Recently, EA introduced Scenarios to The Sims 4. These are challenges to enhance your gameplay, giving you a goal to work towards and rewards if you succeed. We’ve been playing these all week, so let’s look.
How do I play them?
To launch a scenario, select the option on the main menu, underneath New Game and Load Game. Then select the scenario and if you want to set up a new save or add a new family to an existing save. You’ll then go into CAS to create your chosen Sims.
There are currently three Scenarios available.
Making Money and Finding Love after a Breakup are the defaults, while Too Many Toddlers is time-limited, and available to start until 17th November. You can continue to play after this point, just not start a new one.
When you enter CAS, some Scenarios have specific requirements. Finding Love after a Breakup requires 2 unrelated Sims, YA or above. Too Many Toddlers needs one YA or older and 3 toddlers. These are absolute requirements, not minimums. No adding a pet to help the spurned lovers reunite. No second parent or grandparent to help with the toddlers.
You can, however, add to the family after you start – adopt a pet, marry your neighbour, or add extras via manage households
The Making Money scenario has no requirements, so you can have the family size you want.
Each Scenario has one or more specific outcomes:.
Making Money – reach available cash of §1,000,000
Too Many Toddlers – have 3 toddlers reach level 3 in 4 skills before they age up
Finding Love after a Breakup – either – have a Sim be Soulmates with a Sim they’ve broken up with, OR, be Best Friends with a Sim they’ve broken up with, OR, be Soulmates with a Sim they’ve never broken up with.
How you choose to get there is up to you!
Let’s take a look at each individual challenge.
Making Money
This was the first challenge I tried. I set up a single sim up and decided to have her “Black Widow” her way through the neighbourhood!
For all the Scenarios, it’s worth taking some time in CAS to make sure you’ve got suitable traits and aspirations – or to set yourself a real challenge! For my solo sim, I chose a Fortune aspiration, giving her the Business Savvy trait and increasing her starting salary. Completing this also gave me the Shrewd trait, which gives a weekly deposit into household funds.
I also started a game with a family I had saved in the library. I did this to check if there were any restrictions here and established there doesn’t appear to be any. So I started with a family of 4 – 2 adults, a teen and a child. This has the advantage that I have more sims to earn money and they have existing skills and career levels. The disadvantage was that their starting funds were whatever was in their account, meaning I didn’t have enough to buy anything more than an empty lot! Something to keep in mind if using a pre-made family!
This really is a very open Scenario, there are so many ways to earn money. My Single Sim currently romancing her way through the neighbourhood, marrying all the wealthy sims – she’s currently on spouse number 5, and §450,000 cash. My Family on the other hand, have higher paying jobs and 2 generations, so even if I don’t complete that by the time the parents go off with the Grim Reaper, then the children can still complete it.
I started my Single Sim on a starter lot which was considerably under her funds which were then zeroed out. One other possibility would be to use the Existing Save options and add them on a maxed out lot with extras to sell for some starting funds.
Completing the challenge will give each Sim on the lot 5,000 Satisfaction points.
Too Many Toddlers
As most people who know me will tell you, I do the bare minimum with babies and toddlers before aging them up to children, so playing a Scenario where I need to get 3 toddlers skilled up at the same time is a really out of my comfort zone challenge.
When creating the family, you can only have a single parent and the 3 toddlers, however there’s nothing to stop you adding further sims once they’re moved in. If you want to do this, you’d be better doing it via manage households, rather than relationship building to move in given the time constraints. Call them a live-in nanny, if you like!
Toddler traits are important here. I randomised my three for variety, but I noticed the Independent one built skills faster than his siblings. The parent’s traits don’t seem to matter so much, but if you have the Tiny Living Game Pack, and can manage a Tier 2 Tiny home, then you build skills at twice the speed.
The big issue I had when I played through this scenario was the disappearing babysitter! Money was tight, so I chose to send the mum to work and hire a babysitter so the toddlers could continue to work on their skills. Day one, this worked great. Day two, not so much. The babysitter was registering as being around, but was nowhere to be seen, meaning my toddlers were quickly slipping into needs failure, until one of them decided to wander halfway across the neighbourhood to find the babysitter.
Ultimately, I failed the scenario by a hair’s breadth; two of the toddlers were just shy of their fourth level 3 skill when they aged up. Had I been able to meet their needs and skill them instead of playing hunt the babysitter, I reckon I’d have made it.
If I play this one again, I’ll either enrol their parent into a freelance career or move in an extra nanny! I’ve also realised that, if you have Tiny Living installed, then you can take advantage of the skill boosts there, as well.
I streamed my attempt on my Thursday Twitch stream, and uploaded the video to our You Tube channel, if you want to see my attempt
Romance
In the romance scenario you start with two sims who have recently broken up, but are still stuck in the same household for whatever reason. (In my head it was because neither had enough money to afford the deposit on an apartment) The game requires you to start a new household with two sims who are young adult or older. You cannot have more sims in the household to start, although you can add more later on by the various mechanics one has to do that. There are three potential win conditions for the scenario – best friends with the sim they’ve broken up with, soulmates with the sim they’ve broken up with, or soulmates with a sim they have not broken up with.
The game sets the two sims to broken up and maximum negative romance relationship and somewhat negative friendship. They also have a long-term “deeply wounded” sentiment towards each other, which generates various sad/angry moodlets, and a 12h Sad moodlet about the breakup, which makes having any positive interactions with each other rather difficult. The first time I tried to have one of them apologize to the other, they were completely blown off and it made the friendship even worse! They also autonomously do mean interactions with each other, so letting the relationship fix itself is not a winning strategy.
I’ve put them in a starter home with only the one bed, and they’re refusing to share it, so that’s making sleeping arrangements interesting. They can’t afford to upgrade the house at the moment, so they’re either taking turns with the bed or napping on the sofa.
As of the time of writing this, I’ve managed to have them rebuild their friendship to slightly positive, but any thoughts of romance are right out. The “soulmates with another sim” requirement would seem to me to be the easiest of the three, but “best friends with the sim they’ve broken up with” is doable. Rekindling the romance between the two is definitely the most difficult of the three, so of course that’s the one I’m trying for!
Conclusion
Overall, these are a fun addition to the game. Community challenges are nothing new but personally with no in-game accountability, I tend to lose interest. Scenarios’ in-game prompt gives an outcome to focus on, while still being free to approach them as you chose.
The existing ones are fairly straightforward, so I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with in future. And, of course, the modding community appear to be making great leaps in custom scenarios, too!
Leave a Comment