Paralives’ 2025 Recap: The Year in Numbers and Screenshots
Hi, it’s Alex! Happy New Year from the whole team!
Since this is the first post of the year, let’s do a recap of 2025 through numbers and images. A lot was done, so let’s get started!
🔐 This post is for Patrons only and will be shared with the public next week!
🏡 Build Mode And Town
While 2024 was all about adding more furniture and items to the build mode catalog, 2025 had Léa and Chloé focused on building all the houses and public lots for the town!
➡️ 297 new build mode items were created
Most 2025 items were created for the town. Some of these will be available in the build mode catalog while specific items like shop signs will be hidden unless you use a cheat.
➡️ 104 collectibles to find around town
Gemstones, mushrooms and buried artefacts can be found while walking around town. Donate them to the museum or display them in your living room! We will reveal the censored part with you in a few weeks, so keep an eye out!
➡️ 30 new paintings for the painting skill
This brings us to a total of 100+ paintings that your Parafolks can come up with! We’ve previously shared other paintings here and here.
➡️ 66 houses and public lots were created in build mode to fill up the town
A section of the industrial district.
A section of the Old Town district.
👩👧👦 Paramaker and Parafolks
In 2025, Sonia created even more items
➡️ 100 new Paramaker items
➡️ 40 new Townies
➡️ 822 Patrons turned into Parafolks as part of the Legend tier reward
An image gallery of the new hairstyles, clothing items and accessories we’ve added to the game in 2025!
🔉 Music and Sound Effects
Andrei has been pretty busy on the audio side of things in 2025! The soundtrack of the game is ready for launch, and we’ve been tweaking the ambient sounds in live mode.
➡️ All 16 tracks for the main menu, build mode, and Paramaker have been mixed and mastered
➡️ 12 music tracks have been created for radio channels
➡️ 4 new music tracks for the town’s shops have been created
➡️ 80+ new sound effects for the interface and for gameplay interactions
➡️ 400 voice-over lines have been recorded by each of the 4 actors and integrated into the game
💃 Character Interactions and Animations
This year, Alice and Lina created many new animations for the game, and we’ve integrated them into the game as interactions, adding content to the live mode gameplay.
➡️ 191 new animations created
A few of the many animations created in 2025.
🏃➡️ Live Mode Gameplay Features
In 2025, we have been hard at work on getting the live mode ready for launch and we did a looooot of progress adding the final features we wanted for Early Access as well as improving everything we already had.
➡️ 30+ new live mode features have been added to the game (some big, some small improvements) as well as more live mode content in general
Some of the interfaces for the live mode that we’ve worked on this year as part of the improvements and new features we’ve added.
👍 5 Major Events for Paralives in 2025
1️⃣ June 8, 2025: Release date announcement trailer
2️⃣ Throughout the year: 8 playtest sessions with 75+ people in total. This allowed us to improve the stability and usability of the live mode to make sure people can enjoy the game when it launches.
3️⃣ September 25, 2025: Paralives reaches 1 million wishlists on Steam!
4️⃣ October and November 2025: Translated the game (12 000 English words) in 7 other languages, thanks to LocQuest
5️⃣ November 14, 2025: The team announces a delay. The new Early Access release date is May 25, 2026 and the extra time will be used to fix bugs and add a few features to make sure Paralives provides a good first experience.
📅 5 Major Goals for 2026
🎮 Finish the last improvements and polish to the live mode gameplay according to the feedback from playtests. See the full roadmap here.
🔨 Fix various bugs, improve the interface and the tutorials.
📊 Marketing: Prepare a launch trailer, online ads and work with media and influencers to cover the game at launch.
⭐ Release Paralives in Early Access on Steam!
📌 Plan and announce the content of the first updates that we will work on during the second part of 2026.
Thank you for being part of Paralives’ development in 2025! We’re looking forward to sharing our progress with you up until the Early Access release on May 25, 2026! If you are curious, you can read the recap we did one year ago for 2024 here.
Best wishes for the new year,
Alex
Comments (55)
I love the interfaces of the live mode !! They feel super cohesive and satusfying to the eye !
I need the dolphin painting
Did you use Ai for the paintings?
We are against the use of generative AI in our game, and every paintings are human-made by our artists, Sonia, Lea and myself (Chloe)
One of the paintings gives me major AOT path vibes
I would love to see public transportation in the future!
This! It'll probably a quick rabbithole thing but it'd be cool to also be abe to meet/interact with Parafolks during the commute.
Y'all don't even know how much I am looking forward to playing it!! Especially because I'm upgrading my PC this year hehe so I am gonna be able to play all the games I wanna play, but this one is the one I am looking forward to the most. It's gonna be the first one I'll install once the build is finished I told myself that
I'm looking forward to this! The afro puffs with the two twists in the front are ADORABLE!! I'd love if there could be a few more "bad" paintings sometime in the future!
hey alex am so looking forward to get to play it in may 25 you guys amazing to make this lovely game
Hey Alex, can you guys share the feedback from the playtests? Every time I circle back around to The Sims 4, I'm bored within minutes... I'm so hopeful for Paralives, but also so curious to know what the feedback has been like thus far.
Amazing work! So excited to see where you will all be at in May! I'm in awe at all the progress you've all made since that demo so many years ago! :')
"400 voice-over lines have been recorded by each of the 4 actors and integrated into the game": so each actor recorded 400 lines? A total of approx 1600 lines? Can you clarify please because the wording is not clear to me
In the Paramaker, you can select one of the 4 voices for a given character. So each actor recorded the same 400 lines
Nice you're doing some more advertising of the game leading up the EA release! Hopefully the launch goes very well 😊🩵
Thank you for all your hard work last year and all the previous years. I can't wait to play!!
My birthday is the 24th May and I'll officially be 25 when this releases on the 25th! No rush of course, but Paralives releasing would be such perfect timing, can't wait you guys <3
Im so freaking excited for this game. 🤞that everything goes smoothly & we get to play the game in May!
Happy New Year! I wish I could’ve been a part of your journey sooner, but better late to the party than never. The love, care and attention put into this game is very heart-warming and inspiring. I still have so much catching up to do. Wishing the team lots of luck during these next few months (and don’t forget to un-shrimp your backs every once in awhile!)🤞🏽
I love your work. I just wanted to say that, when you showed us the two different desings for babies and toddlers, there was a more cute and soft design. I think babies and toddlers look too old, like little adults, and not that cute and young. Maybe it’s just me. Anyways, the progress made during last year is just crazy. I want to try the game so bad!
Happy New Year, peeps!! And did I just read that y'all had to create 822 Parafolks?! Geez, Louise. My hats off to you all for cranking those out, that's no joke.
Wait, I never got an email or a message about being made into a Para, and I was on the Legend Tier for three months 😭 Have you done everyone already or will you continue? Or have I missed it??
You should have received an email, send us a DM here on Patreon so that we can help you!
Happy new year, Paralive team!! Excited to see what the new year will bring! 🎉❤️
This is going to be a wonderful year. All the hard work will pay off
OMG all of these are amazing, I'm so excited to get my hands on this game. I honestly can't pick a favorite detail. I'm gonna have like a hundred hours in this game and someone will ask "So how's the game?" and I'll just go "Great! I just finished making my first para, can't wait to build a house!" I also love all the different art styles for the paintings. The ghibli one is so cute, I see those hidden hands...you can't hide from me. (also a bit of a side-note, but for the ghibli one I would maybe edit it a bit? Cuz I know people are going to think it's ai, sadly. 😔)
Thanks for the comments and feedback, we will take a look at what we can do!
Happy New Year! The progress is amazing and I can't wait to see what 2026 brings 💚
happy new year!!! i missed these updates! i can’t believe we only have a little over 4 months until early access! 822 patron parafolks is amazing! 🥳🥳
Excellent, excellent!! I love exploring, and all the Dev team's hard work, creative talents, and ingenuity continues to shine in everything and every step in the development of Paralives. Thank you Alex and the team!! ✨️
The screenshot about the job ("Mission Coordinator") inspired me this thought: as you get promoted and get higher on the ranks, the jobs become more demanding and have more responsibilities (I'm guessing Mission Coordinator in a Space Agency is not an easy job!). Does this reflect on the gameplay? Maybe you don't have perks daily, or your job performance is judged more severely (in gameplay terms, it's a bit more difficult to have a good %, you must take good care of your needs and your general mood). This doesn't mean necessarily that you risk getting "fired", just that your job is more demanding than before (but you get more money!). I'd love this
Thanks for the feedback! More prestigious jobs require higher skill levels so it will be higher to get a good performance rating, upgrade points and perk for them! However, the salary is higher and there are unique perks
Happy new year!! OMG THE NEW RELEASE DATE IS LIKE 4 DAYS BEFORE MY BIRTHDAY, 😭❤️ I have never been so heavily invested in the creation of a game before now and seeing every update just makes me so unbelievably excited for the early access and final game release! Its so good seeing the genuine passion and care you all have for this project, seriously am so excited!
A few comments and questions: 1. I love seeing the hearing aids and prosthetic legs! That's so important and so subtle. 2. What is LocQuest? 3. Was that Ghibli-style painting hand-made? There was a popular trend of people turning themselves into Ghibli-style paintings using generative AI tools and I do not support its use.
The Paralives team aren't using AI. Team members created all the paintings and all other game assets themselves 👍
FIRST PICTURE !! Do I spy a placeable hole in a wall?!!??🤩 Oh imagine the derelict houses we can create🥰
Yes, that's it!
Oh it will be so cool that in the future there is helicopters in the game nothing crazy just for specific jobs like military or like if someone has an accident while hiking in the forest and they rescue the person or like a famous people move on them idk, but i thought of it when i saw the H sign. Congrats and good job guys in love with this game ❤️
Happy New Year everyone! Last year was amazing in terms of progress. I look forward to seeing how much progress is made this year. And of course, the early access launch! So EXCITED! Keep up the good work, the Paralives team! ✨
Happy New Year and welcome back! 🤗 I always enjoy these year review posts, really allows a different perspective on how much was accomplished throughout the year 😊 I can’t wait to see even more about the town soon! Have you decided already on the final townies that we’ll have for early access? I assume all of them will have a household in town, correct? Would you be able to confirm how many townie households we’ll have in total? 👏 So excited for this year 🙌
Thank you! Happy New Year!! We have almost finalized the townies that will be there at launch and we will be able to share more about that in a future post!
Happy new year! So proud of all the progress you’ve made and looking forward to everything to come this year! 🩵
I don't remember if we will be able to select the subject of the painting the Para is going to make or if it will be random
You pick the art style of the painting and the Para comes up with a random image in that style
Happy new year, dearest Team. All the best wishes for you and may you bring your plans to life this year.
Omg that is a lot more patreon townies than I expected! How will that work in-game? I guess all 822 can't be in the game simultanously! All the items and PM items look soooo good!
Thank you!! Parafolks created for the townie reward are going to be used when you randomize characters in the Paramaker and also, these characters will be picked at random to fill up the town when other townies dies of old age, etc
Happy New Year! and welcome back.
I spotted a peaked cap. Need a shako to complete this category of hats in the post-release future. ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shako Also, welcome back and happy new year to you, sir, and everyone else at the studio! Finally, not sure if I ever said this before, but I would like to convey my thanks for including the deafness, hearing aids, and such. I, personally, appreciate this representation for deaf people like me in real life. Your decision to include this representation for what is clearly one of the most "invisible" groups insofar as disabilities goes is exemplary and an unexampled excellence for a developer in the life simulation video game genre. Thank you!
Happy New Year to the team! This is so exciting, I'm still counting down the days to release!
Omg the I JUST WANNA BE PART OF YOUR SYMPHONYYYY✨ painting!! 😍
I missed y'all! Welcome back and hope you had a great rest. This year is going to be great!!
Happy new year! Wow, you guys got a lot done last year. Well done! Look forward to seeing what comes next 😊
Happy new year🎆. Wishing you the best of luck for the year ahead
Welcome back! Hope you ate lots of tourtière over the holidays ✨