While The Sims 4 can seem like a game with endless amounts of replayability, it can sometimes end up feeling a little repetitive after a few playthroughs. One of the main sources of the life simulator's replayability comes with expansions that are often far too pricy for the content they provide. It doesn't help that previous entries in The Sims series are often said to be far more content-rich than The Sims 4 is, even with its current lineup of expansions and packs.
However, there are a few ways that The Sims 4 can provide fans with a new experience, no matter how many hours they have in the title. Some of these methods involve utilizing often overlooked in-game features while others take the creativity of the community into account. These five tips should help make The Sims 4 feel like a unique experience on each new save file.
Use Mods
Mods are a simple and easy way to freshen up The Sims 4, with everything from full expansion-sized additions to small gameplay adjustments available. New clothing, hairstyles and other Create-A-Sim mods keep things looking new on a visual level. There are also tons of game mods that add tons of new features to The Sims 4, giving the game more replayability. The best part is that, unlike other games, modding The Sims is fairly simple.
The Sims 4 has a dedicated folder where it pulls its mods from. All players have to do is place whatever mods they want to use in the Mods folder and launch the game. Mods aren't dependent on the game version either unless they use content from a specific expansion or DLC. There are also plenty of websites that host Sims 4 mods that make finding them incredibly simple.
Add Custom Sims
Whenever a player starts a new game of The Sims 4, they'll typically be asked to pick one of several towns to move their newly created sims into. What players might not know is that the game doesn't lock players to that specific town. This means sims from any town can appear during normal gameplay which can help make up for the removal of The Sims 3's open-world. After moving their sims in, players should head to the Manage Worlds screen and populate their towns with custom sims.
Each town has a set of generic NPC sims that are designed by EA. While these sims certainly aren't bad, they can get a little bland on repeat playthroughs. Creating custom sims or downloading other people's creations to populate the multiple towns in-game can bring a little variety to the normal faces that a player would otherwise see fairly frequently. It's also worthwhile to create custom houses for said sims, though this can take a bit more work.
Try a Challenge Run
The Sims community has created tons of challenges that players can attempt in-game. Many of these are fairly difficult and will require players to use the full extent of their Sims 4 knowledge in order to beat them. Others are effectively just ways to play the game with a specific theme or TV show in mind. An example of the latter is the Big Brother challenge, where players create eight sims and evict whichever one has the lowest friendship with the others each week.
Other challenges include the classic 100 Baby Challenge, where a sim needs to have 100 children over the span of their life. One of the more difficult ones is the Off The Grid Challenge, where sims cannot have any appliances that use electricity or plumbing. There's actually an entire DLC pack themed around providing items that meet this criteria called the Eco Lifestyle pack.
Don't be Afraid to Cheat
Cheating in video games usually isn't encouraged, but EA actually provides a complete guide on how to use cheats in The Sims 4. Giving a sim tons of money is a great way to build a dream house that would otherwise take hours of gameplay to afford. There are also tons of other codes that are perfect for turning The Sims 4 from a life simulator to more of a sandbox game, though this gameplay style does tend to better fit a more casual playstyle.
With cheats, a player could boost skills, give a sim a work promotion, access hidden developer items and even unlock every Build Mode item that would otherwise require a sim to reach a certain career rank. Cheats are great for players that focus on telling a story and who don't want to be limited by the game's progression system. They're also just a lot of fun to mess around with since some cheats can create some pretty hilarious results.
Move to a New Town
As mentioned earlier, players aren't locked to the first town they select and should seriously consider moving their sims to a new town, especially if they've got a long-running save file. A new town means new sims to interact with, new locations to explore and, usually in the case of DLC towns, new mechanics to check out. DLC towns tend to be specifically tailored to the content added in a certain expansion, meaning they're often the best environments to experience these expansions in.
There are also some fairly empty, yet visually unique, towns that are worth considering. Newcrest is a basic town with a few empty lots but nothing else, making it a good blank slate to mold into whatever the player wants. Forgotten Hollow is included with the Vampires expansion and is a similarly empty horror-themed location, though there are a few pre-existing houses and sims. These two relatively empty towns could be built up by the player in order to turn their next game into something special.