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I raised seven babies at the same time in The Sims 4 Growing Together expansion

2K View2023-03-19

The Sims series has always been about making your own fun. Whether you want to raise a happy family or get away with murder, you’re encouraged to play by your own rules. All that freedom can be fun, but it can also get a little boring, which is where player-created Sims challenges come in.

Challenges require players to follow specific rules and restrictions during a playthrough. For example, Rags to Riches challenges have players start with no money on an empty lot and work their way up from scratch. In the Breed Out the Weird challenge, players make a monstrosity in Create-a-Sim and breed out their bizarre traits one generation at a time.

The crème de la crème, the Grand Prix of Sims challenges, is the 100 Baby Challenge. Initially created for The Sims 2, the goal of this challenge is to have and raise one hundred babies to adulthood. No two pregnancies can have the same father, and the mother must raise her babies alone. It’s an extremely tough challenge that can take years to complete.

Even though Sims baby challenges are hugely popular, infants in the game have never been that exciting. For most of Sims history, babies have basically been potatoes. They cry, sleep, and sit in their bassinet until they’re ready to age up. However, now that The Sims 4 has released a new infant update, babies are a force to be reckoned with.

Infants now have their own life stage, which means they can actually interact with other sims. Not only do infants need lots of care and attention, but they can get into trouble when left unattended. Over time, babies learn to sit up and crawl, giving them the chance to dig through the trash can and dump things on the floor. Infants even have distinct personalities and traits, which has inspired some new baby challenges.

So far, I’ve seen two new baby challenges pop up since the Growing Together expansion pack launched. The Seven Infant challenge asks players to raise seven babies at the same time, while the Every Infant challenge has them raise one infant of every personality type. (There are six in total: Calm, Intense, Wiggly, Sensitive, Sunny, and Cautious).

I decided to split the difference and made a household with all six infant types, along with a bonus infant for good measure. I also gave the infants a caretaker: the aptly named Bebe McBaby.

It was clear this was going to be a disaster right from the start. When I loaded my household, babies were sprawled on the sidewalk as their caretaker, Bebe, stared miserably at the ground, lamenting her fate. One of my babies was missing, but a quick search revealed that he was safe indoors, where he was lying on the ground and staring at a teddy bear.

I quickly gutted my starter home of anything a normal household would need and filled it with baby goods, like cribs and play mats. While I had enough supplies to meet each infant’s needs, my caregiver didn’t have enough arms (or willpower). When a thunderstorm struck, Bebe cowered in fear while an army of infants cried on playmats.

All of my babies were miserable save one: my calm infant, who I creatively named Calm. Not only was he pretty chill about being ignored, but he actually developed a personality quirk that caused him to dislike being held. For some strange reason, being ignored while infants screamed and cried around him made him happy. It was a little weird, but since I had six other babies to care for, I was happy to give him what he wanted.

Depending on how they’re raised, infants in The Sims 4 can potentially develop bonus traits that they’ll carry with them into future life stages. Happy infants will find it easier to build positive relationships with other sims, but unhappy infants will grow up to be headstrong and defiant. That means they’ll be even more difficult to care for as toddlers.

The 100 Baby Challenge was already hard, but with the new update, it seems borderline impossible. Even the new, shorter infant challenges are extremely punishing. The Growing Together expansion hasn’t just added more family gameplay to The Sims 4. It’s found a way to weed out the weak. From now on, only the toughest Sims players will be able to get through baby challenges in one piece.

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