Tips Before You Play The Sims 1

We’d probably have published a guide like this to help you get your wits about you playing The Sims back when the game first came out in the 2000s, if we’d been a website back then, but with the anniversary collection of the original Sims out now, better late than never!

Even if you played the original Sims games back when they were originally coming out, you’re in for a much trickier time than you remember. Even if you’ve got later Sims games down pat, The Sims 1 can prove to be a bit challenging, so we’re here to help.

Get Alarms, Even If You Don’t Think You Need Them

Do you have a high enough Cooking skill to safely make meat and veggies for dinner for the family without setting the whole kitchen on fire? Have you been practicing some magic you’re not quite ready for? Do you have a fireplace in the house? Then you would definitely do well to place a smoke alarm on the lot, in any room with a source of flame, if possible, especially since you can start fires easily without meaning to.

Things like playing with fireworks indoors, trying to cook without enough skill, or lighting fires too close to the oxygen bar item can easily start fires when you least expect them. Fire alarms are always a good idea in The Sims, especially if your Sim lives alone, since nobody will be there to call the fire department without an alarm. This means that even when your Sims learn to cook and can afford better stuff, you’d do well to keep these alarms in place.

Additionally, The Sims 1 still featured burglars, striped bandits that would break into your home in the night and steal some of your belongings. You could always call the cops after they’ve left and your Sim discovers they’ve been robbed, but prevention is always the best method, and burglar alarms freeze the burglar in place while simultaneously automatically calling the police to come apprehend the would-be criminal.

Motives Take Dedicated Focus

Later Sims games took it a little easier on us, but The Sims 1 was kind of hard when it came to taking care of your Sims! You’ve got eight core needs that you’ll need to look after, tending to the basic needs of a human like feeding them, letting them shower or use the toilet, and pushing them into having a social life outside the house.

Needs have changed in surprising ways throughout the Sims’ lifespan, but stats matter much more in the original game than they do in later entries in the series. For example, not only does your Sim rest up faster on beds with higher Energy stats, but their Energy will deplete slower the following day. We might not have moodlets in this game, but you’ll still feel different effects somewhat like them!

It may not be a bad idea to have at least two Sims in the house, but you’ll need to be careful to build relationships between household Sims, since they don’t really seem to start with one. Having two Sims around, especially if one of them doesn’t have a traditional office job where the carpool comes, is a good way to keep the house in order, and they can keep each other company when their Social needs feel exhausted.

If you only came into The Sims in later entries, then you may be surprised to see two motives that no longer exist in the series. And while they’ve disappeared in the 25 years since The Sims 1, they’re still just as critical to mind if you’re diving back into the game. These motives can be easy to overlook or neglect to factor into your gameplay, but they impact your Sims’ overall mood bars just as much as other needs that have endured into later games.

The Room motive focuses on your Sim’s environment, and the nicer and more put-together it is, the better. This motive factors in fairly obvious things like the presence of trash and puddles, unpainted walls, or dead plants and fish lowering the score, but also lesser-contemplated things like the size of rooms and the number of light sources. Additionally, the furniture and decor contributes to this motive, with more expensive items offering higher Room scores in exchange.

Second, you’ve also got the Comfort motive, which plays off of the Sleep and Hygiene motive to consider how generally comfortable your Sim is. This need is influenced by things like how soft the Sim’s bed is, how full their Bladder is, and how much you splurged on items like sofas, recliners, or dining room chairs.

Get To The Carpool Or Get Fired

While later entries in The Sims series offer far more flexibility with work and transport – having the option to work from home, head to work on your own time when your shift began, or even being able to drive like we could in The Sims 3 – you’re bound to the carpool that picks you up for work every day. While you’ve got plenty of more patient options for transport in the game, the carpool has places to be and will leave without you.

The carpool shows up to pick your Sim up for work one hour before their workday begins, but they’ll only wait there until the workday actually begins. If your Sim doesn’t make it into the car before their shift is scheduled to begin, even if they’re outside and on the way to the carpool with no other objective in their action queue, the carpool will leave after exactly one hour. It departs sooner if you’re in the car, but we sure hope you get there in time.

While it’s neat to watch as the car that picks you up gets upgraded as you get promoted, you’re still bound to another driver’s time, so be respectful and try to be heading outside when the carpool arrives. You can take a little extra time to finish what you’re doing, but tasks also take a bit longer in The Sims 1 than they do later on, so it’s not a bad idea to be prepared to go to work.

Take Every Other Day Off Work

In the original Sims game, your boss didn’t care about your work performance or tenure or anything when considering you for a promotion – all you had to do was be in a good mood, have a high enough skill if necessary, and make a few friends. That said, with tasks taking longer than you think they do in The Sims, it can be tough to care for your Sim if they go to work every single day, and absenteeism will not be tolerated.

There wasn’t a calendar system implemented just yet in the original Sims game, which had the caveat of not giving Sims any days off. If your Sim misses one day of work, they’ll receive a warning about missing work and needing to correct the issue. Should they miss a second day, they’ll be fired on the spot and need to get a new job, starting from scratch in their career field if they rejoin.

And while this rigid system is indeed somewhat tight, there’s no meaningful penalty if you skip every other day of work to tend to motives and build skills. Your Sims will likely come home from work, eat, and sleep on most days, leaving next to no time for other motives, any skill-building, or friendships outside of the home, so give them every other day off. You’ll be warned about your absence, but you won’t be penalized for it unless you have two consecutive absences.

Cooking Skills Are Critical To Learn

While it’s always amusing to watch our Sims in later games hop about when they cut their fingers or burn their hands while cooking, back in the earlier Sims games, under-prepared chefs were often met with much deadlier consequences, since you all but need some Cooking skill to safely use an oven. Later games have more mercy, but Sims below level three Cooking often starts fires. Salads don’t seem to spontaneously combust, but we’d suggest avoiding the stove until you’re ready. We already mentioned smoke alarms!

But not only is learning to cook in The Sims essential for your household’s safety, you’ll also see a number of additional perks as your Cooking skill increases over time. Your Sim will need less time to cook than less skilled Sims, and they also serve more filling meals than others. While Sims always make the same types of meals, you’ll see much more satisfaction when eating food cooked by a Sim who knows their way around the kitchen.

Additionally, making burgers on any barbecue tends to not refill much of the Hunger meter, but skillful Sims making burgers instead rectifies this.

Kids Aren’t Like They Are In Later Games

We laugh in hindsight that The Sims 4 didn’t have toddlers in the game when it first launched in 2014, but children and babies in the original Sims games were far more stripped down than they are in later installments of the series. Here, there’s no pregnancy or waiting for your bundle of joy – you kiss or “play in bed” using the vibrating heart bed until one Sim asks if they should have a baby. If you agree, the baby appears immediately in a bassinet. You can’t actually see the baby in there, but just trust us.

In the original game, you can only interact with babies when they’re awake. They get up every few hours and will cry until you tend to their needs, which is largely being fed and then sung back to sleep again. Do this successfully for three days and your baby will grow up into a child, but your child may not resemble their parents, since the option to have a baby seems to randomly decide on a child Sim to add to the family, skin or hair color and feature similarity be damned.

If you let the baby cry for too long, you’ll be warned to tend to its needs. If you continue to neglect it, the social worker will come and take the baby away from the household, and there is no way to get back a baby that was taken in this fashion.

Even then, though, Child Sims will never grow into Adults. Like grown-ups, they’ll need to go to school every day and keep their grades up by doing their homework to maintain a strong GPA. Failure in school is unacceptable, though, and children with low grades will be sent to military school. This sees them change their clothing, say goodbye to their parents, and leave the lot, and like taken babies, military school kids do not come back.

Your Sims Get Trapped By Objects (A Lot)

Building has always been one of the more amusing parts of playing The Sims, but we’ve come quite a long way in 25 years. The list of improvements in that time goes on and on, but not least of all, our Sims have finally figured out how to navigate their lots. In the original Sims, though, you’ll need to leave plenty of clear space for Sims to walk, since your Sims can and often will get stuck with objects in their way.

A well-known example is that, if a Sim sets a plate down on the floor in the doorway, other Sims cannot walk over it and must find another way to exit the room until the plate is cleared from the other side of the door. If another Sim is standing in the way of something your Sim wants, they simply won’t complete that action. The grid system is much more rigid in these older games, so be sure to leave your Sims space to get around.

Somewhat frustratingly, your Sims cannot multitask in this game, so you’ll need to make ample time to take care of needs.

Summon The Genie, But Use Caution

If you’re really in a bind in some way playing the original Sims (or even if you just want to shake things up a little), you can splurge on the Antique Lamp object, a decorative golden lamp that your Sim can rub to summon a genie that grants wishes. You can make one wish per lamp per day for every Sim in the household, which means if you’ve got a number of Sims that own a number of genie lamps, you could have quite the interesting time!

The genie is capable of making some of your Sims’ wildest dreams come true, but he won’t offer much in the way of choice on how he does it, and he’ll often give the opposite of what you requested. For example, if you ask him for money, you might end up with an additional pile of household bills, or your request for friendship goes awry, your Sim’s best friend in the relationship panel will begin to hate them.

But when the genie cooperates, you can gain some incredible perks from him, such as but not limited to skill point gains, pots of gold containing actual Simoleons, or even a dream match with your Sim’s soulmate. It’s a high risk, high reward situation, but if you’re feeling lucky, it’s worth a shot.