Although there’s no official word on if and when The Sims 5 will release, a new game in the long-running franchise is the perfect opportunity to include new build options in order to improve creative freedom. The Sims 4 already gives players a variety of options to customize their perfect families, homes, and worlds, but there are plenty of new elements the franchise can incorporate to enhance the opportunities for creative expression.
There are three modes in The Sims 4 – Live mode, Buy mode, and Build mode. As its name suggests, Build mode allows players to make architectural enhancements and construction work. Players can add walls, windows, a roof, doors, landscaping items, and more to their homes in this mode. They can also paint and add new flooring to their property. Buy mode, on the other hand, allows players to buy things like furniture for their homes, and Live mode lets players allow their Sims to enjoy the final product.
While Build mode is already expansive in The Sims 4, especially when compared to its predecessors, there’s a lot that can be improved upon. The following ideas would take The Sims 5 up a notch and allow players more freedom of opportunity, thereby enhancing gameplay and incentivizing players to keep on building and creating.
What Build Mode Should Definitely Include In The Sims 5
For one, there should be new opportunities for customizing one’s home in The Sims 5. When it comes to putting up walls or flooring, there aren’t as many options as players would have in real life. For walls, players can only put up drywall and then customize it with different paint and wallpaper options, some of which take on the appearance of other materials. But The Sims 5 should provide more options for actual wall types. Not every home is constructed of drywall. Incorporating options for walls made from glass, brick, or even wood, like a log cabin, would take the game up a notch. This could be expanded into mini-games where players have to actually find the materials to build their homes with, such as asking them to go out into the woods and cut down trees, or by getting a load of bricks delivered to their empty lot. These bricks could either be used for building a Sims 5 player's home or used in landscaping, such as making flower beds or exterior fences.
The options for roofs could also be expanded to include new styles, like easier options for players to make mansard roof types, or by giving them an auto-retracting roof option. Similarly, the different types of staircases could be improved. New styles could be introduced, like a spiral staircase. While The Sims 4's options for customizable staircases were very much appreciated by the community, former games in the series did feature spiral staircases already, and it would also be nice if players were about to build and design their own elevator systems to help create large, expensive Sims 5 mansions. These elevators should also be fully animated and interactable, not simply black holes characters teleport through. Some mods for The Sims 4 have already attempted this.
As of now, certain features in Build mode become disabled if players are working on an apartment building or dormitory, so expanding what players could do when working on condominium-style residences would also take the new Sims game up a notch. It would be exciting to see different styles available for apartment buildings. Even more, the game could expand the number of occupants allowed to live in the apartment building, which would allow players more opportunity to build living spaces for their Sims. The Sims 5 may still be a long way away, considering nothing official has been released about it, but there are tons of possibilities for how a new edition in the Sims franchise can improve and expand Build mode.