Details From The Sims 4 Life & Death Developer Stream

A new Life & Death Developer Stream was broadcast today and we learned SO much—if you’re a long-time player of The Sims you’ve got to check this out!

Today on The Sims‘ YouTube channel there was a ~2 hour livestream that went into detail about the Life & Death Expansion Pack that’s releasing next week. We got a look at everything from CAS and Buy/Build to the new World and Gameplay features, and I’m so excited to share it with you. As a bonus, if you’ve been playing the franchise for a long time or you’re big into The Sims lore, you will be quite pleased with what’s coming. Let’s jump in!

Life & Death Developer Stream

The Life & Death Developer Stream was introduced by a faceless Grimtern before jumping over to several members of The Sims Team, who gave us a thorough look into the upcoming Pack. There’s so much to share!

CAS

Behind The Sims Host Mersea and Art Director Mike gave us a look at a bunch of new CAS assets that really embrace the concepts of Life and Death in beautiful ways, with an amazing attention to detail and a variety of pieces you’ll love no matter your style. Mike lovingly referred to it as “Death Shroud-Core.”

A lot of the clothing is gender-neutral and bears motifs such as cameos, skulls, butterflies, feathers, and sheer fabrics. Sims of every age get some new content, with pieces styled for more traditional looks as well as modern takes of the dark aesthetic. Mersea summed it up well when she said, “I feel like this Pack was made for the Goth family,” as she showed off some new Life & Death looks with our favorite spooky household.

I love the punky details of the outfit shown here on Cassandra, and here’s a fun fact: all of the color swatches available for the crow costume are accurate to the real birds’ coloration!

Some of the new CAS assets have Ghost versions as well, with additional details such as tatters, stains, and even some exposed bones! Thee bones show through with the Ghost Overlay turned off as well, so you can fine-tune the look of your wispy sims down to every detail.

They also briefly touched on some of the new hairstyles and abundance of ombré colorways that are meant to evoke that ethereal feel. The CAS section of the Life & Death Developer Stream starts at 1:16:12 if you want to check out every piece that the team shared!

Buy/Build

Morgan and Lead Designer Jessica showed us through most of the other game details. Like the CAS assets a lot of new items for regular gameplay have hidden motifs as well, and it became a game with the team to see if they could hide skulls in places that Mark wouldn’t notice.

When approaching the stylistic themes for this Pack, the team wanted to embrace the old-world feel of the Neo-Romanian world while also having options for a more modernized space.

They took the same approach with wallpapers, adding typical macabre colorways along with softer and brighter options for spaces like Children’s rooms. In the image above you can see that the crow wallpaper has dark & wispy vibes, but then the swatch on the left has little sparkle details that make it look less foreboding and more storybook.

The whole object overview begins at 1:49:57 but here are some highlights:

• There are “new” and “old” swatches for many pieces like windows which involve things like missing glass and damage. If you run multigenerational families and the passage of time is a big factor in your play style, details like this allow you to show age without having to completely replace or redo your spaces.
• A new roof detail object adds holes to the roof, and these objects can be used on the floor as well for ground hole damage.
• All of the new gravestone and urn items are available as decorative objects so you can build cemeteries right away without the need to kill dozens of sims first.
• An object of note is the Customizable Memorial Display where you can place things like objects that were important to your late sim, pieces that represent them, and a photo. The photo can be one you’ve taken through gameplay or it can be auto-populated with a portrait of the decedent as they looked in life.
• A new Pet, a crow, comes with this Pack. Treat it well or you might learn firsthand about why the new Death type is “Death by Murder of Crows.”
• A new Lot Trait called On Hallowed Grounds adds extra supernatural elements to an area, such as TVs showing static, flickering lights, cold spots, and Netherworld Rifts. This Lot Trait can be combined with the Haunted House Residential Lot Type for even more scares!

The World

We’ve previously gone over some of the details of the new World of Ravenwood, but the Life & Death Developer Stream dove deeper and shared some cool new features.

There are several City Hall buildings throughout the world where sims can go to fill their needs, do research, or start a Will. You also have the option to focus the camera on places of interest such as festival locations, since they might be tricky to locate on your own. Another point of interest in the world as signs where sims will occasionally be found who your characters can sell Collectibles to. Finally, the big stone face we saw in the trailers is called The Artifact and it changes expressions!

Each neighborhood in the new World has a focus. Whispering Glen is a more “alive” area while Crow’s Crossing floats in-between, and Mourningvale is the closest to the “afterlife” where things seem almost out-of-time. Every neighborhood has several Festivals and Events that gravitate towards their focus, but each place is meant to be welcoming for the living and the dead alike.

In the Festival area of Crow’s Crossing you will often see specters floating around, and in Mourningvale you will find the Baleful Bog where sims can float between states of being alive and dead (maybe they should have called it Schrödinger Lake). Don’t swim in there too often, though!

Haunted Places

In addition to wayward specters in Crow’s Crossing, there are several locations that are straight-up haunted by special NPC Ghosts that can be interacted with in unique ways.

The Well of Longing and Regret is haunted by the Ghost of a little girl named Edith who died from drowning, and making contact with her is one of the Aspiration Goals for the new Ghost Historian Aspiration. She has a terrible screeching voice and can scare sims to the point of running away or even passing out!

A large and mysterious arbor called The Guardian Tree can be found in Mourningvale, haunted by a Ghost named Alice who carries the title “Weeping Mother.” She has quest lines to follow, and apparently has a history with some of the other local spirits.

Festivals

There are so many new Festivals and Events coming in Life & Death with themes and activities befitting the neighborhood they take place in. Some of them include the Family Day Festival, Celebration of Life, Moon Revelry, Thinned Festiveil, and Afterlife Anonymous.

Gameplay

There really is so much that we saw in the Life & Death Developer Stream, but let’s touch on some of the bigger aspects of new gameplay.

Bucket Lists, Wills, & Heirlooms

As the EP name suggests both Life and Death are touched upon in this pack. The Bucket List is something sims can take an active or passive role in, with bucket list activities populating organically based on who your sim is and they can also be chosen by the player. You have the option of guiding the kind of bucket list items you want to see, or even be exact about it with the right Traits. And if you ever find that it’s not working out you can discard the Bucket List and start over.

While sims are alive they can create a Will in several ways, such as at Town Hall, on the computer, or at the Family Day Festival. There are multiple aspects to a sim’s Will. Sims can choose to leave their money to others, donate it to charity, or a combination of the two. Items of sentimental or monetary value can be made into Heirlooms which can be willed to specific sims upon death. This is the opportunity for sims to also outline the types of activities they’d like featured at their Funeral and their preferred gravestone or urn. You can also choose an emotion that informs how sims react to the Will reading.

Heirlooms, Wills, and Graves all have the option to add a personalized note. In the image above Morgan added special notes about the backstory of the Heirloom objects, denoting the clock as a wedding gift and recalling the moments mother and daughter shared on the piano.

Tarot Quests

Throughout Ravenwood sims can find Tarot Tome Shrines where they can learn about various quests to complete in exchange for Tarot cards. There is a more basic Tarot deck available in Buy Mode, but sims who complete their Tarot deck by doing these quests gets you an advanced deck with more capabilities. Each card has its own method of earning it and you’re able to check those requirements anytime in your sim’s Collections menu. You can also purchase the Tarot cards as wall decor because the artwork was just too lovely to keep trapped in those tiny cards.

The Tarot cards are all designed as references to The Sims, and not just this iteration. And yes, I’m still salty that didn’t make them available in the Sims Shop…

Let’s Woohoo!

Life Death is short, but it’s not too short to Woohoo everywhere you can! In addition to the ability to Woohoo in Crypts, there’s a new activity called Transcendent Woohoo that happens between Ghosts, or a Ghost and a sim who has temporarily transcended into Ghost form. From there things get freaky, as your two non-corporeal sims can possess almost anything and Woohoo in it. TVs, couches, bookshelves…almost nothing is off-limits to lusty sprites.

The ability to Woohoo with Grim has been added to the base game, but with Life & Death your sims can also procreate with him!

Other Neat Features

Since the Life & Death Developer Stream covered so much, there are a lot of smaller details we want to mention, too.

The LORE!

If you have played The Sims franchise for a while like I have, you are going to lose it for the amount of lore and references there are in this expansion. One of my personal favorites is the Freezer Boney added to the new fridge, which is a reference to the original Freezer Bunny’s first ever appearance in the series. As we mentioned above the new Tarot cards have artwork that pertains to in-game lore (check out 1:56:18 for an example), but there’s even more than that.

There is a premade family that ships with the pack who bear the surname Specter. One of those sims is a nervous-looking teenager with an interesting birthmark that references his Grimborn Trait, and his mother Olive has quite a storied history in The Sims 2. He goes by the name Nyon Spectre (which I was unable to locate an applicable meaning or etymology on) now, but those of us who know, know. Luckily since The Sims 4 occurs in a different timeline, players have the power to change the subject in regards to Nyon’s fate.

Misc Tidbits

• A new Skill called Thanatology is based on the study of death, its associated rituals, views on it, etc. Sims who master this Skill can make motivational concoctions and speak a dead language.
• Sims with the Ghost Historian Aspiration can unlock the ability to write Horror novels.
• Players can now decide to make their Ghost stay a single consistent color instead of ti changing with their mood.
• Some houses in the Crow’s Crossing neighborhood can be infested with or cleansed of Ghosts. You will see the windows of the building changing color as if an otherworldly rave is happening inside.
• A Ghostly NPC known as the Mysterious Merchant can be found roaming around they Crypt in Crow’s Crossing who sells things like “authentic” premade Wills. He also sells extra souls, and other Ghosts can earn money from him by trading in Essences they gather from interacting with the living.
• You can find a section about the new Rebirth mechanic starting at 1:11:38. Based on the conversations between Morgan and Jessica it sounds like there’s no limit on how many times a sim can experience Rebirth.
• There’s an entire section of the Life & Death Developer Stream dedicated to the Reaper Career which is an Active Career. It starts at 36:23 in the video and goes over all the details—we may do a dedicated post about this in the future.

Final Thoughts On The Life & Death Developer Stream

There is just so much that we learned today in the Life & Death Developer Stream that it’s impossible to thoroughly cover it all in just one post, but hopefully we conveyed quite a bit of it here.

Occasionally I like to inject my personal experiences into these posts, and I really have to do it for this one. Simmers, I am so excited about the Life & Death Expansion Pack! One thing that stood out to me again and again throughout the stream was how everything we saw from clothing to furniture to build elements and more just will integrate seamlessly with the content in other Packs. The Sims team did such an amazing job here trying to make this EP blend seamlessly into the preexisting content from The Sims 4 and I never once looked at an item and thought to myself, “who will ever use this?” They really brought their A-game with this Expansion and I’m happy to see this quality returning to a franchise so many of us love.

Additionally, it’s been wonderful seeing the team look back to the past. We got some Sims 2 influences in the Lovestruck EP and now they’re going even further by pulling in “ancient” lore and adding concepts and characters that the old-school players know and love. It’s as if the team is saying “yes we want to bring in new players, but to the long-term OG simmers, we see you too!”

So simmers, what did you think of the Life & Death Developer Stream? Are you as excited about it as I am? Let me know what stood out to you the most, what surprised you the most, or what you’re most looking forward to. Until next time, spooky simming!