Revisiting MySims After 17 Years
During Chirstmas, I was gifted the MySims Cozy Bundle for the Nintendo Switch (thanks to my family), and boy, was it a trip down memory lane. Since I am predictable, I spent a long time on character customization before settling on the Sim below:
I chose him out of the other 9 sims I made. It was a hard choice, but I’ve been digging the “depressed office worker” aesthetic lately.
Background on MySims
MySims released in 2007 as a spin-off series of The Sims aimed to boost its popularity in regions where it wasn’t as successful, i.e. Japan. As opposed to the mainline series, MySims has a more cutesy style with a greater focus on the NPCs. Whereas The Sims focuses more on letting the player make their own sims and tell their own stories, MySims has more of a pre-set narrative.
Another interesting aspect is that there were 2 different versions of MySims depending on which console you played them on, since they were made by 2 separate studios. The DS version was focused on mini games, while the Wii version centered on creating buildings and furniture.
Many people who only played the DS version were disappointed and confused. For me, I grew up with the Wii version and had no idea the DS one was so different! It’s interesting how they made no distinction between the 2 versions as the cover art is identical for both of them.
The MySims Cozy Bundle for the Nintendo Switch is a newer re-release of the Wii version and its sequel, MySims Kingdom.
Lore and Gameplay
The premise of MySims games usually have you play as “a Sim living life in a dilapidated land, and using new creative abilities bestowed upon you in order to restore and rejuvenate the world you live in” (MySims Wiki).
The gameplay loop consists of:
- Meeting new characters.
- Receiving tasks from them.
- Collecting essences (aka supplies).
- Using those essences to make furniture for the characters.
- Rinse and Repeat.
For #3, essences are essentially supplies that can be used to design objects. You collect them by finding them in the world through fishing, gardening, prospecting, or interacting with the characters. They can be objects like apples or more abstract things like happiness or anger essences.
Depending on the character, they will like or dislike certain types of essences. For instance, Sir Vincent Skullfinder dislikes Cute essences but loves Spooky and Studious ones.
The game isn’t terribly difficult since it was made for kids, but it really shines through its characters and creative options.
In particular, I enjoy all the cute little interactions and animations you can see while walking around town. You can splash around the fountain for a bit or have a tea party with the characters.
Criticisms
As charming as these animations are, they have little impact on gameplay aside from occassionally getting essences from them. My one critique on this game is that I wish there were more life sim elements in it.
The core focus is really the furniture-making and building aspect, which I do enjoy but it can get a bit repetitive. It would have been nice to have more variety in the gameplay with additional life sim features. In the mainline Sims games, your sim could have jobs or hobbies and more in-depth relationships with other sims. Playing MySims made me want to return to the mainline Sims games or Animal Crossing for scratching that “life sim” itch.
A lot of the world also just felt empty. I would unlock new areas and find new essences, but the novelty would wear off pretty fast as I would just be waiting for my sim to walk back to the main town to make new furniture. However, I will say a big appeal to the game is filling the empty lots with new sims to move into your town, so maybe I just need to play more to fill out the world.
Nonetheless, I do understand that this is a 2007 game and they might not have had the time or resources to add all those extra life sim features. Plus, it may not have been a priority for them in the first place as this is primarily a building game. It’s not bad by any means, it just made me want more with how charming they made the game world. I still thoroughly enjoy the game despite these criticisms.
Extra Goodies
Revisiting MySims had me feeling extra nostalgic. I remember playing the game afterschool as a child and building the wackiest houses with my sister. I shared a save file with her so I would have to play as a girl character. 🤣
I definitely have a deeper appreciation for these games as an adult. Especially with how difficult game development, design, and writing are. I went down a rabbit hole earlier and found that there’s still a dedicated community of MySims fans! Seeing that made me really happy.
I’ll leave these links here in case anyone else wants to go down a MySims rabbit hole.
MySims Communities
- r/mysims - reddit community
- Tumblr: @mysimspc - blog for MySims content
- Tumblr: @theflowerbunny - mods for MySims PC version
- YouTube: Prudence Softly - MySims gameplay and commentary videos
MySims Staff Portfolios
These are the portfolio pages of some of the people who worked on MySims. They were posted by @mysimspc on their tumblr blog. It’s impressive seeing all the hard work that was poured into these games.
Ending Notes
It’s been nice revisiting this series after such a long time. I’m still working my way through the first MySims, but I’m looking forward to starting the 2nd game in the bundle, MySims Kingdom. Maybe that’ll be a future blog post. 😉
Hope you all have a wonderful holiday and new year!