Paralives is probably one of the hottest anticipated titles in the life simulator genre right now. Offering open world exploration, freebies throughout Early Access, and consistent updates throughout its six-year-plus (and counting) development period, it’s easy to see why.
Today, we got our most in-depth look at Paralives’ Live Mode – where I’m sure a lot of us will spend most of our playtime – so far, thanks to a 45-minute-long play-by-play shared on the developer’s YouTube channel.
Here’s everything we learnt about Paralives today, from what to expect of your Para’s personalities all the way through to the simulator’s social and employment systems.
It’s about what’s inside
We take a quick look at the Paramaker at the start, giving us a whistle-stop tour of the sorts of personalities we can expect our Parafolk to have.
Personality will partially work on a point-based system, reminiscent of some older Sims games (or Dungeons & Dragons). You have seven points to split across four categories, with a maximum of three points each. These categories are physique, mind, creativity, and charisma.
On top of that, you can also pick one vibe for your Para. The options are overjoyed, gloomy, energetic, serious, or jester.
Next, you pick one social perk. Each of these perks are, as you might expect, framed as “being good at” something. You can be good at:
- Being alone
- Making friends
- Taking care of others
- Romantic relationships
- Cooperating
Then, you can pick what your Parafolk’s talent will be – if they have one at all. Your options are a jack-of-all-trades, music, fitness, food, technology, art, or “good at nothing.”
Go on, girl, give us nothing…
Each of these options gives you the option of sometimes using chance-based mechanics in relevant areas. For example, a Para with the good at making friends perk can try to cosy straight up to someone and make friends with them – at the roll of a dice. So, it could go right, or it could go very, very wrong.
Lastly, you can pick from a couple of lifestyle options, including vegetarianism, sleep style, and cleaning habits. These impact things like autonomy during Live Mode, with Neat Paras prioritising handwashing and teethbrushing whenever appropriate. As they should.
One more section of the character creator wasn’t explored on stream, but it was visible in the bottom-right corner. This is where some handy demographic information was tucked away, affirming that there are eight life stages, three core gender options alongside what looks like the chance to customise it, and two voice options.
Needy, emotional Parafolk
Right now, Parafolk have four needs: hunger, energy, bladder, and hygiene. It looks fairly streamlined right now, running off of a 12-point bar which ebbs and flows depending on your actions.
Parafolk also have emotions, which you can click on to select Wants. Those wants are linked to your Parafolk’s emotions, but also draw from their vibes and habits. So, a happy, neat Para might have the Want to clean something up. You can pick and choose which Wants you’re going to fulfil.
On top of Wants, you also have a list of Goals to help guide your gameplay. Goals look like they’re going to help you to get acquainted with different aspects of Paralives, including how to find a job, cook meals, go shopping, find collectables, decorate your home, and much more.
Every night, your Wants reset in your sleep if you don’t fulfil them. So, if you’re planning on ticking something off, make sure you do it before you hit the hay.
Fulfilling wants shapes your Para’s personality
Fulfilling wants provides personality points, which can help to level your Para’s personality. When you level up your Para’s personality, you can choose to evolve your Para’s talents, perks, and so on that you picked while making them.
In the example given in the stream, a Para’s music talent was levelled, giving the option of two different music-related upgrades. The player could then pick one, which was put into the Para’s personality panel.
Skill up
We didn’t get the closest look at Paralives’ skills in the Live Mode demo, but we did get to see that you Paras can learn instruments, programming, and graphic design skills.
How well your Para learns skills will be impacted by what perks you picked while making your Para.
Look sharp
Your Paras can have multiple outfits available for a given occasion, and you can add new ones through a household mirror. You can also change their clothes there, making getting ready in the bathroom nice and easy.
Cook up a storm (or go out to eat)
As you might expect, cooking ties closely to skill level. If you try to cook something with a low skill level, you’re likely to fail the recipe and spoil the food. You also don’t have many recipes unlocked by default, presumably due to a low skill level.
Also, as mentioned, your Paras can be vegetarian. They’ll have options like tofu hot dogs available to them.
Don’t feel like cooking? You can grab a snack from your fridge without any effort. And, you can also easily swing by cafes to buy different baked goodies to enjoy eating outside of your home, like ube cookies, croissants, and blueberry pie. You can sit in to eat or grab it as a takeout.
Go shopping, and get things for free
You can roam around Paralives’ open world to head to shops and pick up new items for your Para’s homes. This means you can get new things without even having to head into Build Mode.
Several different shops can be found around town, like florists and furniture shops. What they have on offer looks like it’s going to vary all the time, and sometimes they’ll even run discounts.
Also, Bloom gives out a free plant every day. Just so you know.
A job for every Parafolk
Parafolk appear to be able to choose from a long list of different jobs from a diverse range of sectors. The whole list of sectors shared in the stream is:
- Software Development
- Art
- Service
- Music
- Education
- Management
- Maintenance
- Healthcare
- Science
- Fitness
- Food
Businesses around Paralives’ town also featured hiring posters in their windows, suggesting it’ll be possible to swing by shops to get a job directly. I guess the whole “print out your CV and go around town” approach still works in video games.
Each sector has a list of job titles attached to it. Some lists are massively long and varied, with others looking a little more limited. For instance, the Managerial sector was overflowing with work, while the Engineering sector looked a little more limited.
Two interesting things about the jobs system are that Parafolk aren’t instantly qualified for every job or sector, and also that the same job can be available at multiple different locations. This was particularly noticeable with the service industry, which had a long list of hospitality and retail jobs seemingly associated with different businesses.
Once you pick which job, you can pick which schedule you take from a set list. This determines your shift pattern based on the times and which days you want to work.
Build your dream job through upgrades, or lose it through poor performance
Paralives’ employment system looks like it’s going to be fairly complex.
After each day, you have the chance of getting an upgrade point, depending on your performance. You can spend these upgrade points for overtime bonuses, hourly raises, and more.
The stream also teased a performance bar and a “strike” system, seemingly suggesting that Paras get three chances of messing up (badly) at work before they’re out.
It takes a Paravillage
Talking to other Paras around town fills something called the Together Bar. After about half an hour in-game of chatting with another Para, you’ll be able to choose what direction your conversation is headed in. This is where you could introduce yourself, as about your new town, and so on.
This is also how you make friends with other Parafolk you meet and build connections with them by finding out a little more about them. You can ask questions about their job, share how you’re feeling, and from the looks of things, a lot more.
Depending on what mood you’re in – and presumably, what mood the other Paras around you are in – you can influence the feelings of those around you with your aura. The example shared was that an overjoyed Para could give a little happiness boost to his new friend just by talking to him. Aw.
And, of course, you can flirt with and romance other Paras. This also depends on a luck-based, success-failure mechanic. As is life, I guess.
Go, Jog, Run, Dance around town
Paras have a lot of options for moving around town in Paralives. As with most life sims, you’re going to be moving around by clicking on the ground wherever you want to go and choosing how to move.
You can expect to Go, Jog, Run, and even seemingly Dance to your target location. You can also exercise, sit, or daydream wherever you please.
It’s also easy to do different activities around town together with other Paras as a group. After you’ve started getting to know someone, you can just drag your mouse across the ground around them to include them in your Para’s activities.
Speed it up, slow it down
You can manipulate time while you Para is off working, developing their programming skills, or really, just about any time you please. You can play the game in regular, double, and triple speed.
And, of course, you can pause and freeze time altogether.
Read all about it
I would be hard pushed not to mention The New Paper: Paralives’ daily paper that you can check out at any time.
Right now, I don’t know if it directly does much gameplay-wise, but it is a pretty fun addition to the simulator’s overall worldbuilding.
Watch the livestream here
Want to check out Paralives’ gameplay footage yourself? I don’t blame you. You can watch it over on the developers’ YouTube channel.
