The Sims 4 Eco Lifestyle

It's tons of fun to create your very own home and live out your dreams, but have you ever thought about how your choices impact the environment? That's the question that The Sims 4 Eco Lifestyle poses, as this expansion in the massively popular life-simulation series puts your ethics to the test. Arriving in a new region called Evergreen Harbor, The Sims 4 Eco Lifestyle tasks you and your character with making good choices that will benefit the environment. With new building materials, power and water options, and a slew of other fresh features, this expansion is a must-play for longtime fans.

Main Game Features

• Build your ideal home and live how you want
• Keep your neighborhood clean and eco-friendly
• New items, careers, and skills

Story

The Sims 4 Eco Lifestyle is an expansion for The Sims 4 and contains a similar narrative structure, focused on your created character and their life in a suburban neighborhood. In this expansion, you move to Evergreen Harbor, a collection of neighborhoods with environmentally-conscious residents that want to minimize their impact on the world. As the newest neighbor on the block, you'll have to do your part in keeping energy expenditure down, recycling your waste, and participating in community events.

As always, the story is dictated by your actions, as you decide what to do and when to do it. After building your house, you're responsible for the day-to-day decisions of your Sim character. You'll get a job, clean and decorate your home, go out on dates, and more. While the lack of an interesting narrative might be a negative for some players, those who appreciate the freedom of The Sims 4 Eco Lifestyle will greatly enjoy creating their own memories. There are lots of ways to interact with your neighbors and Evergreen Harbor at large, leading to engaging moments of drama, suspense, and romance. Even though you won't uncover any crazy mysteries or defeat massive bosses, there are still lots of things to enjoy about the world of The Sims 4 Eco Lifestyle.

Gameplay

As an expansion in The Sims franchise, The Sims 4 Eco Lifestyle sticks to the same formula as before, but adds a lot of new items and features for players to enjoy. As always, you start by building a house using a limited amount of funds, picking everything from the type of couch in your living room to the color of the paint on the walls. This expansion adds plenty of new objects to buy and place in your home, including solar panels, a wind turbine, garden planters, and more. You can also change some things in the neighborhood, such as creating a community lot where you and your neighbors vote on what goes into the shared space. There are also a couple of new jobs to consider, including the civil designer and freelance crafter careers.

As the theme of the expansion would suggest, making environmental-friendly decisions plays a major part in The Sims 4 Eco Lifestyle. For example, you can use recycled materials to create and sell fun objects, making a buck and reducing needless waste at the same time. Additionally, you can lower the cost of your bills by investing in things like solar-powered energy. Depending on what kind of lifestyle you live, Evergreen Harbor will look different, becoming a beautiful town or a smelly dump. If you and your neighbors are responsible and keep things clean, the harbor will look gorgeous all the time. Refuse to be eco-friendly and garbage will start to pile up, or you might even have to deal with destructive acid rain!

Conclusion

The Sims 4 Eco Lifestyle does a good job of adding new features and keeping the game entertaining, but also encourages players to think ahead and make plans before acting. Keeping your house and neighborhood clean isn't easy, but it's very rewarding, as there are lots of benefits to going green.

Pros

• Lots of new features
• Fabrication ability is fun to use
• Choices have consequences

Cons

• Can be hard to balance eco-footprint
• Building requires more forethought
• All three neighborhoods feel similar