The Sims FreePlay Review

The Sims Freeplay is one of the finest example of how best to handle the freemium game model, even if it does strongly encourage the use of in-app purchases in order to progress faster.

Taking the concept of The Sims 3, The Sims Freeplay mixes that up and places everything into real time. In other freemium games, this idea frequently feels restrictive, ever encouraging players to pay up and speed up their progress. In The Sims Freeplay however, it makes perfect sense. In life, cooking dinner does take more than a split second, much like sleeping for 8 hours takes 8 hours.

Sure, there are ways of speeding things up but that's not really keeping to the spirit of the game. The Sims Freeplay is geared towards dipping in during the day. The freedom of other Sims games is there with the ability to interact with a whole multitude of objects as well as make friends, lovers and follow a career path.

To keep things constantly interesting, the player isn't restricted to one Sim with the ability to switch to other households and player created characters ensuring there's almost always something to do. There's the steady stream of objectives, too, which provide structure to the game as well as earn much needed experience points, which inevitably opens up more possibilities.

Buildings can be purchased as well as items to furnish the surroundings. Most of the regular Sims format is here bar the ability to have children.

This means that there's a decent amount of game time for free. While buying simoleons (currency) does go some way to speeding things up, it's not really essential for the patient gamer. For those who can multi task well, it makes the whole experience all the swifter.

Rather than crowbarring in in-app purchases and time based objectives, The Sims Freeplay is well laid out and fits into the concept very well. The only strange omission is the lack of social functionality, much loved by freemium games conventionally, but it never really feels missed as the rest of the game is so well laid out.

The Sims Freeplay offers plenty of hours of fun. Some in one big dose, while other sessions are in shorter drop in sessions as is common with the freemium model. In each case, it makes The Sims Freeplay a worthwhile download at an excellent, non-existent, price.