Sims 4 Devs: Cooking, Gardening, New Hair Updates coming

In a rainbow-studded Maxis Livestream, the Sims 4 developers not only celebrated the varied contributions of queer Simmers and LGBTQ+ artists around the global community, but they also dropped delicious hints about features coming to base game in the near future. 

The June 29th patch, which came laden with the code necessary for the fresh Sims Sessions in-game festival events, also came with new wall art designed by queer Simmers. The first selection, a landscape Pride parade of colorful confetti, waving queer flags, and queer bodies of every size, shape, and color, is an audacious work of art from Jupiter, known as @MidnightFox452 on Twitter.  Jupiter is a non-binary transperson who identifies as a lesbian; they used the many different hues of the varied pride flags in their work to infuse it with infectious vibrance. Sims 4 players can now find this joyous piece in-game! 

Two more stunning works, created by queer Simmers, will hit Sims 4 build/buy in the next patch.  Ashley Lukashevsky (@AshLukaDraws on Twitter and Instagram) created the next piece wrought in shades of pink and purple.  The piece portrays two soft-bodied women embracing and, according to Ashley, represents the interconnectedness of freedom.  Ashley uses their art to strengthen racial, social, queer, immigrant, and mental health justice movements. Their work will be available in game as wall art come the July patch.  

A queer artist named Mohammed made the final lovely piece entitled "A Recipe for Good Times."  The art depicts four "found family" members celebrating the tender moments of pride: laughter, silliness, hugs, and great times. Mohammed mentions that pride so often focuses on what is big and bold, but they like to highlight these small but essential moments of tenderness between people who love one another. Sims 4 will offer this work in the next July patch. 

Base Game Updates

True to form, SimGuruBat and SimGuruDuck revealed some delightful changes coming to the Sims 4 base game.  The first welcome update is a fresh, textured, "modernized afro."  The Sims team has been embattled in recent years concerning Black representation in-game. Simmers have criticized the Sims team for poor Sims 4 skin tones, a dearth of good-looking textured hair (one of the afros was designed after cauliflower of all things), and the shoddy quality of what textured hair did exist in the game.  Finally, Sims 4 is beginning to include better representations of kingly coils and queenly curls in-game so that all Simmers can see themselves in their colorful pixel counterparts. The pictured hairstyle will be available July patch.

Improved Cooking

Sims 4 developers have also improved the cooking activity.  Now, Sims will be able to perform an action called "Group Cooking." 

Group Cooking allows: 

• ​5 selected sims to cook together
• relationship gains while cooking
• Better quality meals and more servings
• Children to cook alongside adults while gaining "mental" skill 
• Newly formed sentiments while cooking

This complements the new "farm-to-table" game mechanics folded into the highly anticipated Sims 4 Expansion Pack: Cottage Living.

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Better Gardening

If the cooking update were not enough, the Sims team has also improved the gardening feature. 

Children will now be able to 

• Plant, weed, water, harvest crops
• Children cannot use the vertical gardens
• Unlock weed, plant, and harvest after unlocking mental skill thresholds
• Talk to plants (Toddlers can do this too!) 
• Children can ask questions like "How does the sun taste?"

More interactions include:

• Teens, Young Adults, and Elders with enough gardening skill can teach Child Sims about plants, which increases the Child's "mental" skill
• Sims will now be able to plant seeds in their inventory

Sims Sessions

Starting June 29th and running until July 7th, Sims 4's newest in-game music festival will invite all Simmers to enjoy intimate, live jam sessions with artists Bebe Rexha, Glass Animals, and Joy Oladokun.  

After logging into game, players can register for the single-player event, receiving tickets to a Sunday show from 12-12:30 (in-game time.) Once Sunday arrives, the game will transport the Sim (via a phone interaction) to Magnolia Blossom Park in Willow Creek. At the music festival, Sims can  buy festival swag, run craft sales tables, visit lounges, camp, eat, woohoo, and make new friends! Food trucks will also come to the game through the Sims festivals. Even after the official show from the famed artists has ended, Simmers can continue jamming on-stage to keep the party rocking! Simmers can show off their festival-themed threads on gallery using the hashtag #SimsSessions in gallery. 

Sims 4 continues to evolve; what are you most excited for?