Paralives has a key advantage over The Sims - characters who can use the bathroom by themselves

Paralives
(Image credit: Alex Massé)

Upcoming life sim Paralives is set to give their characters a little more autonomy than The Sims, meaning they have the ability to go to the bathroom by themselves.

As reported by PCGamesN (via the Paralives Patreon), the characters in the upcoming simulation game "will be able to decide to perform some interactions on their own." You can see this in action in the video below which shows two characters in an apartment reacting to hunger differently. 

One of the characters is trapped in a room after the evil player took the doors away, and the other is luckily placed in the kitchen. Without being commanded by the player, the second character takes it upon themselves to head to the fridge once they get hungry, satisfying that need without the player having to lift a finger. 

Unfortunately for the other character, they aren't able to get their hands on any food and eventually give up and die - yes, that does mean you can basically recreate the swimming pool ladder trick from The Sims and kill off characters in Paralives.

Paralives characters will be able to automatically go to work, use the toilet, and find an activity to occupy their time. What's most interesting about this feature is that what the characters choose to do depends on them individually. For example, "Parafolks could automatically clean the house or highly skilled musicians could decide to play music in their spare time," the Patreon update reveals. 

If you prefer having your characters do exactly what you want them to, there will apparently also be an option in the upcoming game's menu that allows you to switch the autonomy off and have full control.

Paralives is still in the midst of development right now, so we won't be getting our hands on it just yet. There are plenty of ways to keep tabs on the project though, including wishlisting it on Steam, heading over to its website where you'll find a detailed roadmap, and following its developer on Twitter

Need a different Sims 4 substitute before then? Find out everything you need to know about the City Skylines dev's upcoming life sim, Life by You

Hope Bellingham
News Writer

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training.  My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.