I’ve played the Sims since it was released back in 2000…wait really, that’s 17 years ago?!

Now I feel old.

I remember my first family was myself and my Husband, who was loosely based on a guy I had a crush on at the time…

Don’t judge me, I was 14.

We had quite a few children but this was before Sims aged so soon we were just reliving each day like a version of Ground Hog Day that was until they released Sims 2 and everyone could grow old and eventually die.

Anyway I’ve owned and played nearly all the expansions, including The Sims Medieval, which could have been so much more then it was and lived the ups and down with my sims. I’ve done all the normal stuff like imprisoning random neighbour sims, breaking up families, “accidentally” setting the house on fire for story progression and completing a Legacy Challenge. So with that I’m now playing Sims 4 with the City Living expansion and it’s recent addition of  Toddlers.

The added life stage is pretty good though it does trip over itself in a few areas. For instant there isn’t a buggy or a pram to take the toddler out in. I’m sure there was one in a previous version? So without this you have to carry them everywhere or wait for them to catch up and making a toddler chase after its parent is a little bit cruel.

It also doesn’t help that the toddler DOESN’T KNOW WHAT IT WANTS.

Fair enough it is suppose to be a life simulator but it’s just really frustrating when you’ve just put the toddler on the potty, stood there for god knows how long (is it just me or does it take Sims an age to do anything!) and then once they are done and you ask the toddler what they want, yep you guessed it, they want to go straight back on the potty.

The whole check toddler interaction seems a bit redundant as it often contradicts what the needs menu is telling you and you just end up cancelling interactions.

I’ve also recently realised that pregnancy extends the Sims life. I don’t know if this was in any previous versions,  or if its something that has appeared with an update but I had a family who had twins, a boy and a girl. Time passed and they grew into adults and found partners of their own and the female sim fell pregnant. Now I don’t often click on the lifespan menu as I like to be notified that my sims are ageing up or that they are in fact dying in an undetermined amount of time but I must have clicked on her menu whilst she was pregnant and the lifespan bar was glowing like it does when they age up.

Funny I don’t remember a notification telling me about a birthday. I check her twin brother’s life bar and his isn’t glowing and is a fair way from turning into an adult. The pregnancy continues and when she has the baby her life bar returns to where it was before she got pregnant, so my twins now have different birthdays. By time shes has had her second child he is just becoming an elder whilst she is still an adult.

I can understand that elder female sims can’t have children because of this thing called the menopause but why freeze ageing during pregnancy? Seems to me that ageing should just progress normally and if a sim turns into an elder during it then that just how it is.

So there we go, the key to extended life is pregnancy as long as you’re a Sim that is.