Life By You, developed by Paradox Interactive and a competitor to the popular The Sims series developed by Electronic Arts and Maxis, mimics every second of every character’s existence.
The upcoming simulation game Life By You, which will compete with The Sims, will take things to the next level by modeling each and every second of the characters’ virtual lives. This is not restricted to the playable Agent characters but encompasses all of the non-player characters that populate the game’s open world.
Paradox Tectonic is creating a future life simulation game called Life By You which Paradox Interactive will publish. Rod Humble, who worked on The Sims 2 and The Sims 3, will be in charge of the game’s development. The game’s early access launch, announced at the beginning of this month, is September 12th, 2023. The developers at Paradox vow that the new game, Life By You, will be significantly more in-depth and expansive in its scope than its predecessor and provide players with a real-life simulation set in an open-world environment.
According to Humble, the all-encompassing nature of the life simulation offered by Life By You goes as far as modeling every second of the lives of every character. During a recent interview with Rock Paper Shotgun, the head of the studio mentioned this particular feature. As Humble has described, the life span of an Agent in Life By You is simulated to be almost 75 years long. Also, there are no loading windows. Thus there is no ability to manipulate the statistics on the time that has passed. As a consequence of this, it was vital to ensure that each and every character in Life By You exists on the same time scale, which required replicating each and every second of their virtual lives.
This pertains not only to the player characters but also to the non-playable characters in Life By You. Humble stated that loading screens are utilized in most life sims to differentiate between different places. As players load into a new location, the characters who previously inhabited the previous one are erased. On the other hand, all of the characters in Life By You share the same universe and operate according to the same set of guidelines. They are independent beings with their own homes and families, and the players may run into them while exploring the town.
Players of Life By You can even take control of non-playable characters at any time, allowing them to move freely, discover new areas, and experiment with their life. All the characters share a level playing field, meaning that players have the same capabilities as the non-player characters and vice versa. While the player isn’t controlling them in Life By You, the characters, including the player, will take action on their initiative. This includes making major life choices, such as getting married, potentially to a character the player hadn’t met before.
When asked why Paradox Tectonic opted to have Life By You simulate every minute of the character’s lives, he responded, “Because I haven’t seen it done before.” The idea of modeling every aspect of each and every character’s life is something that Humble finds very appealing. Even though this was quite a struggle for the developers, all of their hard work over the past several years should pay off when Life By You is released later this year.
The PC version of Life By You is currently under development and will launch into Early Access on September 12th.
Source: Rock Paper Shotgun
