While life simulation games like The Sims 4 can be fun for the first few hours, playing aimlessly can result in boredom. Adhering to goals and player-defined scenarios is both creative and fun, and it removes the barriers of boredom and frustration.
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Challenges are a great way to shake up your gameplay and discover parts of The Sims games that you normally wouldn't discover. Challenges have long been a part of The Sims community as far back as The Sims 2 and have been adapted for The Sims 4. They have their own rules, themes, and requirements. Some take place over generations of sim lives, while others for just a portion of one.
Updated June 2nd, 2021 by Shayna Josi: The Sims 4 has had a steady release schedule of expansions, game packs, and stuff packs. These extras all can contribute to the below Sims 4 Challenges to make them richer and more entertaining to play. With more content comes more options of gameplay and scenarios, and so here are some additions to the more classic challenges possible on The Sims 4.
15 Homeless Challenge
The Homeless Challenge is just what it sounds like - create a Sim, remove all their money, and have them rely on the public facilities available to them. The challenge in the Homeless Challenge comes with having very limited funds and utilizing public facilities in creative ways. Your Homeless Sim is not allowed to get a job, but may earn money through hobbies, fishing, collecting, and gardening. The challenge ends when your Sim earns enough money to build a house.
14 Big Brother Challenge
The Big Brother Challenge is based on the reality TV show Big Brother. The goal is to place a variety of Sims in a single household, and once per week evict the Sim that has the least friendships with their housemates. Randomizing the Sims competing and giving them clashing personalities makes the challenge all the more interesting.
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Another fun element of this challenge is building a mansion worthy of being the Big Brother mansion and all that title carries.
13 Bachelor/Bachelorette Challenge
This challenge is also based on a reality TV show, except its focused on romance rather than friendship. Create one male or female Sim, and give them five possible love interests. Move them all into the same household, and once per week evict the Sim that has the lowest romance score with the main Sim. The Sims 4's dating system can be used in this challenge, as well as creating a lavish mansion to house the Sims. Vacation packs, such as The Sims 4: Snowy Escape can be used for romantic vacations with contestants.
12 Masterchef Challenge
This challenge is based on the reality TV cooking show Masterchef. Create five Sims to be contestants, and three judges. The judges must have at least level five Cooking skill. The contestants must begin with no cooking skill and are only allowed to cook on competition days.
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On the other days, the contestants are allowed to grow their own herbs to use in their dishes, and they are allowed to improve their Cooking skill through research. Eliminations occur once a week, where the contestant who created the lowest quality dish is eliminated.
11 Asylum Challenge
This challenge involves pitting Sims against themselves. Create an asylum, then place in it five Sims that all have the Insane trait. Their other traits must be randomized, but they cannot have the Self-Assured trait. Choose one Sim to control, and try to get them to achieve their Aspiration, which means they can leave the asylum. The challenge is won when the asylum is empty.
10 Legacy Challenge
The Legacy Challenge is a classic in The Sims community and was one of the first. The rules of the Legacy challenge are simple: one Sim must be the founder and created in Create-a-Sim. This Sim must be moved into the largest empty lot in the world. No cheats can be used. The founder must have children, who will be the next generation. The challenge ends once the tenth generation is born.
The Legacy challenge is often used as the foundation for other challenges, but it also tells the classic rags-to-riches story. Reaching that tenth generation is truly rewarding.
9 Black Widow Challenge
The Black Widow challenge is all about romance and money. Players make a young adult female Sim and place her in a house. She is not allowed to get a job; all her money must come from her suitors.
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The goal of the challenge is to find and marry a male Sim, preferably a rich one. Host a dinner party, find your sim's next paramour, get caught cheating, and murder your husband. Continue the cycle until your sim gets through ten paramours and is fabulously wealthy. As a bonus, your Sim's traits must include materialistic, snob, and romantic, and her aspiration must be Serial Romantic.
8 100 Baby Challenge
The 100 Baby challenge is another classic. The aim is for a single Sim to have 100 babies.
There are multiple variations of this challenge that either make the challenge a bit easier to complete or even more challenging. Ways to make it more accommodating include stretching the challenge over several generations, with daughters continuing the legacy. Ways to make it more challenging entail not having more than one child per father and, like the Black Widow challenge, your Sim is not allowed a job.
7 Dumpster Challenge
The Dumpster challenge is exactly as it sounds: you buy a dumpster, set your household funds to 0, and your sim survives off everything in that (or a community lot) dumpster provides. This includes food and all furniture.
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Additional rules include not being able to shower at the gym or use any other community lots for anything else. Everything you use must come from the dumpster. It's like a similar homeless challenge, only more restrictive. (Note: This challenge requires The Sims 4: Eco Lifestyle.)
6 Big Sister Challenge
Thanks to a patch, teen Sims can live in a household without an adult. This opened the door to storytelling and challenging opportunities, one of which is the Big Sister challenge.
The rules for this challenge involve placing a teen girl on a lot, with a child of any gender as a younger sibling. The goal of the challenge is for the big sister to raise the child and create a home for her sibling. She must have the Big Happy Family aspiration, and she and the child may have any traits. This challenge is great for any stories geared towards the bonds of sisterhood and has great potential for both drama and heartwarming scenarios.
5 Runaway Teen Challenge
That teen patch also brought the opportunity for the Runaway Teen challenge. This challenge involves having a teen-only household and, as the name suggests, tells the story of a teen who has run away from home and all the trappings that implies.
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You are encouraged to either move from lot to lot, or you can settle down on a lot. You aren't allowed to interact with adults, only children and other teenagers. You must skip school, and you can't get a part-time job. Your teen can earn money by fishing, gardening, and digging. Once they're young adults and have earned enough money to live in a house, they can get a job. The challenge is in building something from nothing and is a bit of a rags-to-riches tale.
4 Berry Challenge
The Berry challenge is a colorful take on the Legacy challenge, where every generation represents a different color and personality. Your sim's hair, clothing, skin color, make-up, and house décor all represent their chosen color. Each generation and color comes with its own set of personality traits and goals.
An alternative to the Berry challenge is the Not So Berry challenge, which forgoes the skin color change. If you don't want your Sims to be bright pink or blue, this may be a more palatable version of the challenge. Either way, the rules of this challenge make for a colorful twist on the vanilla Legacy challenge.
3 Disney Princess Challenge
The Disney Princess Challenge is yet another alternative to the Legacy challenge. Each generation tells a different story based on a different Disney princess.
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This challenge is fun because of the potential for storytelling. Most are at least familiar with these characters, and the challenge's limits pushes the creativity of the player and the mechanics of The Sims 4. Working around these limits makes for gameplay with is far from boring, and the ten generations means that it should provide hours of content to work through for this challenge.
2 Off the Grid Challenge
The challenge here is to live completely off the grid. This means cutting off all your electricity and water supplies from the municipality. While this means fewer bills to pay, it also brings with it a whole host of challenges to overcome.
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Certain expansion packs help with this challenge, such as Laundry Day, Jungle Adventure, Eco Lifestyle, and Island Living. These packs aren't necessary to live off the grid thanks to a patch, but these packs contain items that'll certainly make it easier to survive without relying on your local government.
1 Decades Challenge
The Decades challenge is something of a combination of the Legacy and Off the Grid challenges. It involves ten generations, where each generation embodies a different decade.
Most versions of this challenge begin in the 1890s, which means you have to live without electricity or water for the first three generations or so. Each generation is required to dress in the styles of their decade as well as build and decorate their homes accordingly. It's amazing how creative simmers are with this challenge, and how the game lives up to the task. Definitely one for history aficionados!
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