Summary
- Challenges in The Sims 4 are self-imposed rules that make gameplay harder and more rewarding.
- Scenarios in The Sims 4 are similar to challenges but have a set time limit and specific goals.
- Project Rene can improve on Scenarios by making them customizable, permanent, and applicable to existing households.
The Sims 4 is a sandbox game where pretty much anything could happen. While setting up a household such as creating new Sims and building a home involves some planning, playing in live mode is a different situation entirely. It can be easy for players to feel lost in regard to what to do with their Sims, and sometimes having too many choices isn't a good thing. This is why challenges became a staple in The Sims community, and have been as far back as The Sims 2.
Challenges in The Sims 4 and How They Can Inspire Project Rene
What are Challenges?
The Sims challenges are a set of self-imposed rules that a player follows that make a household follow a set path or storyline. They often make gameplay harder or more challenging by restricting the use of cheats, limiting household funds and sources of revenue, increasing the number of Sims per household, removing any Sims older than Teen from a household, or limiting the types of household items that are allowed in builds. Challenges have different conditions for "winning" depending on the challenge.
What are Scenarios?
The Sims 4 has introduced a gameplay mechanic called Scenarios. Scenarios in The Sims 4 are similar to player-created challenges in that they have a set of base requirements, such as no household funds, and have the player work towards an end goal. There are a wide variety of Scenarios, some permanent and some available for a limited time only, all with rewards that are either tied to the theme of the Scenario or simply reward the player with inspiration points upon successful completion.
Why Scenarios Aren't a Replacement For Challenges
Scenarios help give structure to players, but they aren't a replacement for challenges as they only function within a limited timeframe. Many challenges, particularly Legacy challenges, are designed to last ten generations of a Sim family, whereas most Scenarios only last a couple of Sim weeks at most, with a single Sim. Only one Scenario can be activated at a time for a household, which means that the different alterations players make to challenges aren't possible.
How Project Rene Can Use Challenges
Improving on Scenarios
Project Rene has the chance to take inspiration from Sims player challenges to make Scenarios far better. When Scenarios first launched, they couldn't be used by an existing household, which can't be the case for Project Rene. Like challenges, Scenarios in Project Rene need to be fully customizable, and they need to last as long as the player needs them to.
Building on Gameplay Mechanics
The best way this can be implemented is through a set of toggle buttons at the start of creating a new household, like a customizable difficulty setting seen in games in Baldur's Gate 3. These toggles need to be freely available throughout the playthrough, and need to cover the following as a base:
- Pack content
- Build/Buy items
- Sim lifespan
- Set household funds
- Set career progress
These toggles also need to be an option for existing households, so that players have the freedom to start challenges with any of their families.
Adapting Scenarios for Project Rene
Project Rene could also look to expand their Scenarios mechanic so that it works over multiple Sim generations, has toggles, and implements more of the themes that players are already using in their challenges, such as the Black Widow Challenge, History Challenge, Runaway Teen Challenge, Decades Challenge, or Baby Challenge. These Scenarios also all need to be permanent rather than limited, and any gameplay shouldn't be limited to the Scenario, such as PlantSims and the Plant-A-Sim Scenario.
The Sims 4
- Released
- September 2, 2014
