INDEPENDENT KIDS CHALLENGE
This is a really small challenge that takes only 8 Sim days (so you will finish it before you get bored ).

THE STORY
It is an usual family with many children and a single parent. Well, almost usual. The father (or mother) is a stereotype Mad Scientist and spends much time in his/her home lab inventing something mysterious...
One day his/her amazing invention is almost ready to work. It is a wonderful thing that allows a person stay inside for any chosen period of time without aging - the Hibernator!
Unfortunately, the invention is not perfect yet, and there is one fault: once activated, the Hibernator cannot be switched off manually. The person inside will only wake up automatically, when the chosen time passes.
The inventor gets inside the device trying to improve it. At this moment one of the children gets to the lab and decides to play with the Hibernator. The kid accidentally presses the button, and the device activates, leaving its inventor hibernating inside.
After a number of unsuccessful attempts to wake up the parent, kids realize that now they must survive on their own...

STARTING THE CHALLENGE

Download the following custom objects:

• Numenorean Hibernation Cell here. Download the buyable version.
• Paladin's Automatic Bill Payer here (Sims 2 - Objects - Home life improvements). You will need it, as the kids cannot pay bills themselves.
  Note: if you want to make the challenge harder, simply leave the bills unpaid and re-buy all the items taken by Repo-man.

Create a family in CAS. You should make:
- one Adult, male or female. Give him/her any appearance and personality. It doesn't really matter, because the adult will be in the Hibernator from the beginning to the end of the challenge.
- at least 1 Child, but you can make more. Give them random personalities. You can use the method from the Prosperity challenge:
Roll a die twice. The first time you roll to choose the set of astrological signs. The second time you choose sign from the set.

Set:
Odd (1,3,5) = Set 1
Even (2,4,6) = Set 2

Set 1:
1 = Aries
2 = Taurus
3 = Gemini
4 = Cancer
5 = Leo
6 = Virgo

Set 2:
1 = Libra
2 = Scorpio
3 = Sagittarius
4 = Capricorn
5 = Aquarius
6 = Pisces

Move the family to a lot, build a house and furnish it as you like. You are allowed to cheat for money; when you are done, reduce the family funds to 500 Simoleons. Don't forget to build one room ("the lab") and put there a Hibernator
Now you are ready to start. Get the Parent to the Hibernator and set the time to a month. You will be allowed to wake him/her up once the challenge is over.

Your aim is to make all the kids live on their own, building their skills and getting as high marks at school as possible. Try to complete the challenge without visits from Social Worker.

The kids cannot earn money to pay bills by finding a job or cook normal food to eat. However, there are ways for the family without teens, elders or adults to survive. Here are some of them:

Getting money

• sell paintings
• catch and sell fish (Seasons)
• sell limonade to your neighbors (OFB)

Getting food

• get snacks from fridge
• bake food using RIP Co. Little Baker Oven (remember that you can't have more than one!)
• order pizza or chinese food

Note: If you find other ways to get money/food, they are allowed if they are not too easy and do not require help from an adult at any stage (for example, gardening is OK, while endless buffets are disallowed).

RULES

• CC is allowed, as long as it has reasonable price and characteristics. No hacked objects or objects with special abilities!
• No cheating, except for fixing bugs. Cheating for money is allowed only when you are building and furnishing the house, but after that you must reduce money to 500 Simoleons.
• You are not allowed to sell any build or buy mode content you started with
• You cannot hire Maid or Nanny. All the other service NPCs are allowed.
• You are not allowed to have more than one RIP Co. Little Baker Oven on your lot.
• If any object is taken away by Repo Man, replace it with identical one. If you do not have enough money to do that, you get -10 points.
• You win if all the Children become Teenagers. Then you can wake up the Parent and send the teens to the college or let them live further in your neighborhood.
• You lose if all the kids are taken away by the Social Worker.

SCORING
+1 for each skill point earned
+1 for every 5 Simoleons earned above the initial 500.
Note: if you end the challenge with less than 500 Simoleons, you don't have to substract points.
+5 for each A+ report card
+10 for each kid who grows up well
+10 for each Talent Badge

PENALTIES
-5 for each D report card
-5 for each bad memory
-10 for each kid who grows up badly
-10 for each object taken away by Repo Man and not replaced with identical one
-30 for each kid taken away by Social Worker

BONUS POINTS
Multiply your score by 2 if you started the challenge with 5 or more kids and no one of them was taken away.

Have fun!
Please post your pics, comments and suggestions.

P.S. My own score is 93
P.P.S. My English skills are not perfect, and I am trying to improve them. If you find a grammatical error or something like that, please PM me.

Wow! Love this challenge! I'm gonna do it right away. By the way, your english is really, really good! Where are you from? I'm from Holland myself so my English isn't the best either.

Hi! It made me so happy to see your comment! Could you post some pics if you really do the challende?
P.S. I'm from Russia

Wow! Thanks for your pics! I like the girl and hope she will be able to survive alone, without any help. Can't wait to see more!

This is a cool challenge, I'll give you an update tommorrow of what happens

So I just started and I made the Jamieson family, 3 girls and 1 female mother.
I am playing their 2nd night, and I must say, It's not as hard as I thought.
I'll try and get some pictures soon.

I'm very happy that you decided to try this challenge and hope you enjoy playing!

The challenge was not intended to be extremely hard
Just winning is easy, but the idea is to make the kids as rich and prospering as possible, and it is not that easy, especially earning money. I played this challenge with 4 kids and managed to get only 30 Simoleons in addition to the initial 500! (well, maybe I didn't use the best possible strategy )

Well, I didn't really need the money cause I already gave them a swanky house xD, but I'm training to get them to play the piano so they earn money for their college funds

Also, I found a glitch where the kid's mum got up off of the hibernation thing and wet herself. o.o
I wonder if that's meant to happen. :3!
*Rushes to comments*

This challenge looks fun

I also moved the sims in a splendid house, but this caused bills over 300 simoleons, so the kids had serious problems with money


That's really strange, I've never got such a glitch, although I use the hibernator quite often

Little thing I see here: if one child is neglected/starving, they all get taken by the Social Worker.

(I had this happen once...a child got an F and he AND his infant sister were taken.)

I finally finished the challenge! Here is my score:

+72 for each skill point earned
+5495 for every 5 Simoleons earned above the initial 500. (not counting the 7000 from selling novels because I didn't know if the hack that lets kids write novels was acceptable for this challenge.)
+20 for each A+ report card.
+50 for each kid who grows up well
+50 for each Talent Badge
x2 for 5 or more kids

-0 for each D report card
-0 for each bad memory
-0 for each kid who grows up badly
-0 for each object taken away by Repo Man and not replaced with identical one
-0 for each kid taken away by Social Worker

My total score = 11,374 points

If you'd like to see my progress through this challenge. Go to
http://simslife.atspace.org/Challen...enge/index.html

I had a lot of fun with this challenge. I like challenges that aren't too time consuming.
I think that if it wouldn't have been for seasons, I wouldn't have made such a good score.

Where did you get Alexas dress? And where is the kids can write hack?

Alexa's dress is a free TSR download. You can get it here . It comes in lots of colors, but the blue is my favorite.

The kids can write hack is from MTS on this page.
Kids can write novels, but they cannot mail them. You could do what i did and make some random walkby selectable and have them mail it and then make them unselectable. I wasn't sure if doing that was cheating. That's why I didn't include the money I got from the novels.

Thanks! I really thank you! your stuff is awesome, may I just say. I love blue too. Sky blue is my personal fave.

You're welcome. I'm glad someone likes my stuff.
BTW, my favorite color is sky blue, too.

I'm going to try this, but one thing. The link to the automatic billpayer leads to page one of the comments for the Hibernation chamber.

EDIT: I searched for it on Google, and found it. No big deal!

Lurve this idea, totally doing it with this one premade family, with one child.

I just finished with this and loved it! I had a single mom in the hibernator with 5 kids who had to fend for themselves. It was hard getting them to do their homework, fulfilling their needs, and then making them do jobs like write, fish, and paint. I was kinda reluctant to age them since I was having so much fun. 10/10 for this challenge!

Here we go![Again]



Heres the whole Deania [De-an-ea] family! [Lucy, Honey, Kyra, Sophie, Dennis, Tom, Biscuits and Nibbles]



"The day I have been waiting for... The time to test out my best invention yet!" Lucy cried happily. She had been working for months on this invention and nothing was going to stop her.



"No-No wait!" Was Lucy's final words before the Hibernator snapped into action.
"Eight Weeks" Said the Hibernator in a robotic voice. The children didn't know she was testing her invention- and all there relatives were either dead or in Australia!



Honey was passing by and saw her mothers keys on the floor.
"I better go give her theese keys" She thought.



"Mummy you dropp- Mummy what are you doing?" Honey asked, surprised. Her mother was trapped in a cell and wasn't moving.
"Mummy! Can you hear me?" cried Honey. When no response came, Honey tried to prise open the door of the cell, but it was stuck. Honey looked all around the cell until she found something. 'Hibernation time: Eight Days.' Then she dashed out of her mother's lab and went to tell the others.



"And it said 'Hibernation: Eight Days.'" Honey explained.
"Did you try to wake her" Kyra asked.
"Yeah, I've already said that it wouldn't open. What worry's me is, how are we supost to survive the rest of our childhood?" Honey said, looking at the others. It suddenly dawned on them; They were going to have to live by their money.

Off to work they went, and SOMEBODY let in the welcome party. Anyway, Honey went off to paint on Lucy's painting thingy.



And Tom went to sell some lemonade [Ridiculously Expensive]. I only had a little bit of time.



Up next time..

Sophie used the garden and Kyra wrote novels! [Romance].
Only Dennis didn't do much. He only trained the pets for their jobs!

Discontinued, the neighbourhood got deleted.

wow this is really good I love it please show me the rest I am thinking of starting this challenge

Thanks! I should get going to get your piccies. Enjoy the rest... I guess.

This sounds awesome. I don't think I would be able to finish it with 5 kids like some of you did. I'll put this one on my list of challenges to do. I have to finish the crazy cat lady challenge first.

Cute piccies, Mai. I don't think I could ever get 5 kids and 2 pets to survive through 8 days. ^_^

this could be interesting i will have to try it out but i am going to lock the mom in a basement with the stuff needed to live though because i cant download the hibernator for some reason

Hi everyone! I haven't been here quite a long time and I am soooo happy to see that you are enjoying this challenge! Thank you for trying it



OMG, nice score
I think that not including the money from selling novels is right. Technically, writing novels itself is OK, since it is time-taking enough. However, as you need to make an adult selectable to sell novels, it should be considered cheating