Things are getting strange in The Sims 4 with the arrival of the latest Game Pack The Sims 4 StrangerVille. The GP allows Simmers to explore a new world which shares the same name as the pack itself. StrangerVille is full of mysteries for players to solve and it’s the first town involved in a progressing storyline, affecting the direct surroundings of your Sim. This review will be as spoiler-free as possible, while still telling you if the pack is worth the price or not.
Presented by EA Game Changers
Wild West vibes in Create a Sim
Giddy up and hop right into CAS to give your Sims a makeover! StrangerVille is located in the middle of the desert, making it the perfect scene to put on some good ol’ cowboy attire. Create a Sim provides in quite a nice amount of new items for your Sims to dress appropriately for their new location.
The Create a Sim items of The Sims 4 StrangerVille are of great quality like usual. However, CAS (not all of it, but a lot) is very stylized towards this pack and its environment, so I am not sure how often I will wear some of the items outside of StrangerVille. This does not make the items bad or less enjoyable, but more something to keep in mind when you’d consider buying this pack.
Cowboys attire, lab coats and dog tags
Yup, it sounds like a very weird combination, but then again.. We are talking about a Game Pack called StrangerVille here, so did you really expect something normal from this? The mishmash of clothing can be explained by the overall theme of StrangerVille and the mysteries surrounding the village and you will unlock even more CAS items by playing through the story and new military career.
As everyday wear you will find a variety of Wild West inspired clothes for both feminine and masculine Sims, but also some more day to day choice. Some of the items are more casual than others, and I can really see myself use some of these items as hot-weather outfits in the future. There is not one outfit that I disliked, however nothing really wowed me either. So I wouldn’t call CAS amazing, more.. okay, I guess.
These boots are made for walking, but not for crawling
Two of the most prominent items for Adult Sims in the CAS of The Sims 4 StrangerVille would be the cowboy boots… The over the top, sinfully flamboyant snake-leather cowboy boots. While I enjoyed the shorter versions for both feminine and masculine Sims, I think the longer ones might be a bit too much for me personally.
While children get a whopping total of a two CAS items, toddlers are left out of The Sims 4 StrangerVille completely. I get that this particular Game Pack is not focused around these age groups at all, but seeing as it took toddlers years to arrive to The Sims 4, they have some catching up to do! Leaving them out of entire packs isn’t helping with that! How CUTE would it have been to have toddler-sized cowboy bootsies for your little ones?!! I am not shouting, you are shouting?!!!?
New Aspiration & Trait to set the mood for StrangerVille
The Sims 4 StrangerVille adds a new aspiration in the Location category, called StrangerVille Mystery. It’s a fairly fun aspiration to play through and it works best with Sims who are new in town, due to the story progression of StrangerVille.
One other thing in CAS to spice up your gameplay would be the new trait Paranoid, making Sims of ages Teen or older suspicious of other Sims, sometimes even accusing others of spying on them. Hilarious! It sets the perfect mood for an apocalyptic storyline as well, seeing as these Sims feel at their best in basements.
Watch our Overview of The Sims 4 StrangerVille CAS
This video will show you our complete overview for all the Create a Sim items of The Sims 4 StrangerVille, including all their color swatches!
Build mansions or bunkers with Build & Buy
Time to stock up on some canned foods and build yourself a bunker. With all the ominous activity in StrangerVille, you better prepare for the worst! Good thing the Build & Buy of the Game Pack allows you to do just that.
Build & Buy has two very distinct styles. On the more wealthier side of town you have gigantic mansions, while on the other side of town you can suddenly find yourself in a bunker underneath the ground. Apart from the more usual items, if you consider listening devices usual that is, you will see that some part of the objects belong in some sort of dodgy lab. This makes the Build & Buy of The Sims 4 a bit non-comprehensive and this might not be for everyone.
There aren’t a crazy amount of items to build with, especially considering there are multiple sides of StrangerVille that need representation. This does not take away from the quality, because all the items are extremely well made, but I do think it cancels out the opportunity for more day to day items. Making especially Build-mode very stylized for this pack only, or maybe as a nice add-on for aspects of The Sims 4 Get to Work.
Victorian mansions with a goth twist for the rich
The Build-mode items from The Sims 4 StrangerVille gives a new range of doors and windows that go together amazingly well. The style is a mixture between victorian, with a few goth-like arched windows and I love everything about them. The color variants are amazing, there are some neutral ones, but also more colorful choices for those who like that.
Unfortunately this style does not seep into Buy-mode, leaving you out in the dust with the interior of your house. Well, that is apart from a medium wall-height bookcase. Which looks amazing by the way… Oh, and it’s perfect for libraries too.. Now that I think of it that is probably the reasons it came with this pack as StrangerVille has a library in the middle of town square. Either way… Love the bookcase!
Grungy bunkers for the conspiracy theorists
StrangerVille comes with a lot of secrecy and Sims are picking up on it. There is not a lot of Build-mode items for this style, as it comes with a door. one wallpaper and.. yeah, that’s about it. Oh, and don’t forget the dirty version of a floor tile we already got from base game, which is still the same price as the nicer, cleaner version, but I digress. The quality is very nice and it can set the right mood for storytellers and roleplayers alike.
Luckily Buy-mode has a higher amount of items that fit this theme. I especially love the tinkered bathtub-shower combo which looks like it’s about to fall apart, but someone tried their best to make things work anyways. It even has a boiler on the side for warm water, love the detail! However, I must say the price of the object seems a bit weird. The item is even named DIY shower, yet it’s the second most expensive shower tub in the game, with the same price as the nice one from The Sims 4 Parenthood. What is up with that?!
Watch our Overview of The Sims 4 StrangerVille Build & Buy
This video will show you our complete overview for all the Build & Buy items of The Sims 4 StrangerVille, including all their color swatches!
Become StrangerVille’s hero with the new Gameplay
You will notice straight away that StrangerVille is highly focused around the storyline of the desert town. The Game Pack feels unique in different ways than any other The Sims 4 pack ever did, and the gameplay is the key aspect for making that happen. Even if you’re more of a Builder or CAS-er, it is simply a must to at least play through the story once.
The Sims 4 StrangerVille manages to grasp your attention for the lore immediately. No matter where you are in town something odd is always happening, making it easy to hop into the storyline and begin your mysterious journey. The very first townie I came across was acting insane & I knew right there and then that this pack was going to be a blast.
Strangetown 2.0 arrives in The Sims 4
Some of the veteran Simmers amongst us might get some serious flashbacks from the The Sims 2 era, when Strangetown was the one bringing the weirdness into the franchise. As someone who has been playing the game since day one, I can really appreciate the throwback to the older games. The Sims 4 StrangerVille has brought me a lovely amount of nostalgia to remind me why I keep playing the franchise for all these years. It’s just pure fun!
StrangerVille is a beautiful revamp of Strangetown, tweaking the storyline a bit so it fits more with The Sims 4. The climate is similar to Oasis Springs, but StrangerVille still feels different than the base game desert. The world itself is quite big for a Game Pack as well and I’m pleasantly surprised by that. Especially when you compare it to The Sims 4 Get Famous, we even get one lot more, while that is an Expansion Pack!
Shady town conspiracies
Everywhere you go in StrangerVille you will notice something is off. The library is full of scientists who seem to be afraid of something and the bar is full of military personnel who aren’t too happy either. And then there are these strange purple things everywhere around town that seem to have appeared out of nowhere.
While the story instantly grasped my attention, I found it a bit difficult at first to get started with the actual progression. My first piece of evidence was gathered shortly after entering StrangerVille, but after that I had no clue where to go. My advice to you would be to really read everything Sims tell you, what the game tells you and just gather all the information you can to solve the next part of the riddle. Or you can always read our guide to help you solve the mystery of StrangerVille. That’s a good solution too.
One of the aspects of the gameplay that I genuinely enjoyed were the new social interactions between Sims. Specifically when playing a Sim with the new Paranoid trait, I found myself in various funny situations with other Sims. You can pick fights with them by accusing Sims of spying on you and if you really don’t trust them (I mean.. why would you?) you can go ahead and place bugs to see if your theories are valid. But of course they must be valid… right? RIGHT?! Oh dear, where did I leave my tinfoil hat? I’m scared!
Okay… I’m calm again. All these ominous happenings around here just really freaked me out for a second. Now, I will not spoil the end of the storyline for any Simmers out there who are planning to play through it themselves, but let me tell you one thing: I LOVED the end of the story. It was so much fun and it was actually quite difficult to get it right, so when I finally did it truly felt rewarding.
So is The Sims 4 StrangerVille too odd or not?
StrangerVille is a very weird scramble of gameplay which we have not encountered in The Sims 4 before. When I was playing the Game Pack it felt more like a mini-game inside The Sims 4, rather than part of the game as a whole. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I can see why it will not be a pack for everyone. Specifically for Simmers who like to keep their gameplay more natural, without strange interruptions and occults.
As a Game Pack I think it is one of the strongest in the franchise. Game Packs are usually more focused around Gameplay, and The Sims 4 StrangerVille just really hit the nail on that department. However, it got me thinking… Will I play this “mini-game” more than once, maybe twice? Probably not. After playing through the story you’ve seen all there is to see and I think that because of that, I will not use the gameplay aspect of the pack a lot in my Simming future. Let me stress that the gameplay is amazing, just not for multiple times.
The Create a Sim of The Sims 4 StrangerVille is extremely detailed. The overall quality of the items are nice, and there’s quite some variety of items even when staying in the particular theme of the Game Pack. However, I really missed some stuff for Children and the fact that Toddlers aren’t even included just breaks my heart. I would have loved to make a whole cowboy family, with everyone strutting their funky boots and hats, but alas.
When it comes to the Build & Buy my opinion is quite positive overall. I’m a big fan of the Victorian styled doors and windows, and especially the doors with stained glass are downright gorgeous. The mishmash of themes in StrangerVille causes the Build & Buy to be quite divided. Which makes it a hard pack for builders to work with as you can’t make one comprehensive build, without having to use other packs in the process. This doesn’t mean Build & Buy is bad in any way, shape or form. It’s just a bit all over the place.
Overall I personally think the Game Pack will be great for any Simmers who are looking to spice up their game, but I must also be honest that I probably won’t play the pack a lot after completing it a handful of times. So if you can look past this, then The Sims 4 StrangerVille will be worth your money. Especially for storytellers as the items from CAS and Build & Buy are perfect for screenshot-taking purposes! Otherwise you might want to sit this strange one out…
