Setting:
The game will always start out on August 14, 2028 in the (landlocked) southern US. This means lots of forests, rivers, mountains, and lakes. This is a version of the near future where technology has advanced pretty far, yet most of these advancements are not available to ordinary civilians. Thus, the world will seem eerily similar to now, with only fashion changes and the appearance of cellphones and other daily technology being obvious differences. Your character or characters you create are pretty much broke, yet needed to move to a new town to find a job.

Because of this, you can't just buy a house or apartment the instant you start up the game. Your character's friend allows you to move in with them temporarily until you can get on your feet, and who that friend is depends on the personality you assigned your character and the randomized social class your game assigns you.

Social Classes:
Yes. You read that right. Your characters are part of different socio-economic backgrounds, yet the game chooses that for you. That way you might have a character that strongly conflicts with these stereotypes, or you might have one that fits them perfectly.

Certain personality traits determine whether or not you could room with people outside your background, like friendliness or humbleness might make your upper-middle class character still room with their poor friends, or vice versa. Contrasting this, a snobbish or bratty character is more likely going to absolutely hate rooming with poorer people, even if they are a snob or brat too. Characters without extreme traits like that wouldn't really care either way.

You could play as anything from poor, lower middle class, middle class, or upper middle class. You cannot play as someone supremely rich or powerful, otherwise you probably would not have moved into that town in the first place. Your character can in fact climb up the ladder even if they were extremely poor, and they can also fall off from the top if chance wills it. There is a glass ceiling, though, and like I said: upper middle class is the highest you can go. The randomly assigned background chooses their pre-existing friends and where they live, and how hard you have to work, but it does not choose who they are as a person.

Technically, upper middle class is the new rich to be honest.

Starting Family Sizes:
While you can choose extra people to live with, like siblings, parents, or significant others, you can't play as a big family. Up to three people including you
to start with before you room with your friend, and you can live in a house with up to two roommates not starting out with you and their possible two or less children. Once your character finds their own place, they can have more people in their family.

Starting Characters And What Happens If You Die:
These other people impact you, but are non-playable unless you die. Whichever starting character had the highest relationship with you is the one the game picks as the new main character. If there's a tie, it'll be randomly picked. Roommates and their children who are not the original three or less starting characters will not be picked. If you have kids of the proper age farther into the game and die, they can also be picked even if they were never starting characters. If there is no option, no one will be picked and the game will just end.

Ages:
The age your character starts out as is also limited at first. You can be as young as thirteen and but you can't play as someone younger even though NPCs can be younger. If you have parents living with your character, the family friends you get sorted to live with will rely on their personalities and not yours. If your character is under 18 and is not created with parents, the roommates will become your legal guardians instead though not related to you by blood, and will only generate as being over 21.

The youngest playable ages go as follows:
Young Teen-13 and 14 >Middle Schoolers (Default: 7th and 8th grade)
Middle Teen-15 and 16 >High Schoolers (Default: 9th and 10th grade)
Older Teen- 17 and 18 >High Schoolers (Default: 11th and 12th grade)
Young Adult-19 and 20 >High School Grads (Default: Can enroll in a university if you choose)

All of these ages have some limit to what you can and can't do in the game, and above that you are a lot less limited. Since the game takes place in the United States, those ages are the ones that can't buy alcohol yet and such. That's why the young adult age group is so small and is considered separate from the other adult ages. It's just all that is under 21. Young Adult characters will automatically be graduated from high school-but not yet enrolled in college-if you choose to play as one, but can be high schoolers if your character starts out younger but is held back. That is also another reason why they are considered differently in the game despite already being adults and capable of living on their own. They can still drink, just not legally.

Gameplay:
You can pretty much play the game any way you want. Do you wanna rebel and skip school or work and just explore the town all day? You certainly can....but it's not advisable except on days off of course! Do you want to just live an ordinary life? Do you want to wreck as much relationships as possible? Do you want to find out what houses are haunted and whether or not demons exist? The game's pretty open-ended to be honest. You can do whatever you wanted to do in sims, just without being able to be as powerful. The difference is there's a lot more detail, the game is in first person view, and the game takes place in a more specific setting.

Where You Guys Step In:
What are your opinions? It isn't meant to be a sims competitor so the big differences are very much intentional.