Life By You is an upcoming life sim experience, and it looks set to rival The Sims 4 in all its creative potential. This hotly-anticipated upcoming PC game has been on our radar since its March 2023 announcement during the Paradox Announcement showcase, and we can't wait to see it launch into Early Access on June 4 following a second delay.
With its expansive customization systems, dialog trees with real human language (instead of the gobbledegook likes of Simlish), and a build-in modding client to facilitate player-made creations, Life By You is turning out to be one of the most interesting new games for 2024. For any fan of EA's long-running life sim series, it points to perhaps the first genuine contender for its crown. It's true: Life By You is one of the few games like The Sims 4 that could literally beat EA at its own game, and without much in the way of new Sims 5 intel to go on, we're definitely excited to put Life By You through its paces.
We've been waiting two years to get our hands on Paradox's sandbox life sim, a game that could well become one of the best simulator games ever. Here's everything we know about Life by You so far, including the expected early access launch date, gameplay details, hands-on previews, and more news from the developer.
Recent updates
This Life By You hub was updated on April 22, adding some recent news from Paradox on monetizing your Life By You mods.
Life By You news
- Can Paradox beat The Sims at its own game with Life By You?
- Life by You preview: trying to "push the boundaries" of life sims as a more open and customizable experience
- The Sims 4 competitor Life by You delayed to 2024
- Unlike The Sims, Life by You is absolutely pro-nudity
- Life-sim Life by You shows off how jobs will work for the first time
- Sims competitor Life by You doesn't have loading screens because its NPCs are "accurately modeled every second of every year"
- The director of Sims competitor Life By You says players can monetize their future mods: "You don't owe us a dime"
Life by You release date and platforms
The Life By You release date into early access is set for June 4, 2024. The most recent delay comes as the Paradox Tectonic team endeavors to polish the game up visually, according to a press release given by the publisher.
Pushed back once more, this time from a March 5 launch date, the game was originally intended to release on September 12, 2023 for PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store. However, it was delayed last year so that the development team could focus on new features and visual improvements - and it sounds like Paradox Tectonic is still smoothing things out today. The publisher has offered refunds for any and all preorders, and while you can still wishlist it on Steam, preorders are no longer for sale.
Life by You trailer
The first Life by You announcement trailer (which you can watch above) that dropped during the showcase gave us our first proper look at the open-world setting and how we can control anyone at any time. It also shows off some of the interactions controllable humans can have along with insight into customization, character creation, and much more. A lot of the features do share similarities with The Sims; the more open feel and use of vehicles to get around (hello skateboards!) brings to mind The Sims 3.
Life by You pre-order
Life by You is currently available to pre-order in Early Access on the Epic Games Store for a lower introductory price of $39.99 / £34.99. Pre-ordering will bag you the limited-time Life Begins Pack, which includes a Jumpstart Fashion Pack with jumpsuits for your characters, a Vintage Scooter vehicle, and the Walls to Floor Decor Pack which adds additional paintings and rugs to decorate with.
Life by You Early Access
The full release of Life by You will come after a lengthy early access period, we found out on the Paradox Tectonic FAQ page.
The developer expects the life sim to be in Early Access for "at least 12 months" in order to build on and add to the game with players. While the timeframe is subject to change as development progresses, the Early Access period will be used to gather feedback from players "to determine the ideas and content" that will be included in the full launch. The first 100,000 Early Access players will be able to provide feedback on Life By You's private Discord server, where they'll also get to see behind-the-scenes looks "and more".
While a lot of additions will be based on feedback from the community, there's already a wishlist of features the team are currently working on, including further developing and improving children characters in the world, who haven't been fully implemented as of yet. Those who buy the game in early access will not need to repurchase Life by You when it launches in full, but as substantial changes are expected to occur during the Early Access period, saves may be impacted as the team work on changing features and adding fixes. Should anything impact saves, Paradox offers assurance that this will be communicated to players.
"Life is a huge topic, and life simulation is only limited by your imagination," the Paradox Tectonic devs write, "so we know that there's a lot we can add with your input. This is a huge game, we can't wait to keep working on it with you!".
Life by You stories and conversations
Interestingly, Life by You will let you have "real-language conversations" in the world, with a Conversation Editor that will let you craft your own conversations in-game. The screenshot shows a graph of a dialogue tree, with different phrases. Intriguingly, Paradox's official site for the game states that conversations are generated "based on your human's unique situation", which has us wondering how this works in practice.
There will also be different quests and a quest editor in the world that will unlock new experiences, with goals to complete. It sounds as though you'll be able to bring to life a story of your own, and not unlike the sims, you can climb up the career ladder, fall in love, and build up your family. It was also revealed that you'll be able to create custom jobs and careers for your characters in the world.
Life by You customization
What makes the prospect of Life by You so exciting as a true Sims competitor is the amount of customization it looks set to offer. For starters, the new life sim will let you make your own human with its character creator, which has a wealth of features that will let you shape them as you wish. Alongside setting their age and life stage, you also can choose their gender (which includes a non-binary option) and body shape. As well as creating the look of your character, you can also pick personality and character traits, and select a background to help shape their story.
Paradox is also going rogue when it comes to EA's PG-13 views on sex and nudity; instead of having naked characters blurred out like in The Sims 4, the Life by You developer has its heart set on going full-frontal. Guess we won't be needing Wicked Whims or any of the other, more adult-oriented best Sims 4 mods for, uh, realistic gameplay.
Outside of your controllable humans, you'll also be able to build and customize homes and businesses for them. In fact, you can rearrange the entire town in Town Creator, with an extensive library of existing lots that can be placed down and other creation tools for items, shops, and more to play around with – it looks set to be an open-world that's there for you to craft and mold.
As we've seen in screenshots and the initial trailer, the builder and character creation tools also feature color wheels to customize clothing and decor, which was a beloved feature in Sims games of old.
Life by You Creator Tools
As Paradox is designing Life by You to be the "most moddable" simulation, you'll be able to make your own in-game content through mods. With a variety of creator tools, such as an Object Editor Tool, Paradox is set to reveal more about this aspect of the game on its official YouTube channel in the future.
What's more, the developer has recently confirmed that creators will be able to monetize their Life By You mods at some point, and that it will not be asking for a cent of their earnings. It's certainly a change from the way things are done for Sims modders, where mods are generally free unless you wish to donate to a creator's Patreon page.
Life by You open-world
As an open-world simulation, Life by You is said to have no loading screens as you venture about town. From the trailer it looks pretty sizable, with green fields and beaches. Excitingly, there are also different modes of transport options – bikes, cars, buses, and skateboards have been shown off so far.
Life by You system requirements
As a PC release, Paradox listed both the minimum and recommended specs to run Life by Run on your setup, which you can find below:
Minimum Specs
- OS: Windows 10
- Processor: Intel Core i5-8600 / AMD Ryzen 5 2600
- Memory: 16 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 4GB / AMD Radeon R9 380 4GB
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 25 GB available space
- Optimized for 30 FPS
Recommended Specs
- OS: Windows 10/11
- Processor: Intel Core i5-10400F / AMD Ryzen 5 3600
- Memory: 16 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 6GB/AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 25 GB available space
- Optimized for 30 FPS
Recent updates
This article was updated on July 27 to reflect the news that the Life By You early access release date has been delayed from September 12, 2023, to March 5, 2023.
