Paralives

''Paralives'' is an upcoming life simulation indie game by Paralives Studio for Windows and macOS. The game, heavily inspired by ''The Sims'', features house building and management in a small town. It is scheduled for release in early access on December 8, 2025.

Gameplay

''Paralives'' will take place in an open world environment with employment opportunities alongside events such as festivals. Players can build houses, create characters and control their lives in a desired way.

The character creator, titled as "Paramaker", allows the customization of the appearance and personality of "Parafolk", the name of the in-game characters. Players are able to customize the physique and height of the Parafolk. The root and shade of hair, clothing and accessories can be toggled as intended using color swatches, color wheels and texture selection.

A similar system is in place for objects and structures, allowing the player to adjust the size, placement, color and texture of walls, floors, windows, doors, and furniture.

The simulation aspect of the game features "together cards" that appear to players after a "together bar" is filled up during a character's conversation.

Development

''Paralives'' is being developed by indie game designer Alex Massé. After working on several projects such as PewDiePie's ''Tuber Simulator'' and a number of demos for Project Tiny, Massé quit his job and began developing ''Paralives'' regularly. Development of the game started in January 2019 and was officially announced in June 2019. The game is developed using Unity.

''Paralives'' was initially a solo project by Massé, but as of June 2025, the team has expanded to fourteen people, collectively forming Paralives Studio. Massé wants ''Paralives'' to offer a sense of endless customization with "powerful and intuitive tools that allow players to easily create any house with precision". He was inspired by the road tool in '' Cities: Skylines'' and developed a similar tool in ''Paralives'' for building houses. The developers incorporated the technique of procedural animation, which involves automatic reactions based on previously created animations to save developing time.

The game is being funded through the crowdfunding platform Patreon and backers are invited to propose suggestions regarding content they would like to see in the full release. Massé chose to use Patreon after seeing ''Ooblets''s success on the service. By November 2023, the ''Paralives'' Patreon page had over 15,000 supporters and earned over $35,000 per month. Massé plans to release the game in Early Access on Steam and support the game with free updates and modding, where people can share their designs on the Steam Workshop.

Marketing

In January 2021, ''Paralives'' won the title of "Most Anticipated Canadian Game" in a poll organised by CanadianGameDevs.com.

On 12 June 2021, ''Paralives'' featured in Wholesome Direct event, showcasing the game's building tools.

In July 2024, as part of Paralives's showcase at the 2024 Montreal Comiccon, a ''Paralives'' booth was set up for attendees to try the build mode demo of the game.

''Paralives'' revealed the Early Access release date alongside the game's new trailer during PC Gaming Show on June 8, 2025.

See also

* ''InZOI''
* ''Life by You''
* ''The Sims''

References

External links

* {{official website, https://www.paralives.com/

Upcoming video games
Indie games
Social simulation video games
Life simulation games
Windows games
MacOS games
Single-player video games
Video games with gender-selectable protagonists
Video games developed in Canada
Early access video games