Exciting Live Mode Updates + Starting to Deliver Patreon Rewards + New Team Member!
Hey everyone, it’s Alex!
Today, I’ll be sharing various progress updates regarding different aspects of life simulation in Paralives: relationships, wants, personality and more.
New Team Member!
Before discussing live mode gameplay, I’m happy to introduce a new team member, Émélie! She will be joining us for a temporary contract to recreate Patrons as characters that can appear in the game. We have 2000+ Parafolks to create for people who pledged at least 3 months on the Legend tier and Émélie, an expert at character creation, will be handling that!
Starting to Deliver the Hero and Legend Tier Rewards
Over the coming months, we will gradually reach out to all Patrons by email (thanks in advance for your patience!) to send out forms that you will be able to use to claim the rewards highlighted in the image below. You can read more about each reward here.
If you are not on the Hero or Legend tier and would like to claim these rewards, you still have time and you can upgrade your pledge here. In any case, we’re extremely grateful for your support and for making Paralives possible!
Being Mean In Paralives
Some Together Cards have multiple variants. This way, the player can make their Parafolks express different intentions through a given card. Please note that the interface, icons and colors are still a work in progress!
Making an ironic compliment, for instance, could make other Parafolks in the conversation embarrassed, angry or sad. They could then be offered Together Cards to insult the specific Para that was rude to them.
For those who are curious, Parafolks can insult someone else about many things, including the context of the conversation or the personality of the Para. If you feel like insulting someone because they are not as skilled as you in cooking, if they have a lower paying job than you or if you want to fully blame them for the house being dirty, you can!
When characters are mean to each other, you can choose to make them enemies. If a relationship between two Parafolks has the Enemy label, it will unlock more Together Cards and ways to reflect this special relationship dynamic.
New Wants
Based on their personality, relationships and emotions, Parafolks will have different wants that they wish to complete. Alejandro recently added many more wants to the game.
Some examples:
[Fitness talent trait] 💪 Do 50 pushups
[Jack-of-all-trade talent trait] 🔧 Level up 2 different skills
[Serious vibe trait] 👩🏭 Get an upgrade point at work today
[Has met someone new recently] 🤝 Become friends with [Parafolk]
[Has been seeing someone romantically] 💞 Get intimate with [Parafolk]
[Just moved in and doesn’t have a fridge] 🍇 Purchase a fridge
To give you an idea, here’s our document listing all the wants that are being added to the game right now:
I know it’s hard to read, but you will be able to discover these wants when you play the game later on!
Personality Trait Evolutions
In Paralives, completing wants gives you personality points. When you have enough points, you can level up your personality and choose one evolution for it.
Level 1 - You start at level one after you have selected personality traits for your new character in the Paramaker
Level 2 - Pick one vibe trait evolution
Level 3 - Pick one social trait evolution
Level 4 - Pick one talent trait evolution:
Level 5 - Pick 1 extra stat point:
Level 6 - Pick one vibe trait evolution
Level 7 - Pick one social trait evolution
Level 8 - Pick one talent trait evolution
Level 9 - Pick one more social perk or talent perk
Level 10 - Pick one trait evolution (the one you picked at level 9)
Level 11 - Pick 1 extra stat point
Level 12 - Pick one trait evolution (the one you picked at level 9)
We’ve been working on adding more and more personality trait evolutions and effects, and we’re looking forward to sharing more examples!
Keep in mind this is very much a work in progress, so all this might still change before release and after, as we receive feedback from players 🧐
That’s all for today everybody! Have a wonderful weekend and feel free to leave comments down below!
Cheers,
Alex
Edit - August 28th, 2025: This post is now public, feel free to share it!
Comments (84)
What if which wants you decided to fulfill can lead to different upgrades of their personality? This creates interesting characters based on player choice and help shape stories.
Is it possible to know the email that Émélie will be reaching out to everyone from? Is it the normal method? Or a different email that you can’t divulge due to not wanting to overload the inbox?
I'm going to make my Paras exercise naked, for educational reasons ! ❤️
Yup. Me wanting to play this game is way beyond level 12. Keep up the good work Parateam, and welcome Émélie.
I've been an off again on again legend subscriber - I know I've definitely been subscribed for more than 3 months but I'm currently at a lower tier. Will I still be reached out to?
I was wondering the same thing. I believe they said a long time ago that even if you dropped to a lower tier you’d still get the rewards, but I can’t remember for sure.
I was wondering if I could do an OC for one of my characters that I submit to the game I also sent a message if you would like to respond to that one!
I love the progress so far, can't wait for the early access
So excited to see the negative interactions! I'm hoping that the conversations make the Paras have visible emotions on their faces and body language instead of performing something like a mean interaction and resetting back into a default state when it's finished. Welcome Emelie!
I'm glad to see a lot of updates coming through the game as we get closer to the release of it! I do have one question. For the rewards, if we already pledge for the 3 months and stopped for whatever reason, do old members of those tiers still get an email or are they only for the current tier members that've done it for 3+ months?
I think to remember that they said they can see who pledged what for how long, and that if you did 3 months and stopped that you would still get it. If you don't see an email in a while I'd reach out in a personal help request tho!
the amount of custom randomly-generated townies is amazing! I'm excited to see everyone's paras!
WELCOME ONBOARD EMELIE! 💓 I’m also so excited for the rewards to come our way!! It’s all so exciting. Sending all the love devs!!
This looks amazing - I’m so excited to play! It might already have been said but will it be possible to lose personality progression points as well as gaining them? I think the option to lose perks like that (or skill points) is good for long term gameplay - and realistic as well!
Good idea, maybe if you don't exercise for a looong time you can lose "Physique" points for example. You can have a gentle alert before so the player is not caught by surprise! Or this could be entirely optional if you feel like it's too much of a burden (or too similar to real life to be funny, ha ha). This could be also tied to age, so maybe as the Para gets older there's more chance to lose Physique points without regular exercise, while on the contrary their Charisma points are more "stable" and less subject to decrease.
I LOVE the card mechanic, please definitly keep it! 😍 It feels so natural, characteristic and storylike.
I like the control of confirming how relationships evolve ie. becoming enemies. Though for NPC autonomy it would be interesting if a pop-up appeared that says "NPC says they dislike our para" and the player can choose to either ignore, agree, attempt to defend their character in an ego driven way (like sorry you feel that way and there's a chance it convices NPC not see them as enemy), or attempt to repair the relationship empathetic ( still a chance it wouldn't work). Perhaps our para can learn of this through gossip too. I thought this is cool way to add a level of control but still give NPC autonomy as well.
I guess to add to that, it would be cool if an NPC attempts interactions that have a success chance or announcing a relationship change (become an enemy), a pop-up for the player. For example, if NPC wanted to autonomously kiss your para, a pop-up could appear to decide how para reacts if its first kiss, conflicting emotional state (angry at para), or the relationship has changed (like they broke up). I wonder if anything like that is planned?
Is there any other incentives to completing wants besides upgrade points? I remember before paras might ignore their needs if they want something really bad. Is that still a feature in the game? Will wants contribute to general para happiness and will they become stressed or sad if wants are ignored consistently?
Our need and want systems evolved quite a bit since we began working on the live mode, and this idea had to be cut. At first, needs and wants (and mostly everything else) were just thoughts that would 'fight' to be at the forefront of your Para's mind, but playtesting showed us that it might be better for needs to be a stable thing that you can always consult in a more familiar way. As for wants, completing them does make your Para happier (and failing them will make you sad, but not all wants are failable), but they are here mainly to give tasks (or ideas about things to do) to the player while allowing the Para's personality to flourish. Otherwise, they are not 'needs' and you can just trash em if you don't like them. Thank you for the question!
Very interesting update! I have a question regarding the Personality progression: how does personality progression impact the different life stages? Is there a different progression per life stage or is the 12 level progression designed to span the whole para's life? (and if it's the later, then how would it apply for para's that are born in game, thus start as babies, in comparison to a para created as an adult or an elder?)
The plan at the moment is that if you create a parafolk from a younger life stage, they might not have some aspects of their personality already unlocked and you will need to age them up to progress first, we also want there to be an incentive to do this, but we're not ready to talk about this just yet, thank you!
This game will be phenomenal once it releases. Thank you for your incredible work
With 2000+ extra townies in store, it sounds like ugly randomly-generated ones won't be a thing at all, so that's really great! Love how that just works out. I hope there'll be cheats to allow faster/instant level ups. While playing thru each level is generally gonna be more fun and often more realistic, having more options is very useful. (I imagine if cheats like this don't get put into the game, they'll quickly be modded in, haha.)
There are already a few personality-related cheats, it's unsure whether they're going to make it to the final product and in which way, but that's something people might find useful, yes!
I know it's pretty late so I might not get an answer but is there a way you could make so that personalities don't just evolve for the better but also for the worse? I think that's very accurate to real life and would make for some interesting stories. I completely understand if it's not going to happen though
Those types of evolutions could pair so well with the new interactions of picking on others and making enemies!
Welcome in Emelie!!
Welcome Émélie! Also, love how the personality traits and together cards are forming, including the way things level up and having different variations of the cards. It’ll make paras seem a bit more unique. Rather than having the exact same cookie-cutter things, we can tweak things just a bit more and that makes me excited. Good job!
Love the RPGesque aspect of our Para's personality! I would love to know if, for example, a Para without any charisma point would be able to chat normally or if most of their conversations would have a "bad" outcome? Or does it just affects the skills?
Stats can influence things other than skills, like conversations, yes! So a low charisma Para might get some... iffy together cards from time to time.
Big welcome to Émélie! Can't wait to see your creations!
Really cool stuff!! One small detail I was thinking about looking at this post though was that the smileys in the corner of the together card, while super cute and unique, might be a little illegible as tiny icons in the corner of our screens. Larger expressions, thicker lines, or maybe multiple colors might help
Yeah the icons are extremely placeholders! I've made some of them in paint myself aha :')
if you were pledged for 3 months but aren't anymore- you're still eligible correct?
Yes, absolutely!
How can we all name a townie? Will there be tons?
The "name a random townie" reward will make it so when people create characters and click the "random name" button, a name will be picked from the ones submitted by our Patrons!
This is going to be what I've been waiting for since Sims 3 😁 🙌 😍
I wonder if we could get some sort of unique code to spawn our respective custom paras? It would be quite the experience to be able to interact with "ourselves" or play your pre-loaded self in character/household creation! 😁
Yes, it will be possible to spawn your character using a cheat or something of the sort, otherwise statistically speaking you could play the game forever without ever bumping into you aha!
Welcome, Émélie! I got scared for a second thinking I wouldn’t be able to change my tier level but thankfully we’re still able to change it 😅 let me go change it to Legend. Other than that, as someone that likes to play with b*tchy characters, I love the mean interactions! I’d love to see “mock/insult appearance” as well as “slap” interactions 😂 as for personality traits, I think “Mean”, “Ambitious” and something along the lines of “Party animal” would be some good ones to have.
The Para life dynamics are looking great, and welcome to the Paralives team, Emilie! ✨️
I love y’all which is why we gotta talk about the wording and proofreading 😅 An “ironic” compliment might have humor but if you’re talking about being deliberately unkind, then you most likely mean “sarcastic”.
That's true, I'll bring it up with the team, thank you!
I'm getting more and more excited with every post 🤩
I cannot remember how much I pledged for. Do you guys have that recorded. I know did 3 months at least.
You can check that information under your subscription settings on Patreon.
IM SO EXCITED! I cannot wait. So is emelie making them? Are we providing her with pictures of ourselves ?
During the next months we'll send emails with all the information required in it to get your legendary characters. We're tracking all the pledges from everybody, don't worry!
Love the negative interactions/together cards. Can’t wait to make frenemies 😂 Curious, will there be a chance for the interactions to backfire on the Mean para? and they become sad, embarrassed, or mad instead?
That'd be pretty funny, we're still working on mean interactions so that might be possible haha. Thank you!
I love the levelling system, as someone pointed out, it really gives the feel of dnd. Regarding the together cards, would we be able to do certain actions like insulting/complimenting or anything else only when they appear or also when we click on a para. That would be kinda weird if we can't do stuff like that anytime. And also, could it be possible to make certain stuff more automatic with a switch in the settings, like that you don't have to choose whether you become enemies with someone, but you just automatically become them. Or getting a crush on somebody automatically instead of choosing whether you want to get a crush on them. I like the randomness in games, always cool to see where the game takes you
The way we're seeing social interactions, mostly everything "verbal" is done through together cards, so there are not a million options when clicking on another Parafolk. So far we think it works well!
Are we able to "discard" wants ? Let's say I don't... well, want to let my Para fulfill their "do 50 pushups" want, can I just... click an X somewhere and that particular want disappears? Or can I do it, but only up to a limit (let's say I can delete only 3 wants in a day without consequences)? To be clear, I'm not asking if I can "ignore" a want so that my Para gets frustrated, I'm asking if I can make it disappear as if it never happened (if I feel like it).
Yes, you can discard wants!
I can't wait to see how automany will work. I know it would be hard to do, but basically the saying "your a villan is someone else's story" People present differently depending who they are around and how they are feeling that day. Maybe having it where if a parafolk is low on energy or food they are more likely to be snappy, unless they have some optimistic trait. Maybe personality clashing, not meaning one personality is bad, but they just can't get along because interests, ideals, and traits just keep getting in the way.
Welcome Emelie! 2000+ is a lot of parafolks to have in one game at once. Would it crash the game to have so many? Will only a subset of possible parafolks randomly spawn? Are they going to be used as the "random" parafolks that appear in PAM?
These parafolks will not always be present in the game but will be used in two places; Randomly in the PAM and whenever a townie leaves town (dies, etc.) a random legendary parafolk will move in.
Hi, interesting post! Welcome Émélie! So, you have to *actively* choose to become enemy with another Para, it's not something that just "happens" automatically when you're consistently mean to each other? So if you don't "activate" the Enemy status it means you've just had an unpleasant exchange with that Para (so maybe your mood will be low etc.) but the next time you meet them you are more or less on good terms? Just asking, I think I like it because it gives control to the player.
Yes, exactly, you have to 'confirm' that this is what you want!
Welcome to the team Emilie ! Looking forward to seeing the town coming to life. I really like the flashcard flipping for the together card aspect and I'm huge sucker for grinding gameplay I'm loving the progress. You guys are doing great !!!
For the ongoing wants and personality points, I was thinking it might be worthwhile to have expensive boosts to certain interactions (i.e. the percentage chance of something being successful, an opportunity to negotiate for something, like a one-time lowered bill or extension, or a limited-time offer of something in the mail) -- effectively a luck boost.
That's a neat idea!
Aaaah so exciting!! Welcome Émélie! I love the mean options and the personality level system. And I can’t believe it’s already time for the Patreon rewards 😭 you guys have come such a long way 💕
hell yeah bring on the drama of being mean!!!
After pledging Legend tier for 3 months, will changing your tier after that negate the rewards?
No! Once you unlocked the rewards, you can downgrade or stop your pledge and you won't lose the rewards
Omg, first off I am literally so excited aaaaaaaaa it's happening!! Secondly I love the DND vibe to leveling up points and personalities
The Parafolks evolution is one of the gameplay features I'm really looking forward to 🤩 The game looks amazing guys!
Welcome to the team 🙌 can't wait to play Paralives
Welcome to the Team! Can't wait for the First Early Access Release!
Welcome to the team Émélie! I've been loving the development of the game ever since the project began! Now, about being Mean to Parafolks... (not that I would do it either ;) ), but if you become Enemies with another Parafolk and have enough animosity with them, will Parafolks be able to get into fights? Also about the demo idea from @playeronthebeat , I think it's a great idea and as an alternative if you don't want to do a time-limited approach, I think maybe a stripped down version of both the Build mode and Paramaker would be a good way to just give people a taste!
Parafolks will be able to argue and insult each other but we don't have physical fights in the game right now A demo would be really cool, I totally agree! However, it would take quite some work for us to prepare so we prefer to focus on the full game and release
Welcome to the team Emilie! Love to see the continuous progress of this game, I'm so excited for the Early Access. I have a question if that's ok. We can level our characters as we play and they'll get more traits and perks and all that. If we create a Para in PAM will they all start at level 1 regardless of their age? Or will they have a set level at different ages? I think it'd be weird for example to create an elder para and have them start at level 1 as if they have done nothing I'm their lives.
Thank you! For now, everyone will start at level 1 because, like a role playing game, we want people to feel a sense of progression while playing. However, I see what you mean and it's possible that we look into our options later on
will the traits have an end to the levels? and if so will the wants go towards anything else?
For now, it ends at level 12 and the personality points awarded by wants won't give more things but this could be improved later on!
Oh my, create 2000+ parafolks? Talk about dream job. 😍 Good luck Émélie!! I hope you have lots of fun! (please make me pretty)
I really like the personality development system!
Ahhhh this is so cool. I can't wait to play!! And welcome, Émélie!!
Amazing work guys!
Welcome to the team Émélie! I like the new developments! Also a couple of questions, as I pledged legend tier for 3 months at October, November and December 2020, as well as in 2022 from September, October and November of that year, would I be getting two messages (one for each of the three months)? Can I give away one of those to a friend or family of mine? Thank you and sorry for the long response.
Yes, you will be able to claim the reward twice and you will get two seperate emails! The second one can be used to recreate a friend or family member but you will have to fill out the form yourself, with their permission