The Sims 4 Get to Work Preview

Preview about the Aliens, Retail Stores, Building and more!

The Sims 4 Get to Work is the expansion where we’ve all been waiting for. There are new interesting ways for your Sims to become a Simoleonaire. With the new Retail Business, the Doctor career, the Scientist career and the Detective career you can earn your money like never before! Get a chance to meet Alien in your neighborhood or take the portal to Sixam.

Alien World Sixam

Let’s start with the Alien world overview. As you can see beautiful decorated with extraterrestrial trees, plants and mushrooms. The white almost glowing grass gives it a unique feeling when walking amongst the aliens. The decorations found in this world can also be used on your home lot with the debug cheat. This includes floating flowers, the white grass and the large purple/blue mushrooms. You can also find new rare plants, trees, metals, crystals and a new collectible: Geodes. There will be 6 Geodes to collect in the game and can be obtained by polishing raw Geodes found in the Alien world.

Going to the Alien World can be done in only one way. You need to be a Scientist to create the Wormhole Generator. After that you need to upgrade the Wormhole Generator on the Invention Constructor. If your Sim has arrived in Sixam they can not use the phone because there is no phone service there. If you want to take selfies or photo’s there to take home with you, you should bring your camera.

Aliens

What’s new with the Aliens? Well, a fun fact I discovered playing The Sims 4 Get to Work is when Aliens die at your lot, they will leave a special alien tombstone or urn at your place. When Aliens give birth, the baby will be put in a special Alien crib. It’s also possible to play with the Alien race in your own household.

Azure Bowie confirmed an interesting fact in the Skype conversation while talking about the Aliens. Male pregnancy is possible when they are abducted by Aliens. Male Sim can deliver the baby in the hospital when in labor, just like the women!

Aliens can be found in the Alien World Sixam and in your own neighborhood! They can be disguised as human Sims and you won’t even recognize them at the beginning when they are walking around the town. Aliens in Sixam look a a lot like normal Sims but will be green, blue or purple. I don’t have a screenshot from the Aliens but Simlicious does.

Running a Retail Business

This is my favorite part! I could spend many hours and even days selling stuff and running a business in the retail shops. There are so many possibilities you can do with the stores, you can almost sell anything you like, this also includes plants, vegetables, photo’s, prepared food, baked goods, self written books and many more.

Building a Retail store

Building a shop can take many hours but if you want to start quickly there are styled retail rooms you can place on an empty retail lot. If you choose to build it yourself there are great options to customize the store to your dream store. You can choose between many stickers to put on the windows and choose between overhang to place on the exterior of your store. The store windows and doors that are included in this expansion can be changed to fully white, black or any other color. When decorating the store you will find out they added a lot of new display possibilities!

Choosing products to sell in your Store

Let’s say we want to sell clothes for children and the target audience will be snob children. You can place Child Mannequins in your store and give them the proper outfits. There are 2 kinds of mannequins, modern and realistic and of course boy and girl. You can change a mannequins pose to let’s say confident. Now we will create a corner where kid’s can play with toys and next to it we make a shelf with toys we want to sell. As a store manager you can simply click on a product and choose the option put for sale. This will add a price tag on the product. You can’t choose the price for each product but you can change the profit margin for all products together.

[quote_right]When I was trying out to run a Business I found the marketing option in the register very helpful to attract more customers.[/quote_right]

Every action in your store will get you Perk Points. This includes talking to customers about the product, cleaning shelfs, restock products you sold and many more. These Perk Points can be traded for new objects, more staff slots or new interactions. When earning Perk Points you will also get experience in selling and running the store. This also counts for your employees.

Managing the cash flow of your store is very easy. You can take some of your household fund to the retail funds of your store. You can use this money to set up your business, expand or for promotion.

Preview for Builders and Decorators

As a builder I found the new windows and doors great additions to the game, especially because you can make them fully white. When I found out they added thresholds to the list of fences I was very happy! They also added some rusty fences and stairs. Other than that they didn’t add any new options to roofs, swimming pools, fountains or any other guild mode option. One thing they did add in the game I was missing is bright colored carpeting.

In the buy mode on other hand is full of new stuff! The objects I found the most useful for future builds are the large ceiling lamps, 1 tile television for the wall and the new houseplants. You will also be able to unlock a lot of new objects with the new careers. Create a house for Aliens? Yes you can! You can even change the mailbox to a stylish Alien mailbox.

Alien decorations can be found with the debug cheat to add to your lot. You will only find a few of the alien decorations in buy mode like trees.

More Basement, more Levels!

I was very excited when Azure Bowie (SimGuruAzure) told we can build 2 levels below the ground. I got even more excited when she said they added 1 extra story to build on top of the house! Think about the mansions and warehouses we can create! This update will be released in March and you don’t have to own The Sims 4 Get to Work. Oh, and it’s free!

New Careers in The Sims 4 Get to Work

I only had the time to try out 2 of the 3 new careers in The Sims 4 Get to Work. The system works the same way as the social events. You will get new goals to complete every day when you are working. Sometime there will be a main goal added when fer example a pregnant Sim comes in to the hospital. You can choose to follow your Sims to the work place but you can also stay home with the other Sims in your household and send the working Sim alone to work.

One thing I was missing was a new social event like a business party or something. That would have been fun.

Scientist Career

As a Scientist you are able to create serums. These serums can do various things like extend your life (youth potion), change a Sims shape or effect emotions.
[quote_left]One thing I discovered in this career… Don’t push the Red button![/quote_left]I was able to make and test some of the inventions like the Sim Ray. If you take the Sim Ray with you in your inventory you can use it anywhere you like. My Sims used it on one of her patients in her new job as a doctor… They will get frozen and when you take them out of the ice the Sim will stay cold and blue for a while.

The thing I loved the most about this career is the Invention Constructor. You can build up a friendship and talk with the machine to discover more inventions together!

The Wormhole Generator will be a portal to the Alien World Sixam when you upgrade it with the Invention Constructor.

Doctor Career

The Doctor career is pretty straight forward. You will have to take different actions to diagnose your patients, run tests, deliver babies and make house calls. I didn’t find any new game play additions other then shown in the trailer and the blog. But I only was a Doctor for one Sims day so maybe I missed something.

I wanted to know when you will unlock the Sim Skeleton Model and this will be at level 9 in the Doctor career.

Photography and the Baking skill

The Photography skill is a very nice game play feature in this expansion. Take selfies or shoot photo’s anywhere in the world. They will be added to the inventory of your Sim and they can sell them on the retail shop or put them on the wall as decoration. You also have the option to choose special filters for your photographs just like on Instagram.

The Baking skill brings a LOT of new delicious baking recipes to The Sims 4. Some of the recipes requires some ingredients to bake them. You can sell baked goods in your own bakery retail store.

The Magnolia Promenade Neighborhood

Magnolia Promenade only comes with 4 lots, 1 empty and 3 stores. You can build anything on it the way you like. It looks like a shopping district and also has a small park and a playground. I was hoping to get a bigger neighborhood and many fans are backing this up. SimGuru’s already responded to our wishes.

Unexpected features in Create a Sim

I was very surprised by the new make up they added and it was pretty funny when Rosana from SimsNetwork and Marii where literally screaming when they saw these. You can now add Alien/Elf face paint on your Sim. Believe me it’s beautiful! They also added a lot of new lipsticks in The Sims 4 Get to Work.

The new clothes are also a nice addition. Especially the work outfits you will unlock while leveling your Sim in specific careers. I personally like the Scientist outfit!

Mini Previews from the Sims community

This was my experience about the game, but I think you may be interested in what other people thought about this game too. I asked a few people to share their thoughts about the game and to pick 3 favorite ones. So what where their favorite features in The Sims 4 Get to Work?

Rens (Simlicious)

• That after a while the displays in the store will get dirty and you or your employees need to clean them
• Advertising for your store to attract more customers
• Alien world

Matt (SimFans.de)

• I love Sixam, espacially the story behind it. All these visual effects there are awesome. The water and the waterfall looks so cool
• Then the retail points system. I think that it will be very challenging to collect all these bonuses
• And also a lot of fun of course

Marii (ByMarii)

• The Aliens, in particular the male pregnancy
• Female clothing
• That you can sell your own vegetables from your garden in the retail shop

Sara (sarademoor)

• Aliens
• Retail shops and how it works
• Searching for evidence in the detective career
   

The Sims 4 Get to Work will be released on April 2, 2015 in European country’s and March 31, 2015 in the US (this is confirmed by SimGuruAzure) It may be a different release date for your country. You can buy The Sims 4 Get to Work on Origin or in a retail store.

I was invited to The Sims 4 Get to Work Preview event at EA in Schiphol, The Netherlands. This event took place on March 12, 2015 and lasted for 4,5 hours. I leaned a lot about the new Expansion pack The Sims 4 Get to Work and I’m happy to answer your questions. Leave a reply!