What life simulation games are
Life simulation games are a subgenre of simulation games where players control one or more virtual characters through everyday activities. Instead of fixed objectives or linear storylines, most life sims emphasize open-ended play: creating characters, building homes, managing relationships, and shaping a virtual world at your own pace.
The genre spans a wide range, from social simulations like The Sims series to digital pet games, farming sims, and biological simulations where players manage creature populations across generations. What ties them together is a focus on nurturing, personal expression, and emergent stories that grow out of simulated systems rather than scripted events. Common elements include character customization, social interaction with simulated characters, resource and time management, and dynamic worlds that react to player decisions.
What this hub covers
SimGoodie maintains dedicated hubs for individual life simulation games. This Life Sims hub collects everything that sits outside those game-specific pages: genre-wide news, cross-game comparisons, market coverage, and reporting on life simulation titles that do not yet have their own hub.
When a new life sim is announced or a story touches the genre as a whole, it lives here. Recent examples include coverage of Monster Fantasy, which blends monster hunting with cozy life-sim mechanics like fishing, crafting, and village building, and the Resident not-Evil concept pitched by Resident Evil 2's director as a cozy spin on the survival horror franchise.
Genre roots
The life simulation genre traces back to Little Computer People in 1985, one of the first commercially released artificial life games. The Sims, released by Maxis in 2000, brought the concept into the mainstream and remains the genre's most commercially successful franchise. Today the genre continues to grow across PC, Mac, console, and mobile platforms, with new entries from independent studios and major publishers expanding what a life sim can be.