Former Sims studio head is now making a competing game called Life By You
Paradox Tectonic is developing the life sim under the leadership of Rod Humble.
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There’s a new challenger to The Sims on the way, and this one is led by a former Sims developer. During its showcase today, Paradox delivered a short teaser for a game called Life By You being developed by Paradox Tectonic and led by former Sims studio head and Second Life studio CEO Rod Humble.
Today’s announcement video above was a very quick teaser giving the suggestion of green, suburban neighborhoods, house construction, and simulated people doing real people-y stuff like hugging and microwaving a meal. Yup, it sure looks like Life By You is angling to be a direct competitor to The Sims—North American suburbs and all.
That’s about all the initial reveal gives us to go on, though you can frame hunt down hints about the building interface and specific home decor styles. There’s a vaguely ’70s vibe going on in the teaser home interior. My own hope is that the strategy buffs of Paradox come out of the gate with an equally deep level of interpersonal simulation that The Sims 4 is only just now tackling in its upcoming Growing Together expansion.
A larger reveal with more details and gameplay will happen Monday, March 20 on theLife By You YouTube channel.
The bigger news out of Paradox’s event today was the announcement of another sim,Cities: Skylines 2. We also saw thenext game from BattleTech developer Harebrained Schemes, which looks a bit like Indiana Jones XCOM.
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Lauren has been writing for PC Gamer since she went hunting for the cryptid Dark Souls fashion police in 2017. She accepted her role as Associate Editor in 2021, now serving as self-appointed chief cozy games and farmlife sim enjoyer. Her career originally began in game development and she remains fascinated by how games tick in the modding and speedrunning scenes. She likes long fantasy books, longer RPGs, can’t stop playing co-op survival crafting games, and has spent a number of hours she refuses to count building houses in The Sims games for over 20 years.
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