Paralives: 10 Tips and Tricks We Wish We Knew Sooner

Paralives is finally here and life sim fans are all over it after waiting for seven years. Announced back in 2019, it's become regarded as the game that will finally challenge the monopoly The Sims 4 had over the life sim genre.

However, Paralives is definitely its own thing, with a unique art style, an open world, and some great tools and features that make it distinct from both InZOI and The Sims 4. Between live and build mode, all the new options can be overwhelming, but much of Paralives is more simple than it first appears. Here are some tips and tricks for Paralives to make your playthrough a breeze.

10 Building a House Foundation

Some Experimentation May be Necessary

Building a foundation isn't quite as simple as it is in The Sims 4. There's no dedicated tool for it, and the process itself isn't intuitive, but it is possible and fairly easy once you get the hang of it.

1. Create a room using the wall tool.
2. Click the arrow pointing up and drag the walls down to the size you want the foundation to be.
3. This will make a room for ants, but you can build on top of it, making the second floor the first.

Creating a porch and stairs are other places that you may get stuck. The solution here is the Separator tool, which you can find as the third wall tool option. This has a bit of a learning curve, but it also means you can create things like conversation pits and engawa in any home fairly easily.

9 Layer Your Clothes

Create Your Own Styles by Mixing and Matching

We're right at the very start of Paralives' Early Access, and while the Paramaker is truly remarkable, there aren't too many clothing options at the moment. This can be rectified somewhat with some workarounds that are already there. The Paramaker includes tools to customize your clothing choices, most notably the option to tuck your shirt in or out, and the option to layer your clothes.

Layering your clothes and tucking in your shirt can change your look in surprising ways, and give a whole lot of additional looks on top of the ones that are already available. Don't just go with the defaults, experiment with the layers, colors, and textures, and suddenly a lot of new options will open up.

8 Own Multiple Homes

Buy Up the Town

Melino is a beautiful town with tons of nooks to explore, and you never know what's around every corner. Having one house in town is nice, but two are nicer. You can feasibly own all the available homes and properties in Melino, but this would take a while if you're not using money cheats.

To buy a new home or property, go to the main map and click on the For Sale home you want to buy. You can then switch between the two properties seamlessly as Paralives has an open world. Take advantage of the open world and quick transition between Live Mode and Build/Buy mode to effortlessly customize your different properties.

7 Keep Your Swatch UI Clean

Make Your Life Easier

Paralives has given us some incredible tools for customization. For most items, you can simply click and drag to customize the size of objects. There's also a color wheel, and you can pretty much customize the color and material of every part of a piece of furniture or item in Paralives.

Landing on a color and texture you want can take a bit of experimentation, which in itself leads to very chaotic swatch cards. My cards soon filled up with colors and textures that I was just trying out, and soon I was overloaded with overflowing cards with swatches I'll never use. As you create a swatch you don't want, immediately delete it by right-clicking on the swatch and selecting "Delete".

6 Use the Hash Code

Make Things Quick and Easy

Matching colors across furniture sets is always of the utmost importance, and it drives me nuts when the color is just slightly off. This may be solved with the color wheel, but sometimes getting that swatch color exactly right takes a lot of time and frustration, especially under different sources of light.

Skip the drama and just use the hash code. You can play around with the color wheel then copy and paste the resulting hash code, or just immediately input it if you know the code for the color you want. Hash codes are a lifesaver for furniture sets, and have already saved me a ton of time and sanity.

5 Use The Toggles

There are More Options Behind the Buttons

Like the layers and tucked shirts, Paralives includes different options for hairstyles. Simply click on the icon in the top left corner of the hairstyle tile, and you'll see all the available customization options for that particular hairstyle. Not all hairstyles have alternate options, but it's really helpful for the ones that do have them, particularly in regard to the accessories used for that hairstyle. Most of these variations are for the feminine hairstyles, but hopefully with the upcoming updates more will be added even in Early Access.

The same can be done in Build mode. Many of the furniture items have variations that aren't immediately apparent, but can be seen if you hit those three buttons in the corner. They can be easy to overlook, especially if you're overwhelmed, so keep an eye out for them.

4 Use Cheats

Optimize Your Playthrough

Cheats have become a staple of the life sim genre and take the game a step further in letting you do whatever you want. They're also, notably, essential for when things go wrong, like a Para getting stuck or a bug happens, and you need to reset the character.

To open the cheat screen, press Ctrl + Shift + C while the game is open. Inputting "help" will bring up the list of cheat codes, but they don't have a description of what they do.

Here are some of the most helpful:

Money:

• setmoney ### - Change the household balance to the input amount, eg. setmoney 10000 (remember the space!)
• printmoney ### - Give the household a set amount, eg. printmoney 2000
• lottery ### - Give a random amount from 1 and 100,000p
• jackpot - Gives 50,000
• makeitrain - Gives 10,000
• piggybank - Gives 1,000
• clearbills - Sets all outstanding bills to 0

For the rest of the cheats in Paralives, you can check out this handy list.

3 Pick Stella

Go Easy on Yourself

Every Paralives playthrough is built around its Storyteller. You pick a Storyteller just after exiting the Paramaker, but you can also change them from the main menu. The Storyteller you pick determines how easy or difficult gameplay will be, and will shape the cards you get at the end of the day.

There are three Storytellers: Ricardo Maxello III, Maxence, and Stella. Each Storyteller shapes the experience, such as the chances of your Para having triplets, job strike threshold, and aging. Because Paralives can be overwhelming when first starting, picking Stella to start with will help ease you into Paralives' new systems and features. Alternatively, you can customize your Storyteller and set the difficulty however you like.

2 Make Use of the Separator Tools

The Secret to a Good Build

The Separator is another new tool introduced in Paralives. It doesn't actually explain what it does or how best to use it, and so may be overlooked when you first get started, which is a pity because it's one of the strongest tools in your arsenal.

The Separator tool lets you place an invisible divider in your builds, essentially creating a new room without walls. This is key to creating porches, leveled rooms, and different floors and wallpapers for the same room. Experiment with it and see what you can create. I've created conversation pits, balconies, and foundations all with this tool, and I can't wait to see what else is possible.

1 Reset for Rags-to-Riches

Your Favorite Challenge is Back

I love a good rags-to-riches challenge, and it remains a player favorite for a reason. There's just something so satisfying seeing your character evolve from battling it out on the streets on the verge of death to owning the biggest house(s) in town, and it makes for great storytelling.

Paralives has several tools that optimize the rags-to-riches challenge. First, you can set your household funds to 0 using cheats or when customizing your Storyteller. Once you're on the Place Household screen, you can click the three dots on the household name card, which will pull up the option to play without a lot. You can start making money by selling junk you find on the beach and around town, or find a job by clicking on the hiring sign businesses post on their doors.