The domain of The Sims on life simulators is now undisputed. Over the years, many software houses have tried to unseat the creature of Electronic Arts e Maxis from the throne but without success. This, however, did not stop Alex Massé, an independent video game programmer who is working on a new life simulator called paralives.
The game is currently in the early stages of development and beyond a few images and short videos, we know very little about its development. For this, we went straight to the source and we interviewed Alex Massé himself who answered some of our voracious questions about Paralives!
The birth of Paralives
We got to know better Alex Massé, the Canadian programmer behind paralives who told us about the birth of this game. Massé confessed that he has always been a great lover of life simulators and playing games The Sims for 20 years. After working for five years in the gaming industry (PewDiePie's Tuber Simulator, demo projects for Unity's Project Tiny), Massé started his own personal project and driven by a passion for life simulators, he decided to dedicate himself to a title like Paralives.
Having brought into play the lord of all simulators, we could not but ask him for an opinion on The Sims and in particular on the last chapter of the series. Alex Massé replied: “I really appreciate the work of Electronic Arts and Maxis and have played all the chapters of the series. It was this passion that prompted me to create Paralives. With regard to The Sims 4, I love it! My only problem is that it takes a lot of money to buy all the expansions and enjoy all of them extra content. This is something we want to improve with Paralives, we want to be more generous with the content in the base game. "
The "we" used by Massé is justified by the recent addition of due new entry within the team involved in Paralives. It is about Roxane Morin e Lea Smile, two young 3D artists who are also passionate about simulation video games who actively contribute to the development of the game.
Paralives VS The Sims
Paralives has serious plans to become, if not a real alternative, a competitor to The Sims. In fact, the game offers more advanced and flexible tools than the title of EA Games. For example, it is possible to build houses with precision no longer being limited to the usual placement grid. There is also the possibility of creating curved walls and at any angle, resize all objects and much more. Massé himself revealed that building houses is one of his favorite elements in Paralives, stating that the game offers “infinite possibilities of creating particular houses without being suffocated by the grid and using the various tools available. I'm sure people will work their way up to magnificent constructions and I can't wait to see their creations. "
As for the real life simulation, we could not extrapolate further details but being Paralives a Open World, the game world will be more alive than ever and in constant evolution, not just the player's home. At this point we could not ask for more about Parafolks, the characters of the game. Currently the Parafolks are still being worked on as well as the Paramaker (the character creation tool) and it's not yet clear when we might see them in action. The creators of the game are working hard and will only reveal the characters to the public when they are perfectly crafted. “What I can tell you”, says Massé, “is that we aim to recreate realistic proportions while maintaining a cartoonish graphic style. We also want to offer a lot of content to customize the characters so that they can be enriched with lots of details. As for personalities and the like, we're still working on it, we'll let you know! "
A constantly growing project
The release of Paralives may still be a long way off but despite this, the game already has one solida community which constantly supports the project both economically and by providing idee and feedback ai creatori of the game. Users have in fact available a Discord channel in which to discuss the game and future gameplay mechanics or speak directly with the programmers and moderators. If you want to make a contribution to the development of the game, there is also a Patreon page that it already has received the support of over 4000 donors. Regarding this, Massé commented: “I still can't believe ours community is already so big and passionate. Creating such a game requires a lot of work so we are really grateful for all the support! "
The obstacles to creating a video game of this, in fact, are not few. Beyond the economic difficulties, there are many difficulties techniques. One of these concerns the performance. In fact, the source code of the game needs to be continuously optimized to work well and without any type of Lag even on less modern computers. Another major challenge that the "studio" is currently facing right now is the possibility of create different heights for Parafolks. “Changing a character's height can cause a lot problems with animation because they have to adapt from time to time to the height of the other character ”, comments Massé,“ For example, if a character were to hug a shorter one, the position of the arms would have to adapt to the difference in height. We are currently working on procedural animations that they can adapt to that. It is not yet certain whether we will be able to make them work but we will do our best! "
Download
QR-Code
Paralives
Developer:
Alex Massé
Price:
0
Our interview ends with a timid request to show us something about the game that no one has seen yet to which he replied: "Good try!"
With this pungent but understandable answer we greet Alex and wish him good luck for a project that particularly intrigues us. We will not fail to keep you updated on any new developments.
About Paralives
In Paralives we will be free to build houses, create characters and manage their lives with easy innovative construction tools to use and effective. As anticipated, lhe construction of buildings is not limited by the classic grid. Players can indeed build walls of any length and angle. It will also be possible customize the colors and texture of objects, as well as the size of the windows and furniture themselves.
The simulation mode allows players to explore a city full of events, people to meet and ways to evolve their characters and live a happy (or not) life. In Paralives it will be possible to explore a welcoming neighborhood full of shops, parks, workplaces and other interesting places to discover and meet people.
Game features
- Supports custom content via Steam Workshop
- Open world full of parks, shops and many other places to visit
- Possibility to build without the limitations of the grid (optional)
- Custom content support via Steam Workshop
- Optimized to run on both high-end and low-end computers
- Includes animals such as cats, dogs and horses
- Includes means of transportation such as cars, bicycles and boats
- Great ability to customize buildings and furniture
Paralives will be available for PC and Mac on the Steam platform but an official release date has not yet been released.
TagsAlex Massé Electronic Arts interview Maxis Paralives Paralives challenges The Sims, the ultimate life simulator
