At the beginning of March, in its Paradox Announcement Show, the publisher Paradox Interactive showed not only titles such as the eagerly awaited City Skylines 2 but also a teaser for Life by You – a life simulation from the newly founded Paradox Tectonic studio. Now there was also a first glimpse of the game in a 30-minute live stream. But is the game a serious competitor to The Sims ?

Based on the first pictures, it actually has a lot of potential. Because although the studio consists of just under a dozen employees, Rod Humble is personally behind the project. The former head of the EA Play label led the development of The Sims 2 and The Sims 3 , among other things, and was even appointed head of The Sims label in 2008 before leaving EA in 2010.

What makes Life by You different?

At first glance , Life by You looks like a direct sequel to The Sims 3 . The village in which the player spends his gameplay is not only completely free of loading times and teleports, as is the case in The Sims 3 , but can also be edited by the player down to the last detail. In this way, the player can place entire buildings in the game world as he wishes and is not restricted to property limitations. In addition, in Life by You we should no longer only be able to control the leisure time of our characters, but we should also build our careers ourselves.

Another important difference is that the characters no longer appear to speak gibberish. With the new dialogue system, we can no longer just tell our character to make a joke, but we lead the conversations ourselves. In addition to the dialogues, there will also be quests and stories. How exactly these will work, however, has not yet been announced.

However, the biggest difference to the competition will be the mod support. The developers provide all the tools they use to create items, dialogs, jobs, events and much more. In addition, tools for scripts and mods should also be provided.

Early Access and the hurdles to the full version

Only the graphics are unfortunately not completely convincing so far. Although the resolution and light calculation are better than in The Sims 3 , nature in particular still looks very unclean in some places. Nevertheless , Life by You has potential to become something big. And thanks to the modding tools, there will certainly be graphic improvements created by fans at the latest.

So, with its focus on player-generated content, Life by You is for The Sims fans similar to what Hytale is for Minecraft fans, with one key difference: While Hytale was announced back in 2018 and still hasn't released, it's supposed to Start Life by You in Early Access on September 12, 2023 . The game will be available on the Epic Store and Steam for EUR 39.99. The developers also state that the game will remain in Early Access for at least a year and that the price will increase after the full version is released.

Here is the game:
> Epic Games Store
> Steam

Trailers:

Source: Paradox Tectonic Images: © 2023 Paradox Interactive AB. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.