Of course, the trouble with having a particular story in mind when you’re playing a challenge is that you inevitably end up with some screenshots that don’t fit the storyline. So here is a random-ish selection of oddities, bloopers and things that just didn't work at the time.
A Serious Ghost ProblemWell, actually, there are quite a lot of problems with playing a family of ghosts. All that “Ew!” business makes medical clinics and autograph sessions almost impossible and just meeting a new Sim takes twice as long as normal. Also, they keep creeping up behind people and scaring them. I'm not sure Macy did but she was my only good Sim ghost. Evil, rebellious and hot-headed ones do it
a lot.
There’s the whole transparency thing, especially when they're small. Take a ghost toddler out in bright sunlight and there’s a risk of losing them.
And then there’s the drifting between levels. To start with, this was only happening with the NPC ghosts but later on the spiral staircases all kept glitching and everyone started taking shortcuts – with the result that Joe’s top and bottom halves celebrated their adult birthday on different floors of the house.
Ana was clearly used to this sort of thing…
Even after they became human, they sometimes reverted.
Assorted oddities
Vicky mourning her wokSeriously, what is that? It certainly looks nothing like Steward, who had just died – and I hadn’t noticed any cooking mishaps.
Because I knew she’d eventually be leaving the family to make room for the last generation or two, Vicky didn’t get age-frozen but took regular doses of Young Again potion instead. Clearly, it tasted awful.
Incidentally, Chris ended up doing the same. She did have Age Freeze but it stopped working after two or three weeks. The game knew she’d taken it, so she couldn’t use spare LTHPs to buy any more. I initially thought it must be another ghost problem but all of the others were OK. So Chris took Young Again again whenever she approached elderhood (and she had a midlife crisis
every single time she aged up to adult
).
On the subject of face-pulling (which I was until I got distracted), the prize for Best Labour Face goes to Deirdra Ogle:
Somewhere around generation 6 or 7, the game started producing townies with rhyming names.
On the left, we have Dane Spain (father of Tavares) and on the right, Mason Cason.
Apparently, this is Will’s main squeeze (and the camera never lies).
Imaginary Friends Turned Not-Quite-Real
While Lou was skilling at the library, these two turned up. I noticed their names were Cosmo and Rags Goole but it took me a couple of days to remember whose imaginary friends they were. In fact, they belonged to Lee and Kate, Emily’s triplet sisters who had disappeared three generations earlier. I was going to work them into the story but found that none of the active Sims could interact with them. They also appeared (in doll form) among Emily’s friends, although I don’t think she'd ever met them. Ana clearly knew something was going on and wasn’t at all happy about it:
Bloopers
Pillow fights can be dangerousJoe and Macy dancing together after their wedding wasn’t quite as romantic as it appeared in the story. Macy wasn’t clumsy but appeared to be a terrible dancer anyway. Poor Joe had his toes trampled repeatedly. His friend Chet Gilliam was not impressed.
When Tavares temporarily joined the household to take potions and produce Sam, I moved Will next door. Since he was the hot-headed one, it seemed sensible (the first time he met Vicky’s boyfriend Alonzo, he leapt on him and beat him up). Unfortunately, I’d forgotten that it was Will who had the Fireproof Homestead reward and the inevitable happened...
Fortunately, brave Emily was around to put it out but by the time the excitement was over, Tavares’ ghost potion had worn off. It was just as well that Ana had a few spares. Still, it gave them all a new topic of conversation for the next few days.
And, of course, Vernon’s
real first reaction to meeting his beloved wife in ghost form was this:
(The ghost orphans were worse – Wilhelmina Leaf and Davey Moans are both cowards. It was hours before they stopped passing out and I could get some screenshots of them looking happy to be there
.)
GrimnessAny multi-generation game is going to feature Grim quite a lot. He hung around chatting for a long time after several of the deaths - he seemed particularly excited by all the new conversational opportunities provided by Seasons - and once spent most of a day reading in the town library. These are my favourite Grim pictures, though:
Answering the phone (it was a notification that a family friend was about to die of old age, which you’d really think he would have known already)...
...and cooking burgers at the Performance Park after taking three of Ana’s friends (which led to her finally getting the Oh My Ghost! opportunity after several weeks of waiting). Apparently, he’s not a natural cook:
Ana MadnessIt’s only right to finish where all of this all began, with Ana. It probably didn't show in the story but she was the maddest Sim I’ve played in a long time.
And that really is...
THE END
Edit: or not, as it turns out. Sam went on to live out his life as co-founder of a
4x4 dynasty.
