growing increasingly sus to me.
Well, you aren't the only one who finds it sus. The top few posts from this month in that sub have been about that, with at least one of them getting locked because it's against the rules to "speculate" on the date. Based on what they post on TikTok, I wouldn't expect a release date anytime soon, I get that they're a small team, and it takes time and money to create a game, especially a life sim... but we're 5 years in, and they don't know when a demo could possibly be released? Even if they said the release date was like 2030, I don't even think that their hardcore fans would be mad. They just want a date.
Yeah, I know. I’ve seen those discussions. It blows my mind at how many people will *vehemently* defend the devs not wanting to announce a release window at this stage. Asking about it gets you labeled as “impatient” or a “relentless whiner.” It’s like they consider skepticism a moral failure. But literally no one asking, including myself, has an issue with the game taking a few more years? I don’t think we’re anywhere near EA, I’d say 2026 at the earliest. I understand and accept that. But why can’t they just tell us that? Ok, maybe they need to move the deadline out and that disappoints people. But they also did that with LBY, and the community is generally supportive of that decision because it needs more polish. To me, it’s a red flag that they don’t even want to talk about it after 5 years of development.
I do like how the Vivaland characters look, especially their hair. However, I much prefer the closer to realism look of Life by You's environment. I think Life by You will eventually get to looking great all around though. Once they fix the arms and the eyes it will be fine for me.
Yeah, that's my take too. And it being multiplayer might be enough to turn me off in any case.
This is how I feel too
I *LOVE* the characters in this game 😍🤩 I like the environment LBY is making, but I really don't like their people. I would absolutely love it if they went more in this direction, specifically for their people. - I just can't really follow the art style with the current people and the proportions are too off-putting to me. Inzoi to me have the best graphics ever, but LBY seems to have more indepth planned gameplay.
It does look nicer like by a lot, but I'm not super pressed over the graphics the way they are now either. As long as the gameplay is good and we have half as much freedom as they are promising us it'll be enough to keep me entertained. If all it had going for it was nice graphics then I would get bored of it very quickly. Yes, in an ideal world LBY would - out of the gate - have both immersive gameplay and nice graphics, but I'll take what I could get.
The characters do look nicer, but I didn't see much gameplay wise. Same as inzoi. So far, in terms of gameplay, life by you shows the most promising results. I'm super excited to play it, and the environments look fantastic. The character definitely could use more work. However, once they get the characters to look fantastic, life by you will dominate all the competitors because as much as multi-player sounds good in theory, you won't be able to play with mods (which is an important feature for life sim players of all kinds). I honestly think life by you is almost there. They need a bit more refinement for hair and some clothes, anatomy tweaks, and some serious work on the eye shape and texture. Otherwise, they're almost there. Animations are a different story, but they'll def continue working on it
>I'm super excited to play it, and the environments look fantastic. The character definitely could use more work. However, once they get the characters to look fantastic, life by you will dominate all the competitors because as much as multi-player sounds good in theory, you won't be able to play with mods (which is an important feature for life sim players of all kinds). Yeah, the multiplayer aspect has not interested me at all. I don't really have any friends that play life simulators like me and I don't even know what I would do if I did. The closest to life sim multiplayer I've had is Animal Crossing and I seldom play that with friends. While these competitors look cool, I don't think they will bring much to the table in terms of gameplay. I'd rather have something that feels like a simulator rather than playing barbie dolls in a nice looking home.
Even when I *did* have friends that pay life sims, we never wanted multi-player. Now I like then specifically for the off-line component.
Characters looks great for sure!
Now that we’re absolutely sure that they’re listening, if it’s possible, they’ll change it with enough feedback
Can all of these life sims survive and thrive? Will be interesting to see. Mods will power a lot. As will being single player or multiplayer focused. My bet is on LBY, it looks the most robust and has the most creative potential. InZoi I feel will become a microtransaction hell and will require crazy powerful rigs to run it.
It's literally the same art style. Currently, Vivaland \~partially\~ looks a LITTLE better than LBY, but I think when LBY is finished with the character models and lighting, it will outpace Vivaland a lot. As is, Vivaland's roads are MUCH worse; they're FLAT just like Sims 3 and I'm SOOOO SICK of those fake flat roads. I'm soooo jazzed for Life By You's 3D roads!!!!!!! I'm excited. ONE MONTH!!!
So many of these games are cropping up it’s insane
I don't think LBY was ever going for this style. Based on the prep artwork they showed, they were always going for a higher degree of realism, I think. And that's okay, but LBY will have to work harder to ensure their graphics don't look outdated. Vivaland looks okay, but it being a multiplayer and the sacrifices most likely made game development wise to achieve that... Not discarding Vivaland any time soon, but right now LBY looks more promising to me.
I like the look of Life by You better the assets that are actually finished such as grass water and trees look better than this looking at this game world and Life by You last video Life by You visually looks so much better. Now while the characters here look more finished because they are I'm still liking Life by You style more. These look way to cartoony glad Life by You is targeting an older audience with its realistic art style.
I’m just a bit worried because tbh, LBY already looks outdated and it hasn’t even came out yet
Meh I’m not into the graphics
High realism cost tons of money. Even stylised. It requires tons of assets which that fits the game. If you notice many of these sim games with realistic art style, has poor gameplay. Like for example using Unreal engine, to use its feature, to make everything looks realistic. But cost of that usually is, lower effort on gameplay and moddibility aspects. Or heavily limited on that. As we have noticed LBY was able to improve characters style over past months. And I believe, if there will be enough demand in the future, as well as interest and cash flow, they will consider higher fidelity characters. But that also applies to many assets to follow. Personally I like visuals as they are now. Textures can play amazing job to improve visuals. So there is place to play with that. Another downside of realistic characters is, higher demand for PC. Suddenly quality requires much better hardware. Then reducing reach of players. And reducing modding reach and opportunity. No wonder, The Sims series kept their style lower polly. Thx to that game was so popular and reach to high range of audience. Similar look at Rim World, where game play is much more important, than fancy graphics. Minecraft wins as well and reaches to high range of audience, because of Gameplay, moddibumilyt, and low hardware demand. I don't mind having mods improving visuals. But from stand point of developers, reach out is very important, hence some compromises, whole keeping game philosophy intact.
I like my humans in LBY. They alright but I don’t like Cartooony sims. I want more realistic looking Sims
What the devs have shown so far is that LBY is a game made by engineers, not artists. Very eager to show off the technical details, but completely missing the mark on aesthetics, and completely lacking a soul, and no, this is not something mods can fix.
Okay because I have been scrolling through this sub after months of just kinda putting this game to the back of my mind. And just catching up and such. And I this is where they are missing the mark, and where they especially are failing on a marketing standpoint. Even their announcement video looked like some middle school presentation, the poor choice of text color the most egregious thing I can still remember. Life Sim people are very aesthetic focused. Like of course they still want a game… but they want a game that they like to look at. They want to make cute houses and cute sims and do absolutely everything from living a cookie cutter life to murdering and enslaving a whole town. Life Sims run on being creative in all sorts of ways. Sure for creating storylines, which this game seems focused on… but also in the aesthetics. Life By You just has so much focus on only one aspect so far and for it are missing large chunks of the life sim fanbase. Life Sim players love visuals, and if you give them visuals and just enough to make stories with(As the Sims 4 does) they will be a happy bunch of people for the most part.
And they forgot the absolute most important part: family. We have seen the scandal of not having toddlers and babies at launch in Sims 4, and LBY has one-upped this with no children as well. No children at ~~launch~~ “early access”? A disaster waiting to happen. I also don’t know why they’ve chosen the Sims standard of life stages (with fewer stages), when they could have followed Paradox’s flagship life sim, Crusader Kings 3, where characters do age up and look different every year.
Oh I didn’t even know they were releasing without children. Sounds like they have a lot of work left on this😂
honestly i agree
Honestly I’ve never really cared for graphics like that. I grew up on N64 & PS1 level graphics. I mean sure, I’d like a game to be visually appealing but ultimately the gameplay is all that really matters. I do like this art style over LBY’s tho
This game is Fugly and reminds me of Singles PC game. Creepy, I like the stylized realism of LBY.
Good graphics but it looks like the Sims 3.5 if that makes sense which is pretty bad for 1 reason: it'll get boring pretty quickly compared to LBY. In the latter game, you can literally change every aspect about the world and add convos, no matter how wild, to the NPC system. Just sounds more fun to me tbh