The concept of Forever World is very popular in the Minecraft community. It's a world where the player commits to never restarting and playing it indefinitely. It's a style of play that encourages consistency and dedication.

But how does this translate to The Sims 3?

I think it has to do with something that Minecraft and The Sims game series have in common. They're open ended. But not having a clear limit or objective can cause the burnout that is so characteristic of this type of game.

The forever world concept tries to solve this problem, and adapted to The Sims 3 is about having a single save and play it with no end in sight. The idea it for this save is to be the main one, to never abandon it and always return to it. At least, as long as the world doesn't become corrupted, which all of us who play Sims 3 know is possible.


Part One: Deciding what kind of forever world we want to play

The way to play Forever World isn't set in stone. You can play however you want because the most important thing is to have fun. These are some of the options I came up with, but it's not a comprehensive list.

Empty World: This is how I play.

You start with just one Sim and nothing else in the world. You'll have to create everything else, from families to community lots. I think it's a very fulfilling way to play because you're involved in the entire process from the beginning.

As you progress, you'll add more families to your world, whether you've created them or met them in your playthrough, and move them into a house. Here, you can begin rotating through the game and assign challenges to some of them. You can decide whether to play with just one family, several, or all of them. That's entirely up to you!

Populated World: In this case, you start with a complete world.

It can be an EA world or a custom one, but the idea is to have everything already in the world. You also start with a single household. This can be a single Sim or an entire family, whether you create it or it already comes with the world. Here, you can also add families to your rotation. You can add them as certain requirements are met. For example, you can only start playing a new house when someone in that new family becomes best friends with another Sim you already control. Or any other possibility!

You can also decide to divide the world into zones and start playing there. For example, in Sunset Valley, you start with Christopher Steel, and the next family you control has to be someone from the street where he lives, like the Harts, and so on. You can also take advantage of this opportunity to fill empty lots on that street with new families or community lots. When you're done with that street, you move on to another of your choice.

Mixed World: This is a mix of the previous two.

You start in a world with a few families, no more than four or five. And with the community lots you deem necessary, such as City Hall, a park, the grocery store, the military base, and a beach, to name a few. When you start in this world, you already have all the families in rotation, and it's a group effort to add more families and lots, deciding which areas will be populated first and which community lots have priority.



Part Two: Gameplay rules

Empty World Rules:

1. Start with just one CAS Sim. It's recommended that they be a young adult, but this is entirely up to you. You can choose their look, traits, and lifetime wish.

2.Put them in an empty lot. For a harder challenge, empty their funds to zero. But if you want to start with starter funds, that's fine too, because it's also a hard way to play.

3.Choose a method or challenge to build your city. In my case, I'm following the rules of the Nothing is Free Challenge. Here you can only build one community lot per Sim, and only when it meets certain requirements, which are usually max skill related to the lot and buying it with family money. But whatever you want to play is fine!

4.Choose how you'll add families to your city. But don't take them as set in stone; be flexible for added fun.

In my case, for the moment, I'm using the Nothing Is Free Challenge rules to move Sims into my city. This is done only through social interactions, meaning I can't create new Sims, only move existing ones into new houses. But I'll break this rule when I want to add specific Sims to complete certain challenges.

5.Rotation. If you want to play with more than one household, choose a rotation schedule and day, and stick to it for the duration of each rotation. I do all 7-day rotations for each household and switch on Sundays at midnight. In the next rotation, you can do the same, or change the number of days you play each household, as long as it's the same number of days each day. For example, in rotation 1 you could do 7 days per household, but in rotation 2, 3 days per household. The important thing is that the number of days is the same within each rotation to keep the city growing at the same rate. Of course, you can decide to do the rotation however you like. This Forever World concept is very broad, and everyone plays in the way they enjoy most.

6.Season. To maintain balance and logic, make the entire rotation a single season. You can start with any season you like; it doesn't have to be summer like the game begins. In my case, I choose seven days for each season to coincide with the rotation days and so that all families experience their respective holidays. At the end of the seven days, when I change houses, the season also changes, so I use "testingcheastsenable true" to switch to the season of that rotation. You can also select "change seasons" by pressing Shift+click on the ground.


Populated World Rules:

1.Start with one household. It could be a single sims or a family, CAS o premade. You choose.

2.Divide the world map into different parts. The best way is by street. You need to unlock that entire street, which means adding all the houses to the rotation, felling empty lots and buying and upgrading all the community lots. Once you've finished this street, you can add the second one. Note: The word is free to explore, but you can't add Sims to the rotation or buy lots that aren't in the area you want to unlock.

3.Choose a method or challenge to unlock your city. Same as Empty World, but instead of building from scratch, you buy the lot once you meet the requirements. Upgrading to level 3 on purchasable properties is recommended.

4.Choose how you'll add families to your rotation. In this case, you have several scenarios. One where you have houses with Sims, one with empty houses, and another with empty lots. For empty lots and houses, follow the Empty World method. For houses with Sims, you need to become best friends with at least one member of the family.

5.Rotation. Same as Empty World.

6.Season.Same as Empty World.


Mixed World Rules:

In this case, you'll have no choice but to combine the two rules mentioned earlier. The rule you can disregard is unlocking the city by street from the Populated World Rules, since your city is very new and doesn't have enough Sims to unlock it by street.

I'm doing this challenge right now in my youtube channel:

Forever World Ep 1