‘Sims’ all about paying

The Sims Mobile For: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android From: Electronic Arts Minimum software requirements: Requires iOS 9.0 or later, Android 4.1 and up Rating: (12plus) ★★★★ Price: Free (contains optional inapp purchases)

By NEILIE JOHNSON

AFREETOPLAY life simulation,

The Sims Mobile lets players create and control virtual ‘‘dolls’’. Players can friend each other and chat with virtual and real friends. Sims characters do things real world people do, including fighting, dating, sitting on the toilet, showering, getting married and having babies. Sexual content, nudity, and other adult themes are implied rather than shown. While it’s freetoplay, the game implies that it’s easier to pay for progress or additional items for sessions. The app’s privacy policy details the kinds of information collected and shared.

What’s it about?

The Sims Mobile is the latest iteration on Electronic Arts’ longrunning simulation franchise, and as such, focuses on creating a stable of characters, guiding them through their careers and social lives. After customising two playable characters, you’re given a simple home for your ‘‘Sims’’ and a list of tasks to perform. These, along with longterm quests, earn you experience points, and various kinds of currency, which you can use to buy clothes, furnishings and decor. Daily login rewards grant currency and energy refills and you can watch ads for other apps to obtain further rewards. Gameplay is energybased, which means when your daily allotment of energy is gone, you have to buy more energy in the inapp shop or stop playing.

Is it any good?

This is a fun little app for newbies and Sims veterans alike, although its basic, nofrills content is likely to appeal more to players new to the series. What makes it fun is having the kind of control none of us has in real life, not to mention more social and career options.

On top of that, the game’s tongueincheek approach is endlessly entertaining — or it would be, in a nonenergylimited scenario.

Buying energy is more or less essential if you want to play longer than 10 minutes. In addition to that, you need lots of other kinds of currency to progress at a decent rate and unlock enough of the game to make it interesting. If you opt for the freetoplay approach, be prepared to sign in multiple times a day as your energy slowly recharges, and be prepared for a lot of repetition at the start.

For quite a few levels, all your characters can do is go to work and attend other players’ parties. Oh, they can date and engage in one or two hobbies, (if they’ve unlocked them) but with most of the clothes, furniture, buildings and activities locked until higher levels, they can’t do much else.

Things pick up, of course, once you level up (or spend some money), but without spending a lot of time (or a lot of money) you and your characters are in for a routine as banal and repetitious as most of us endure in real life. — TCA