Hello, dear Sims 3 CC creators!!

I’ve always adored the gothic surrealism of Midnight Hollow—it’s one of the most atmospheric worlds in The Sims 3! As someone dreaming of real-life intentional communities inspired by its vibe, I’d love to know: 
1. What inspired the world’s design? (E.g., films, art movements?) 
2. Are there unused concepts or lore that didn’t make it into the final version? 

If you’re no longer involved with TS3, could you point me to others who worked on it?

Thanks for creating a world that still sparks imagination a decade later!

Thank you!
Sincerely!

My name is Sandija.

I would really appreciate, if you would check this out! And, would you ever consult on a real-world ‘goth enclave’ project?

https://www.facebook.com/groups/172...4319/?ref=share

I like Midnight Hollow as a world but hate the lighting. I'm not sure what EA's thinking on that was- it's so murky at night that it's hard to see anything outside especially with moon cycles enabled. (Midnight Hollow is officially an EA world sold in the store as both the regular and gold versions).

It's influence was stated as old black and white horror films- definitely the 1931 versions of Dracula (with Bela Lugosi) and Frankenstein (with Boris Karloff) are heavy influences. If you take the flowers and trees from the world and put it in a 'normal' world, all of them are mostly black and white (with one flower being strikingly blood red with black leaves). There's some newer horror in there with families inspired by Nightmare before Christmas and Psycho. Surprisingly there isn't a Goth family branch there. There is a little dash of steam punk too.

I'm not sure if there are any concepts that EA didn't put in there. Like most store worlds it definitely lacks anything from expansions. Like it could have really used a Season's Festival lot and swapping some of the lots to Late Night venues helps get people out and about (I think it does have some data tossed in to make a couple of NPCs celebrities). And of any of the worlds EA made that should have had the data added in for Supernatural, this is the one. It absolutely needs an elixir shop instead of the Business as Usual toy store.

I had a save file where I made a ton of edits but apparently that got deleted along the way and I didn't make a backup.

Most of the references are covered in the Cultural References section of the fandom wiki: https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Midnig...ural_references
You can also check the pages for each household, sim, or lot- they should all mention what they are likely referencing.

I believe the world was released in 2013, which is a big hint on what they were going for. Peak era for the popularity of gothic lolita, steampunk, and such online. It's also paying homage to the popular dark lore theories and machinima, but whether it's earnest or slapped on to sell more $30 worlds... it had a mixed reception as far as I know.


Not sure if something was lost in translation here, but no players or modders here were involved in the creation of Midnight Hollow. It's not a custom world, it was developed entirely by EA / Maxis.


The SimGurus actually used to build official festival lots for the Store worlds for players to place on their own
https://www.thesims3.com/assetDetai...ssetId=7686949#

Thank You so much for such an awesome replays! I would love to know Your opinions, ideas and thoughts about this more! <3

SimGuruGraham isn't responding. Probobly He's too busy and focusing on sims 4 stuff...

I do like the Beetlejuice influences, and the dark gothic drab theme. My main problem with Midnight Hollow is those stupidly placed low fences that cause routing errors. Almost every lot has them, and in order to make the world playable I have to remove them from each lot. A real PITA. All because EAxis were stupid and didn't understand those fences can't be walked over.

I got Midnight Hollow because of the business kit that came with that pack. I did play it once, but the black & white lightning really threw me off. I thought the game was broken!

I moved some of the houses to other worlds and redid them.

Blood sky is my vibe.

I evicted and edited the whole town tho since I'm not a fan of its style and fashion (I always love to creating Sims from scratch). So I changed it to a rustic-small towns (put s here because there's a lot of sections in the world, like there's other towns or villages outside of the main town), and also play some Silent Hill theme in the background. The highlight is, when the sky turns into blood-red, I'll switch to some ghosts or supernatural households to haunt the town. It's a really fun world to create a story besides of Riverview.

My main problem is shadow lagging but I can tune it down, although I love those shadows from dead trees. (Strange because I've no problem with other worlds)

It's one of my favorite world, of course, but for its atmosphere, climate and weather.

I usually go through swapping to every household to see if backstories match their traits (a pet peeve of mine), maybe tweak a few outfits or decide that someone should be an occult sim. I renamed Nervous Subject and set his father to the Grim Reaper. Almost all of the Midnight Hollow sims using that special white to black skin tone (which has a tendency to get oddly green in the world's light) got swapped to a different skin tone. For most worlds, Midnight Hollow included, I will make a handful of families because EA worlds tend to have very few kids (looking at you, Bridgeport).

My main change to Midnight Hollow was to take all but two of the Savvy Seller lots and turn them into Late Night style apartments. EA does not believe in affordable housing with more than one bedroom.

Don't know if you know, but with Nraas MC> Advanced> Copy Skin Tone, you can then paste one Sims skin to several in one shot.