- MySims is ported to mobile
- Lots of quests and furniture to craft
- Story-based with a town that slowly unlocks
I have spent a lot of time on The Sims, spending my childhood mastering the storyline of Sims Bustin' Out, before moving to Urbz on the Gameboy Advance SP. I love the Sims - I love making my own little world and being able to do things so easily in it. I love mastering skills and doing well at my job, and balancing friendships.
MySims, however, is none of this. Following a more quest and story-based timeline, this is more aimed at a younger audience.
In MySims, you are looking to help a desolate town, which has hit the zero-star ranking. Nobody new has moved there for quite some time, but you, being a carpenter, are looking to turn it all around. Building and creating is the name of the game, but this sort of building isn't how you've seen it in the Sims. You will have set requirements for houses or for building furniture.
Everything is a sort of plug-and-play model, with you putting together bits of houses - adding on the main building, a door, and windows to specific places on the side. Houses and buildings have requirements, like doors and the signs on them. It's sort of the same with furniture. You can walk to your workshop and create items there, either using your blueprints that you have unlocked or by following quests. There is then a shadow of all of the different shapes you need to plug in to create the furniture.
You can then use essence, which is often collected through materials around the map, to add colour or patterns to the various furniture that you are creating. Some of the quests require specific essences, but you can always add more if you'd like it to look a specific way. These essences then make up your town's style.
As you build new things for your town, the town's ranking will go up, and people will start to come to visit. Some of them have skills that they will bring to the town, offering up more for visitors and townsfolk to do. You'll need to get them to move there by doing more tasks and following their requirements.
The world in MySims is small to start off with, but areas start to unlock as you get the correct tools or work towards filling up what is already there. It's a growing city, and you can spend some time making it your own.
At the same time, it isn't clear how to find some of the items required from you or how to get them. I found myself sometimes wandering around, just trying to figure out how to get something. When I thought I found it, it turned out to be a different essence than the one I had expected.
I also had a big issue with the fact that you need to save the game. In 2025, there should be auto-saving. It took me SO long to start remembering to save before I close. I do feel that on mobile especially, which are often played in quick bursts while doing other activities, there needs to be some sort of auto-saving feature.
I do feel MySims doesn't have much in connection with the Sims, but it's a fun experience that's going to be played by a new generation. If you're into the sort of quest and town-building of Hokko Life, then you'll likely gel well with MySims as well.
MySims review - "A lot of building furniture"
MySims is a quest-based adventure all about building furniture and making a town much better in ranking! It's got some issues with not auto-saving, but otherwise, it's fun if you like building furniture and watching a town grow.
Jupiter Hadley
Jupiter is a prolific indie game journalist with a focus on smaller indie gems. She covers thousands of game jams and indie games on her YouTube channel, letting every game have a moment in the spotlight. She runs indiegamejams.com, a calendar of all of the game jams going on in the world, and judges many jams and events. You can find her on Twitter as @Jupiter_Hadley