Answering Your Questions + Get A Signed Postcard (Patreon)

Hey there,

Summer has arrived here in Montreal, Canada so I'm writing this week's post while drinking pink lemonade. Cheers!

Get a Signed Paralives Postcard

It's time to send our third official Paralives postcard! We'll send it in June to everyone who will be pledging on the Hero tier ($20 USD) or Legend tier ($50 USD) next Tuesday, June 1! If you are already on one of these tiers, make sure your address is up to date on your Patreon profile. We always create an exclusive artwork for our postcards and I think you'll love the one Sonia made this time! We'll keep it secret for now until people discover it when they get the postcard in the mail. Here are the artworks Léa created for our last 2 postcards :

EDIT: The postcards have now been sent! The next one will be around the end of 2021.

Answering Your Questions  (For Patrons only! Please don't share)

I'm trying something new this week! I thought it would be great to answer the most common and interesting questions we get about Paralives.

1 - When is Paralives coming out?

We have an estimated release window in mind but we prefer to keep it secret for now to avoid disappointing people if we need to delay it a bit. We still have a lot of work to do and estimating the exact time needed is never easy in game development.  We are working very hard to prioritize the game features needed for the release and to organize ourselves so we can release a great base version of the game as quickly as possible. Our goal is to keep updating the game for a long time after launch to add more content, more features and improve the gameplay based on community feedback.

Take a look at this page on the Paralives website to follow the development progress.

2 - Are the Paralives developers fans of The Sims?

Totally! Most of us have started playing The Sims 15 or 20 years ago and never stopped since. Some people might think that we're making Paralives because we've been disappointed by The Sims but it's quite the opposite! We love that genre of game so much and we think there should be more than one product exploring the concept. The Sims franchise did so many great things and changed the lives of so many people. We aim to make our own game with our own twists and innovations but we'll always have a huge amount of respect for the groundbreaking work done by all the talented developers behind The Sims.

3 - How do you handle the pressure and suggestions from everyone?

Paralives' development couldn't happen without the support from you Patrons and from the community. It's a blessing to work on a game and get so many ideas and feedback as we go. It's true that we are under a bit of pressure because people share a lot of ideas with us and expectations are high. However, we have a strong vision for Paralives and it's pretty close to what the community expects, I think. Our goal is to stay true to that vision and deliver a game that will hopefully satisfy the expectations but it means that we have to focus on what's important. We often sort ideas from the community and keep them aside or for updates after the initial release. It's a bit of management but it's going very well so far. Having the support from the community has been a wonderful thing from the very beginning.

4 - A life simulation game is about managing characters so why did you start with the build mode?

A game like Paralives is basically 3 games in one: a house building game, a character creation game and a character management game. It's pretty complex and ambitious! At the start of the project, I was the only developer and couldn't create every part of the game at once so I started with the build mode. Parafolks won't be able to live without a roof, furniture and items to fill their needs so it made sense! Then, as more and more developers joined me on the project, we started to work on other parts of the game like the characters, the Paramaker, the animations and so on. We're getting closer to a fully fledged game and being able to show you live mode snippets. I think that will be pretty exciting!

Have a great weekend and take care!

Alex 🍹

EDIT - August 12, 2021: This post is now public so feel free to share it!