MySims

  Explore a whole new world with MySims--it's your world to transform. Move to a town that has been struggling lately. With a little creativity and some help from the locals, you can make this place thrive. Improve the town to attract new characters, from the Italian chef and florist to the kickboxing instructor and DJ. Discover what the residents want and need, so that you can help them enjoy life in their town.

  

  MySims is about micro-managing, but instead of creating a character and then getting a job and living a life vicariously through that character, you create a character and embark into a fantasy world that is falling apart. Your goal is to rebuild it … sometimes literally and sometimes just in terms of relationships.

In MySims, the world is a fantasy kingdom that has fallen into a state of disrepair. There were builders, who created everything from houses to environmental elements and furniture. The last builder disappeared and since that time Sims have moved away. The central town is sparsely populated and the mayor needs something, or someone, that will help bring the people back. That’s where you come in – you are a new builder. Your job is to build a house, a workshop, gather Essences to use in creating attributes for the items you build, and then build the buildings and furnishings that will take the town from a sparse population to a robust, thriving community.

The game is rather linear in the design of the missions, but players are free to build items when they wish and to have some fun with bypassing the ghost blueprint and get creative in the design of the item being built.

The game begins with the player creating a character and then arriving in the town to start the renovations. Of course you have to meet with the mayor and that will embark players on a tutorial of the game’s mechanics. Building houses and businesses evolve around a building plot where you can drop shapes from a decent selection of building components, and then one-touch paint them. To start with, you will need blueprints to get the basic ideas down, but as you progress, you can use the basic building blocks to create your own furniture and accessories.

  Don’t worry if you get a little lost the first few spins around the town. There is a map and you can click on a location to bring up in-game navigation.

And then there are the Essences, which initially come into play as you enter the painting mode. Later, you can use them to build (like the red apples you initially collect) to make items appeal to Sims more.

If you are starting to think this sounds a little familiar, you are right. MySims launched on the Wii and Nintendo DS in September of 2007. The major difference between those titles and the PC version is, of course, the game controls and the amount of content available on the PC. The PC version has much more in terms of characters and things to create. 

 

  The controls for the PC version are simple enough to understand. You can use the WASD to move, but the camera is rotated with the Q and E buttons. When you are in build mode, you rotate objects with keys in the same key framework. 

  The game also sports a multiplayer element with players able to visit a shared garden space by using the train station. You can interact with others, trade items and build a small social network. 

For: Nintendo DS, Wii, PC.
 

Also available: MySims Skyheroes, MySims Agents and MySims Agents.
           Game Rating:                    
 73.36%