By now it is very likely you have seen at least one post about it: The Not so Berry Challenge. The challenge has been popping up all over the Sims community and it has us hooked! Simmers Kayla LilSimsie and Zoë AlwaySimming created a challenge to force themselves to play certain parts of the game, that they usually would not necessarily play around with. With Kayla’s rapidly growing audience on Youtube, the challenge went viral very fast. So what started out as a challenge to themselves, grew out into one of the most popular Sims challenges at this time.
The Not so Berry challenge is about a colorful family of (sort of, not really) Berry Sims. Berry Sims usually have bright colored skin colors too, as they are based on berries, but that is not needed for this challenge, hence the name. Each generation has a certain color assigned and has their own set of goals that they need to achieve. I shall not go into all the rules of the challenge too much, so if you want to read the original Tumblr post about this challenge you can click here.
Spending most of my spare time playing The Sims 4, I had to see what this challenge was all about! First up is the Mint generation. So as the challenge suggests, I made my bright haired Sim, named Pepper(mint) Lockhart. She’s sort of a mad scientist. Mischievous, jealous, materialistic, but just like me, vegetarian. I like the sound of her already.
What caught my attention most is that I played around with aspects of the game that I normally would not use. I mean, a jealous Sim? Sounds like a burden to me! The challenge forced me to do things I usually ignore. For example: the first day had me running around in the neighborhood, hunting down dig sites to collect metals and crystals. One of the goals is to complete the element collection, so the more dig sites, the merrier! Normally I would just forget the fact that elements are even there. If you want to know easy ways to complete your own elements collection, make sure to read our guide!
The Sims 4: Get To Work has been around for almost two years, but with everything you can do in the game, who has the time to try out a career? Not me! At least, not until this challenge. I played the scientist career maybe twice and the detective career not even once. As I usually focus on bigger families, an active career just wasn’t a thing for me. But here I am again, finding myself in a part of the game I usually would not play. I must admit, I really liked it. The daily work goals are fun to do, and you can work on your other challenge goals while you are at work. Logic and Mischief both going up as I spoke with co-workers and analysed the objects they gave to me. Psst, did you know we also have a guide for the Scientist career?
My Sims are all good by nature. Kind to others, lots of friends, nice to their family. But the Not so Berry Challenge forces us to be “Not so Nice” Sims. Your Sim will have to complete the Chief of Mischief aspiration. One of the first milestones requires you to be disliked by 2 other Sims. So there I was, in the lab, at my Sim’s first day of work. I found my first victim in one of my co-workers. I even ended up fighting twice, of course my Sim lost, but that is besides the point. MY Sim, fighting? What the heck? I loved to try out the mischievous and mean interactions for once. I could pretend to fire my co-workers and throw drinks in their faces! Is this how it feels to be mean? Let’s do that again! Okay not all the time, but.. you know…
All in all the Not so Berry Challenge is a lot of fun! So if you are looking for something to spice up your gameplay a bit, I would suggest you try it out. Are bright colors not really your thing? Just leave them out and focus on the goals of the challenge! Did you try the challenge already? Make sure to share your progress on social media by using #NotSoBerry, I would love to check it out! If you want to follow my further progress with Pepper Lockhart, I’ll be uploading it on youtube. So if you want to tag along, you can find it here. Hope to see your there!
