Paralives

Paralives takes place in an open world with employment opportunities and different events, such as festivals.[2] Players can build houses, create characters and control their lives in a desired way.[3]

The character creator, titled as "Paramaker",[4] allows the customization of the appearance with sliders and color wheel as the options. Players are able to make changes to the physique and height, and by using the color wheel, the root and the shade of the hair can be toggled as intended.[5][6]

Paralives was created by an independent game developer Alex Massé,[4] After working on several projects such as PewDiePie's Tuber Simulator and a number of demos for Project Tiny, Massé made a decision to quit his job and develop Paralives regularly.[1] Initially, Paralives was a solo project, but Massé hired people to work on the game: Léa Sorribès, Christine Gariépy, and Anna Thibert, forming Paralives Studio.[4] As of October 16, 2020, the team consists of seven people in total after they hired a new intern 3D artist.[7]

Massé thought that previous life simulation games did not have a tool that allowed easy and precise creation of any house in-game, which prompted him to design Paralives to offer a sense of endless customization.[1] He was inspired by the road tool found in Cities: Skylines, and tried to make it work in Paralives, thinking it would fit well for placing walls and building houses.[4] The developers incorporated the technique of procedural animation, which involves automatic reactions based on previously created animations, to avoid the need of animating every situation possible and save some developing time. Considering the game is being funded through a crowdfunding platform Patreon, the backers are invited to propose suggestions regarding what type of content would they like to see in the full release.[1] Massé was influenced by Ooblets's success on the service, and decided to join it as well, having admired the support it had just from the concept art and idea alone. He hoped the Patreon page would aid the development enough to hire another artist. As of August 2020, it contains close to 9,000 supporters and earns near $40,000 per month.[8] The team held a survey covering ethnic and cultural diversity, asking the fans which items and hairstyles from their cultures would they like to see.[4] According to Massé, there is a document with 100 pages called the "Parabook", containing all the ideas collected so far. Massé's plan is to support the game with free updates and modding, where people would share their designs on Steam Workshop.[1] The team wanted to offer a realistic life simulation, meaning no supernatural characters in the game like ghosts or aliens.

• 2020 Canadian Game Devs - Most Anticipated Canadian Game Winner[9]

• Official website