The Sims returned to iOS earlier in the year 2018 in their biggest and best mobile game yet. The Sims Mobile lets you create and customize your world with more detail than ever before, with careers, friends, and romantic relationships to explore.
If you’re a Sims fan, that’s all you need to know. You’ll love having a true Sims experience in your pocket that you can enjoy anytime, anywhere. And if you’re new to the franchise, this is a great place to start, with just enough to keep you interested without being overwhelming.
Parents need to know that The Sims Mobile is a free-to-play life simulation game that lets players create and control virtual “dolls.” Players can friend each other and chat with virtual and real friends. Sims characters do things real-world people do, including fighting, dating, sitting on the toilet, showering, getting married, and having babies. Sexual content, nudity, and other adult themes are implied rather than shown. While it’s free to play, the game implies that it’s easier to pay for progress or additional items for sessions. The app’s privacy policy details the kinds of information collected and shared.
THE SIMS MOBILE is the latest iteration in Electronic Arts’ long-running simulation franchise, and as such, focuses on creating a stable of Sims characters and guiding them through their careers and social lives. After customizing two playable characters, you’re given a simple home for your Sims and a list of tasks to perform. These, along with long-term Quests, earn you experience points and various kinds of currency, which you can use to buy clothes, furnishings, and decor. Daily login rewards grant currency and energy refills, and you can watch ads for other apps to obtain further rewards. Gameplay is energy-based, which means when your daily allotment of energy is gone, you have to buy more energy in the in-app shop or stop playing.
This is a fun little app for newbies and Sims veterans alike, although it’s basic, no-frills content is likely to appeal more to players new to the series. What makes it fun is having the kind of control none of us has in real life, not to mention more social and career options. On top of that, The Sims’ tongue-in-cheek approach is endlessly entertaining — or it would be, in a non-energy-limited scenario. Buying energy is more or less essential if you want to play longer than 10 minutes. In addition to that, you need lots of other kinds of currency to progress at a decent rate and unlock enough of the game to make it interesting. If you opt for the free-to-play approach, be prepared to sign in multiple times a day as your energy slowly recharges, and be prepared for a lot of repetition at the start. For quite a few levels, all your Sims can do is go to work and attend other players’ parties. Oh, they can date and engage in one or two hobbies (if they’ve unlocked them), but with most of the clothes, furniture, buildings, and activities locked until higher levels, they can’t do much else. Things pick up, of course, once you level up (or spend some money), but without spending a lot of time (or a lot of money), you and your Sims are in for a routine as banal and repetitious as most of us endure in real life.
