The Sims has a pretty strong hold on the life simulation genre, but it will soon get some competition — new indie game Alterlife is aiming to break into the genre and it looks pretty interesting.
Alterlife is an upcoming life simulation game built in the Unreal Engine. It looks like it plans to have many of the same features of The Sims and a few interesting spins on the formula, too. Check out the Alterlife Reveal Trailer to see how the game's alpha holds up!
Can Alterlife Compete with The Sims?
The Alterlife trailer certainly looks cool, but whether or not it can actually deliver on its promises remains to be seen.
Aside from what looks like a pretty solid character creator, this new life sim showed off a furniture customization tool that would let you add a personal touch to your virtual home. Tens of thousands of items are promised to be in the launch, but you'll need money to actually buy all of these things. That's where the dozens of planned career choices comes into the game.
Alterlife is being made by an apparently new indie developer VGG Studio. However, the game's Steam Store page also links to the upcoming games Roman Empire Wars and Viking City Builder on Steam, and one of these other two games was mentioned as being published by House Flipper publisher PlayWay in a press release; therefore, it's likely that this new life sim game is also being published by PlayWay.
The trailer showcases pretty much everything that's needed to make a life sim, but whether or not it can match the quality of EA's decades-old franchise The Sims is something we can't quite say until we actually play it. It isn't the only upcoming competition in the genre, either; Paralives is another indie-developed life sim that has been in the works for a couple of years now. The developer of Paralives also happens to have a good chunk of experience from working on PewDiePie's Tuber Simulator, and it showed off quite a few interesting features of its own in a 2019 feature over at Game Informer.
When is the Alterlife Release Date?
Unfortunately, the Alterlife release date has not been announced; the game's public reveal recently arrived via a YouTube Premiere.
Judging by the state of the trailer (and a label that notes this footage is from the Alpha), I imagine that we'll probably be able to play it in Steam Early Access sometime in the near future. For now, you can add Alterlife to your wishlist on Steam.
Do you think Alterlife will be able to compete with The Sims and other upcoming life sim games like Paralives? What would you want to see in a life sim game? Let us know in the comments below!
