The Sims 4 might be tootling along merrily, but it’s now over ten years old and fans are getting increasingly impatient for clarity on what’s next for the franchise – particularly given EA’s somewhat confounding communications on the matter. Amid all this, another six minutes of EA’s new The Sims “game concept” have now leaked online, fuelling all sorts of disappointment as fans ponder a reality where the future of The Sims is, in fact, just a tacky looking mobile game.
To recap, EA first began discussing its “next generation” Sims game, codenamed Project Rene, back in 2022. This, many assumed, would be The Sims 5 – until, that is, EA announced Project Rene wasn’t The Sims 5, that The Sims 5 wasn’t happening, and that whatever Project Rene was would instead co-exist alongside The Sims 4. It also teased a bunch of “cosy games, social and collaborative based gameplay, [and] mobile narrative games” coming under The Sims banner, before revealing Project Rene would begin playtesting soon.
In the six months since then, playtest footage has sporadiaclly leaked online, leaving fans largely unimpressed. And it seems unlikely the six minutes of newly surfaced gameplay footage (as spotted by PC Gamer) will change that, given the bland visuals, endless reward-incentivised to-do lists, and front-and-centre currency focus feels more like a free-to-play mobile money squeezer than a truly “next-generation” The Sims game.
EA describes the playtest – officially titled City Life Game With Friends over on Google Play – as “small parts of a larger game concept”. And the newly shared footage focuses on the same multiplayer-enabled plaza location we’ve seen in numerous leaks before, only now festooned with even more garish free-to-play style window dressing as players stroll around, strike up conversations, and hand out a few muffins. It’s not especially inspiring stuff – and given EA’s refusal to clarify the nature of the project, it’s unclear how horrified fans should actually be.
All this, of course, comes as developer Krafton’s highly anticipated The Sims competitor InZoi launches into Steam early access. And while I wasn’t particulary impressed with InZoi during my time with it last month, it’s unlikely anyone’s going to be dazzled by anything resembling EA’s City Life Game with Friends when Krafton’s game is around.