Paralives, originally slated for release in 2025, is now right around the corner with an early access launch slated for May 25th next week. So what better a way to whet the appetite than with a nice lengthy look at the game in action, right from making your own Sims- sorry, Paras, through to overseeing their entire lives.

When booting up a game of Paralives, you’ll find yourself on a train filled with various households, i.e. groups of people connected to one another through familial ties or otherwise, akin to The Sims’ premade families. You do, of course, have the option to make your own household, and making your own Paras looks plenty involved too. That micro-adjustable height slider certainly looks like a welcome quality of life feature not present in its soon to be rival.

Another difference from The Sims is the presence of a sort of difficulty setting, where you choose a storyteller to help dictate how much chaos you want in your Paras’ lives. This can even be fine tuned with options like your Paras automatically eating at work or how high the chance of a Para having twins is. There is also a dog storyteller who makes things as easy can be! Cute.

The building side of things also looks quite in depth, with the ability to paint the terrain quite easily, filling your shelves with individual bits of clutter, resizing your furniture and the like. Though it’s still obviously not finished, as evidenced by drawing attention to the fact you can’t have windows on curved walls yet. Yours Paras can have jobs too, of course, and attend to various tasks like picking up free plants or grabbing some grub while you’re out in town.

It all looks quite granular, a certain boon for those that like to really get in the weeds with life simulation games. Plus, if what’s there isn’t quite enough for you just yet, community mods will be available right within the Steam Workshop. You can wishlist Paralives on Steam ahead of its release next week on May 25th.