Sunset Valley Times – First Steps into The Sims Social

Via our friends over at Sunset Valley Times, they have published their take on The Sims Social (which is still undergoing beta testing for many of us):

After moving in your new home, you are greeted by none other than Bella Goth, who welcomes you to the neighborhood (called Littlehaven). She’ll teach you the first things you’ll need to know of the game. Because even though it plays very similar to the Sims games on PC/Mac, there are some differences. For instance, there are two types of actions; ones that require energy and ones that don’t. Actions that don’t require energy usually are things like, eating, going to the toilet or taking a shower. Things that do need energy are for instance gardening, composing a song or be social with another Sim. And that’s where some of the trouble with this game comes in. As it’s a “social game” you need to be social with other Sims (your Facebook friends) in order to keep your Sim happy. But when your energy is at 0, you can’t really do anything, so your Sim gets very unhappy and you have to wait for your energy to fill up again. Which takes around 5 minutes for 1 energy point. Of course you can buy new energy, but this costs special coins, which in itself you can earn or buy with real cash. Yup, microtransactions, will probably always be a part of social games unfortunately.

continue on…