some things that came to mind somewhat recently::

at least these games have something similar to this game's inventory:
-Warcraft 3
-Rama
and watched others. I think Neverwinter Nights was one of them.

at least these games seem to have a day/night cycle:
-Warcraft 3
-Unreal 1
and watched Minecraft.

watched some games that have something somewhat similar to this game's Create-A-Sim.
Diablo series I take to be some. I think Neverwinter Nights was another.
some version of Pokemon I take to be another.

Pokemon Sun & Moon allows you to pick your character's skin colour, and you can purchase clothes. Pokemon XY didn't have customization but you could buy new clothes.

So what just because a game has a day/night cycle, an inventory and/or character customization (never mind how rudimentary) it's suddenly "similar to Sims 2"? With those criteria every game is "similar to Sims 2"

(has to look up the name of a racing game)
Grand Tourismo Sport: there's cars, just like in Nightlife (sooo similar!)
Final Fantasy XV: You are controlling humans, just like in Sims (practically the same game!)
Windows Solitaire: Both games are played using a PC! (where's even the difference?)

Hi! I was writing a really detailed response earlier but my PC restarted and I lost everything :S (this is going to be a long reply)

Anyways... I've been playing this kind of stuff and experimenting with virtual worlds and other online games for my whole life. I know quite a bit!
There aren't many games that come close to The Sims.

The one that is the most similar is probably Singles, which was mentioned here before twice. I know quite a bit about it and can give you some info. I even managed to find a Russian modification (maybe not even licensed) that emulated a reality show called Dom-2.
Singles is for adults. Basically, the whole marketing scheme was: The Sims but with "sex" and "nudity".

The nudity had varying degrees of censor depending on the region you were in. IIRC in the UK the game was fully uncensored. The supposedly adult content came with the second installment, since the first one (at least on my experience) didn't have much in terms of naughty business. Singles could have been so much more.
The characters are preset so you cannot make any, but you can customise them to a degree and if you used some mods you could change their appearance further. However, the designs were very realistic, much more so than The Sims. Granted, this was a 18+ game. There was a story mode in both Singles, and it was all pretty basic to be honest, so that's probably one of the reasons for the premade characters. The game wasn't supposed to be a full blown Sims copy I guess, and the developers didn't have such a huge budget, so it's all very limited. The second game is the best, but you can only go out to the bar, only 3 controllable characters, etc, etc.

They actually included certain features even before they appeared on The Sims. In Singles 2: Triple Trouble (2005) you had to do laundry every once in a while, your Singles could brush their teeth (this was included in TS1 though) and fix up their hair, they would get into towels after a bath, and so on. Not to mention the 18+ parts which were quite realistic if not a bit robotic and uncanny valley-like sometimes (and just saying, these scenes are not super explicit, although there is a mod that kicks them up a notch).

There exists Singles 3 which is called Kiss Before Midnight. It was only released in Germany, and is a mix of a dating and card game. Never played it but seems boring.

There are many more life sim games, but most of them aren't really all that cool IMO, and I could spend a whole day talking about this topic. What exactly do you like about The Sims? Maybe I could give you a hand on that.

To be honest, simulation is a bit of a neglected genre. Especially life simulators. There hasn't been a proper competitor to The Sims mainly because it's well-estabilished in the market (and Maxis was already well regarded), and because there is a huge amount of funding that goes to the development of the series.

Indie developers don't want to bother with stuff like this because of these reasons, and mostly because they usually have a idea for a story, not really an open-ended kind of thing. Most sandbox indie games are knockoffs of Minecraft because it's something relatively simple to make.
A game like The Sims is huge and complex and usually requires more than 50 people working non-stop to develop it. Indie games have a small team, meaning that not only they would have to work VERY hard, big salaries would have to be paid, they would endure all sorts of complaints personally (like criticism and bugfix requests), etc...

Ccompanies prefer to stick with what they already know. They probably wouldn't want to risk to make something like The Sims since it's already been done, and well. And like I said before, Sims has been on the market for almost 20 years - who guarantees that a "copy" would have good sales? Singles was meant to be successful but not many people know about it.

I have had a bit of a lifelong dream - I've always wanted to make either a Sims knockoff but more realistic, or a virtual world like Second Life but improved. IMO we always needed a bit of a competitor. At least another option. I know that I've been annoyed at stuff before, and there are things that probably will never make it to the game. Not everyone is into the "dollhouse" aspect of The Sims. They would rather control the characters directly. My best friend, who is male, doesn't like the game for this reason, and because it can honestly be boring after a while, especially if you don't have many EPs.

The console installments were great but lacking. Urbz had amazing potential but eventually all we had to do was: "talk to an Urb, change clothes, use Power Social" and repeat.

I would make something realistic but not completely so - I would obviously omit certain issues. Most people play games for escapism and entertainment. Not many people are into depressing things.

And yes, there are simulation games with really dark stuff. Alter Ego, Real Lives and even the Oregon Trail series and its spinoffs come to mind.

Alter Ego was released in 1986 and written by a psychiatrist. The game is fairly linear and there's a lot of discontinuity but you can make choices and have a character. There are a lot of grim parts and you can die any time, even as a toddler (which is horrifying). It's also quite judgemental and the game kind of forces you to do certain things sometimes. I've played it a lot, and have managed to get the good ending, but like I said, you can die at any time. Oh, by the way - the game is so 80s it hurts. Choice of Games, the company who bought the rights, is trying to update it - I think they got the license for Alter Ego now, so you can even play it on your mobile.

Real Lives is a bit more depressing - you can either roll a random "person" or make your own, and everything is based on real life statistics and whatever. So you can create a male/female character with a preset name who is born in an existing country like Canada or Spain for example. But since the game is based on real life, and it's supposed to be educational, your character can die of an accident or an illness out of nowhere. I mostly play it out of boredom - it's gotten quite boring for me. The company who made Real Lives is trying to update it and I really hope they bring some really good stuff to the table.

There used to be a knockoff called TextLife which was meant to be a bit more different than Real Lives but the guy got hit with a cease and desist and shut everything down.

The Trail games are pretty much the same thing as Real Lives - it's meant to be educational and you can die out of nowhere. I like them but they can be really hard sometimes, especially Amazon Trail.

BTW, someone had posted a screenshot of The Partners. I once managed to grab a copy of it and it's awful. That game was made by now-defunct Monte Christo which also created licensed crap like Fame Academy (The Sims Superstar but with no substance) and the infamous 7 Sins (Charlie Sheen simulator, pretty much).

I think you'd enjoy Animal Crossing and MySims as mentioned. There are some Animal Crossing rip offs as well, Magician's Quest and Wandering Willows. And check out Tomodachi Life by Nintendo.
Perhaps you'd like to try Kudos. You have to manage your life, especially your social network, over a span of 10 years. I never beat any of them. There is a band manager spinoff which is okay, and a Star Trek inspired game called Redshirt.

Try Supple if you can get a copy. It's basically a soap opera. There was also a Desperate Housewives game which was really glitchy.

Maybe try Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons? They're farming + dating sims. There are two games inspired by it on Steam: World's Dawn and Stardew Valley.

I definitely recommend you to try out adventure games in general, especially visual novels, interactive movies and the good old point 'n' click stuff. Some of them can be pretty realistic and they can give you storytelling ideas and maybe even open up your mind about certain topics.

If you still have a PS2 and if you are into "disaster/survival" scenarios I recommend the games "Disaster Report" and "Raw Danger". They're really realistic and you even have to manage food and other resources. Sadly the third installment was never translated and the series was cancelled.

I also recommend two little-known gems. Wonder Project 1 and 2 which, thinking about it, are a bit similar to "Creatures" (biological sim franchise) because you have to teach the Gijin (robots) how to do the most basic of actions. You can find more info online.

And of course you can try RPGs, but not just digital ones - tabletop too. If you have a group of friends, it's really fun. It's like being a kid again, because you have to play using your imagination.

You can also go online! There is roll20 where you can play tabletop RPGs with others over the Internet. The rulebooks and all can be pretty confusing and admittedly I only played tabletop once but I would totally do it again if I could.

There is the World of Darkness franchise, and their most famous game is Vampire: The Masquerade, which is tabletop, but there is a HIGHLY praised PC game called Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. It's the sequel to Redemption, and choices matter.

Sorry for the huge post. You can message me in case you need any more recommendations or help. Cheers.

Regrettably it was one of those things where they thought that sex and nudity would be a substitute for any meaningful content. Singles was pretty much "Sims 4 with sex and nudity"



Can definitely recommend Stardew Valley, above Harvest Moon even. Not only does it seem a bit more accessible but, unlike Harvest Moon it allows same sex marriage, my male farmer just got married to Shane
The only critique I have is that, while you can furnish and decorate your house whichever way you like, you can't actually build it from scratch, only purchase preset upgrades.

I agree with you @Orphalesion. I think Stardew is much more accessible - not to mention Harvest Moon has a bit of lore to it...

and a number of games let us customize the appearance of a played character. Unreal 1, various Unreal Tournament versions.

Pretty much. If we use the day/night cycle, inventory and character customization criteria, then could be said that Kingdoms of Amular: Reckoning is similar to Sims 2. The game has a day/night cycle, inventory that can be expanded up to 130 items with the Teeth of Naros DLC, and pretty extensive character customization. It an Action RPG, so the gameplay is different, but if we use the day/night cycle, inventory and character customization then they are similar.

So there needs to be more of a game play criteria then. The only game I've come across with sort of similar game play is Virtual Families. Although I do wish there were other companies making similar games, so EA wouldn't have a monopoly.

If you like decorating, for something very simple I was introduced to Design Home app.

I know this thread hasn't been posted to lately, but I wanted heartily to thank @simsfreq and @diovanlestat in particular for bringing up Rimworld. if I had not read their mentions of that game here, I would never have thought to look into it. But last autumn, during my yearly monthslong period without access to my Sims machine, I remembered to check out Rimworld. The best news: that developer offers a direct-download version that runs natively on the laptop I do always have with me, a Linux potato (very basic, integrated graphics only).

And wow, you guys were not kidding. Buying Rimworld was some of the best money I have ever spent (I first bought it before its 1.0 release, so it was $25, I think---with all developer updates, the 1.0 release included, built into the price). Even better, all "expansions" you'd ever need come in the form of free mods from the community. (Best found on Steam, and then you hope, if you don't run your game through Steam, that the modder has provided Github or Dropbox or even a Google Drive link to download the mod directly---which most of them have, yay.)

For a simulation gamer like me, who especially loves building an economy largely based on things that the characters in the game can make (sims in Sims 2, "pawns" in RW), Rimworld is thrillingly well suited, in fact better than Sims 2 if considering only that aspect. And there's (sort of) the bonus that it allows you to explore a whole new set of fascinating though horrifying concepts, like cannibalism for survival and organ harvesting from prisoners (in my case, for the sake of ill or severely injured colonists, though apparently some players have been willing to start wholesale trading in forcibly removed organs). And like you guys said, it's really excellent (and from a game perspective, balanced) that any such horrifying choices are accompanied by your colonists starting to have awful, disturbed thoughts.

Now, after many months of playing in only the dark wonderland of Rimworld, I'm finally just about to be able to play Sims 2 again. I'm really curious to see how my approach to Sims 2 differs now, but even from just browsing the Downloads section here in preparation for that play, I can already tell that I'm craving a return to more lighthearted, non--do-or-die situations. I'm loving looking at cute little houses for individual families (instead of a fortresslike compound for all my pawns, where door strength/design, panic rooms, and lines of sight for firing were building considerations!) and thinking about pampering bathroom design (no bathroom needs at all in RW). And I'm realllly looking forward again to the more complex social relationships that Sims 2 sims were built to have; I agree that Rimworld is well built to encourage you to get attached to your characters and their animals, but Sims 2 is still way better at building social networks and interactions among the characters' relationships and family ties. And it has toddlers! (No children in an unmodded RW game.)

Sims 2 remains first in my heart, and I'm sure it always will be. (Rimworld was voted the #1 player-ranked game on Steam last year, and even so I think Sims 2 offers opportunities for a range of emotional surprises that RW and likely any other game will never consistently match. Though as simsfreq says, yes, the personal, experience/history-related details on the artworks that RW pawns create are pretty amazing and do an efficient job as shorthand for a more complex system of memories; still, if I can play with Sims 2 memories, I'd rather!) Nevertheless, thanks to this thread, now I have my alternative for those months of the year when my Sims 2 machines are out of reach. I couldn't be more grateful.

(Edited that last para because I forgot to mention about those impressive artwork details in RW...)

Shame on you for reviving this thread! Now, I've just opened a new tab and gone to the developers website (love indie game developers), and am getting ready to login to my PayPal and buy this, as it looks extremely entertaining and will do nicely on one of my laptops.

There goes the rest of my Sunday afternoon.

Enjoy, PenelopeT. Though if it's only this afternoon you lose, I'd almost say you and RW didn't click, lol. The Rimworld subreddit has many stories about people who booted up their game for a quick morning session and next looked up after dark or after bedtime---it's happened to me more than a few times. Definitely a worthy competitor for a simmer's attention.

(Btw, the latest Rimworld version has significantly shortened loading times for heavily modded games---works great, IME. Though I think with all sales going through either Steam or direct from the indie developer, it's not likely you can accidentally buy anything but that latest one.)

The Movies
LGR review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTIES4BLOSs
kinda "simmy", really hard to obtain nowadays, though.
It's more "manager" type game than "simulation" but I think the hilariousness level is simsy-enough (the same case as Theme Hospital).

Funny enough, just earlier today I was checking Steam and GoG whether they have The Movies...sadly they don't...

This is an old topic but it's always a good one. Whenever I read one of these I can't help but wonder how on earth anything can ever "be like" Sims game without being another Sims game? I think just about the best thing anyone can say is if you enjoy playing Sims you may also enjoy these other games:

Animal Crossing
Creatures (and there are still active forums where players interact and can find the cob files some of the players made as long as twenty years ago)
Banished
Stardew Valley
Minecraft (peaceful mode, love exploring and building)
Cities Skylines
Tropico series
Civ series (I like 2 and 4 the best) (And don't forget Alpha Centauri, and its expansion pack!)
Sierra City Building Series (The era of Caesar 3, Pharaoh, Zeus, and Emperor to my mind are the best ones; Caesar 4 felt too much like just Caesar 3 with new graphics)
...and a few others

In this list of games the one thing they have in common with Sims is that that with the exception of Creatures (which is about breeding little animals) they are about management and the player can exercise their creativity. For me those two things are always important in a video game.

There's another really old game, as in we're talking DOS old, that I'd like to tack on to this list and it's Conquest of the New World. I'm pretty sure it can be had on GOG and anyone who likes playing Civ-type games will most likely enjoy it. It's mouse-controlled and a little cumbersome that way, but the gist of it is you just came to the new world and are settling there. It's up to you to create your colonies and defend them, ship supplies home to the motherland, then eventually declare your freedom. There are several different countries involved that will all be on the map at once. It's not dissimilar from Civ in many ways. Just make sure, though, when you set up a new town it has river and/or ocean access because oddly enough the devs of this game never figured out that overland trade might be a good idea so if you have a town sitting out yonder for the sake of gaining a resource it has no way to get it to trade it to another town or the home country.

I don't know if any of you have ever heard of a game called Niche or not. It's basically a breeding game where you're supposed to try to breed all these cool genetics into your animals. I paid almost $20 for that game and it turned into a tedious nightmare. All the while you're trying to do this you have to move your group a little bit at a time because you're trying to get to islands where animals with better genetics are and the majority of them are going to be limited at first to movements of only one or two blocks. If your little guys are inbred they'll end up sick which is realistic but a huge pain in the rear. It's entirely possible my mind is no longer sharp enough for that kind of thing but I really did not enjoy it.

P.S. Most of the PC games can be had from GOG for cheap. I will have to take a look at RimWorld.

I googled Crusader Kings II out of curiosity and one of the first results was a YouTube video for an Incest Challenge. Sold!

Actually it kind of reminds me of my childhood fav Lords of the Realm.

unfortunately, aside random happy hits on ebay (or something) where the game as a collection item is pretty expensive, and rare, you need to feel dark side of the Internet to acquire the copy. Even with that it's not a common seed. IDK why they did not release this again, probably because of messy licensing and copyright chaos.

Since this was bumped and I mentioned Theme Hospital in my original post, I can't read and leave without mentioning last year's sequel, Two Point Hospital. It's fantastic and absolutely hits all my buttons for tiny details and humour. Also Pinstar, who I knew for his TS2 neighbourhood deco, has even done some 2PH videos on youtube which are entertaining and helpful.

Happy Rimworlding XD

I asked my son about RimWorld. He said I will not like it.

Maybe because it's a mix of survival-management low graphics sim, in the essence it is a successor to the Dwarf Fortress (kinda). You may check out some youtube videos with playtime if you wish;
there are a lot of that kind of games - it's popular sub-genre right now (and they do not need high resurces to develop).

Personally I really wanted to like RimWorld, but the game didn't offer enough of what I like. Plus, I know it's bad to not enjoy a game just because of the graphics but....the graphics are so bad... but that top-down view and the blobby characters...

And all that fighting

it's kinda like dwarf fortress, a pretty difficult and complex survival management sim. Difficult as in "your colonist will randomly die of x calamity without youbeing able to really do much about it"
Plus there's drug and narcotics consume. Ewww.

That being said I'd love a Sims-like game where you build a colony on a planet, but it would have to be maybe like 30% easier and have graphics at least on the level of the The Sims 1 or Theme Hospital.


I've been playing Dawn of Man recently. it's a fairly limited game, but kinda. You play a tribe of Stone Age people, build their village, hunt animals, make them create clothes and food and beer and all that stuff. Again, it's not really a Sims-like game (imho none of the games in this thread are "sims-like", except maybe Singles, and from what I've seent hat game was atrocious) but it has it's charm and it's pretty cool to send your tribe to take out a mammoth so you have enough meat for the winter.
Plus, it's quite a bit easier and more cheerful than Rimworld. And prettier.

It's because it's basically a successor to Dwarf Fortress he said I wouldn't like it and I can't not agree with him.

Orphalesian I am a sucker for decent graphics, in that they should at least look better than something from, well, what's a good time frame? Say those old SNES games? Some were pretty all right but I remember seeing others that weren't, kind of like Stardew Valley is on par with. Frankly I just don't see a problem at all with being picky about graphics. I like looking at pretty things which is one reason I enjoy video games. I always use a nicer resource pack for Minecraft--not one of the super HD ones, even a 32-pixel pack can be great--because the original textures are poking my eyes out with pixels. And yeah, I hate the Stardew Valley graphics (and my kids tell me those are the improved graphics, that the original ones were even worse). My kids tell me it's an art style. I told them no, it's crap; I had DOS games that looked better than that. Of course playability is the most important thing of any game but I also prefer it to look good. A lot of those old games I mentioned have very lovely graphics.


Most are going to be limited but those are usually the kind of game I expect to play the stuffings out of for at least a hundred hours, maybe more, then hang them up probably forever. And because I know I'll play it to death until I get it all figured out and then be done I'm not keen on paying a lot of money for them either. I like sales. I think I got Banished for $10 and I definitely got my money's worth out of it. I also like games with mods that will flesh out where the base is lacking. So, Banished, Stardew Valley, Minecraft, etc. are good for those kind of things. It was such a sad thing that hardly anyone liked SimCity Societies because I really would love to have buildings and such for it. I love that game, not as a successor to SimCity (not at all) but definitely a worthy follower of SimTown that was a lot of fun to play.

Hm, I have to take issue with some of that, because I think it doesn't reflect the reality of playing RW.

Ow, Dwarf Fortress, yeah. That thing *did* hurt my eyes, lol. I wouldn't want to play RW either if it were graphically like DF! Actual apostrophes being used as "graphics" is not a trend I've ever felt nostalgia for, nor do I want to wade through it on my screen.

So Rimworld's far better than that, but it's definitely not graphically in the same category as any of the Sims series, all true. The characters even are called "pawns" because they are only approximations of humans in the same way that pawns on a chessboard are: they don't have arms and legs, just heads and shoulders.

But in fairness...RW's not trying to be even close to Sims-series level graphically, either. In fact, the developer openly questioned the role of detailed graphics in modern games, here .

Maybe everyone wouldn't care about stuff like that, but I enjoyed that he had a whole philosophy going on about what choices he made in designing his game. And what he's basically saying there is that it's possible to make every game much, much prettier and more detailed, but he questions whether it always serves the gameplay. For him it didn't necessarily, past a certain point. And for me, well, I know that it would never run on my Linux potato if it was a lot fancier graphically, so I'm glad he made the choice he did.

Now, as a simmer, definitely at first I sorely missed being able to dress anyone up and make them look nicer. And I think if that is a nonnegotiable part of your gaming, yes, you will always miss that in RW, and I can see how you just couldn't stomach it! (Me, I was able to overlook the lack of outfit options eventually but did install the Zen Garden mod, which made for prettier landscaping options, including some wedding-type greenery arches. So now I take screenshots of particularly beloved pawns marrying in my specially built weddings garden, even though they don't have any ability to put on tuxedos and gowns.)

About the fighting: you are right, Orphalesion, there can be. And too, recreational drugs do exist in RW without any cover terms like "juice"! But there again, to be fair, there are six different difficulty settings in Rimworld, from Peaceful to Merciless---and you can adjust those any time you like, even on the fly during play. Most of the time I play on level 3 or 4, but that was totally my choice, because I found I liked learning how to defend my base. Even so, I've spent some long periods on Base Builder (second from easiest level) at times when I just wanted to watch the colony develop and the colonists work and interact, with next to no risk or frequency of attacks. (Apparently, on Peaceful there are never any attacks at all, though I've not tried it. Which would mean it would be entirely up to you to choose to go out and make war on other settlements---and again, you would not be harmed at all by never choosing to; I don't.)

As for drugs, setting the colony's drug policies is something you should do anyway, so you can just set those to say that no one ever uses any. It will not hurt you to do so. You can even tell them always to burn all drugs at a campfire, to make extra sure (I do that for most drugs in the game and find it satisfying!). Of course, some pawns you will come across will automatically tend to seek out and use drugs even if you tell them they aren't allowed to! But...that's part of the game, that some pawns just have self-destructive tendencies---and unlike in real life, you can easily identify those folks in RW because their personalities are labeled as such, so then you just don't recruit them or, if for some reason they are already in your colony, you ask them to leave.

In my game, I do find the coffee-like drug---even comes in little cups, lol---and beer and also the very slightly addictive rare fruit to be totally acceptable, so my pawns are allowed to use those on conservative intervals I set, though they never are allowed anything harder. However, if we come across an expensive kind of hard drug, might I sell it to a passing trader if we're short on cash for something we do need? Heck, yeah. Since you already told your colony that no one is allowed to use that drug, no one will (assuming you haven't allowed any pawns in who will insist on experimenting with drugs), and it will all leave untouched with the trader.

As far as them dying at random, that's also quite preventable as you become better at the game (kind of like how preventing sims from being late to work or missing the bus or failing to get promoted or growing up without all their toddler skills is totally doable once you are a skilled simmer).

Might your pawn get crushed by a falling roof? Yes---if you instruct them to remove supporting walls from under a roof without removing the roof first. Mistake you probably won't make again! Will they come down with illnesses, from food poisoning to the plague, at very inconvenient times? Yes, and that's why you stock medicine and try and build a clinic or hospital or at least some isolated treatment beds. Will your crops get blighted? Yes, and you either micromanage at that point and cut the blighted ones fast so they don't infect the others...or get ready to send out caravans to hunt or farm elsewhere in your region to send back food.

And if all else fails and something happens to a pawn or my base that I'd rather go back and stop instead, then I just do as I would in Sims 2 and quit without saving---the game rotates automatically among five autosave slots, and you can manually save as many more instances as you want to return to. So I can say that there is no incident the AI storyteller creates that you can't learn to deal with or prevent, and reducing difficulty level sharply reduces or eliminates those random mishaps too. It becomes the same choice as whether to send your low-mechanical sim to fix the broken dishwasher---you can decide exactly how risky the world is for them (difficulty level) and also what risks you want specific pawns to take...or avoid.

Here's the biggest difference between Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress: DF is designed for you to lose, as in the point of the game is that you eventually fail. Even the unofficial player motto for DF has become, "It's fun to lose!" By contrast, a Rimworld colony can easily be played for a very long time, even if you don't only play on the easiest settings and even if you refuse (as I always have) to go to the built-in endgame, where you build and launch a ship to get your colonists off the planet.

For example, the heart of my current colony is my couple Gray and his wife Raymond. They were teenagers when they met after both being recruited into my base, and they're in their mid-30s now (also, still ridiculously happy with each other; it's pretty touching). Yes, in the last couple decades they've lost friends to deadly attacks that I didn't defend against as well as I could have (and chose not to quit without saving after), other colonists have married and divorced around them, and Gray's currently having a hard time because word came that his dad has died. But along the way, Gray's learned to be an amazing tailor and weaponsmith, Raymond's bettered herself from just being the kid I sent to forage berries to sharing lead-gardener responsibilities as well as becoming an excellent negotiator when peace talks and trade occur, and they're probably my two most popular colonists among the others---especially kind Raymond, who often makes other colonists' days with a random supportive comment or compliment. And they've both fulfilled their jointly shared dreams of having more bionic than regular limbs, which makes them go-tos when I need someone to run out and carry in that ill colonist who needs medication right now, reinstall that trap before those raiders reach the base, or just pick up those crayfish from our box trap before one of our pet bears eats it himself.

So...I can still say Rimworld will never be chock-full of warm fuzzies compared with Sims 2. But I wouldn't want its complexity level (and the level of control you as a player have over its difficulty!) sold short either.

That all said, thanks for mentioning Dawn of Man; I'll look into it. I've also always been curious about Stardew Valley!

If you like Harvest Moon games then Stardew Valley is right up your alley. I had a blast with it (despite horrible graphics) for a couple of months then after I realized I'd need to play for another whole year because I forget to do things like watch TV and miss recipes Harvest Moon burn-out hit me. it does have some really cool features, though, many of them are things people wanted for years in an HM game but never got. And your farm is big and you get to put the buildings anywhere you want and if you decide you need to move it you can. The fishing mini-game to me was horrid and I finally just got a mod to just let me catch the fish without the nonsense but I have trouble with a lot of things like that, especially now. So yeah, it was worth more than the $5 I paid for it, for sure. I don't think graphics inherently improve gameplay but they definitely improve my spirits as I'm playing and although Stardew Valley is a fun game it would have been even more enjoyable with graphics at least as good as HM64.

Thanks, Misty! I have never played Harvest Moon games before to know whether I'd like them or not, but I remain curious.

And I do understand about good graphics lifting your spirits. Some of the animal renderings in Rimworld are cute (baby bears and wolves, puppies), and RW weddings (joyously including all colonists automatically finding a good place to spectate, yay) usually delight me, at least when I am fond of the marrying pawns. Yet when I think about it, no animation in RW has ever touched my heart as deeply as some of the animations in Sims 2 (toddler stuff comes to mind first).