Alongside yet more Sims 4 packs and MySims returning to Nintendo consoles, it appears there’s a new type of game coming to the beloved franchise – The Sims: Town Stories. EA gave fans a look at what’s in the works and the projects that now have the studio’s focus instead of the now-forgotten Sims 5 – turns out, it’s a kind of ugly mobile title.
At the EA Investor Day in September, a presentation showed the upcoming projects for the franchise, including “The Sims Project Stories.” You can see the video below of Town Stories by ‘The Sims Labs,’ the apparent new mobile game. While it looks like an early build of the life sim, there’s a legitimate listing on Google Play showing the same images.
Town Stories looks to be a lot less open than Sims 4 and seems very similar to both The Sims Freeplay and The Sims Mobile. Gameplay includes quests and an episodic story that you unlock by collecting items and leveling up. After giving up the city life, you move to small-town Plumbrook with a yassified Bella Goth and Bob Pancakes in tow, who were your college roommates, apparently. Bella has her own house all built, but you need to start from scratch. You can pick from different layouts and do some basic decorating.
In the game, there are two currencies in the top right corner – one with a stack of paper money icon and one with a coin icon. While not confirmed, I personally feel that at least one of these may be related to microtransactions.
As a long-time Sims fan who’s played 90% of the games in the franchise across the GameBoy Advance, PC, DS, and even GameCube, I have to admit – this one doesn’t inspire joy – one Redditor perfectly describes it as a ‘Cocomelon’ style. While the art direction isn’t for me, it’s the quality that really throws me off. Any hope of this being an early build is now out of the window, thanks to the Google Play listing, the game generally doesn’t look great – and in the video above, the character melts into the bed when they lie down.
It doesn’t look like we’re getting a PC port or Sims Nintendo Switch version any time soon – though we do have the MySims Collection to look forward to. You can play these games like The Sims, though.