The best game like The Sims 4 is inZOI, followed by Paralives and Tiny Life. The 22 others cover every other reason you might open a life sim: Nintendo’s island of squabbling Miis, farm and town games where the neighbors are the real draw, home builders for anyone who never leaves build mode, career sims, and free games for your phone.
The Sims 4 lets you make people, build them a home, and meddle with their careers, love lives and disasters, with no ending to reach. We ranked these 25 on how much of that each one delivers, with reviews settling the close calls, so the top of the list is true household simulation and the lower half takes one piece of it and runs. Early access games are marked. We left out the series itself, which our Sims guides cover, along with Life by You, which Paradox canceled before release, and any adult life sim.
25. Wobbly Life
Platforms: PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox and Switch (PC version left early access in September 2025).
Wobbly Life is what remains of The Sims when you take out everything serious. It is an open-world physics sandbox where you work odd jobs, earn cash, and spend it on clothes, vehicles and houses, either alone or with friends online or in local co-op. There are no needs to manage and no family to raise, which is why it sits last. What it shares with The Sims is the slapstick, since a character who cannot quite control their own limbs will produce the same kind of disaster as a Sim left alone near a stove. It is also an easy way to get a group of friends into a shared town.
24. Tiny Glade
Platforms: PC (released September 2024).
Tiny Glade is for the player who builds a perfect house in The Sims and never moves anyone in. You doodle castles, cottages and ruins on a small meadow, and the game adds the detail as you draw, with no grid to fight. Its Steam page is blunt about what is missing: “No management, combat or goals.” Nobody lives here, so it ranks near the bottom, but it is the purest building toy on this list, and reviews on Steam are overwhelmingly positive. If you want a break from a demanding household, this is a good place to take it.
23. BitLife
Platforms: iOS and Android (released September 2018). Free, with in-app purchases.
BitLife strips The Sims down to its most guilty pleasure, the question of what happens if you ruin someone’s life on purpose. It is a text-based life simulator: you tap through choices from birth to death, marrying and raising kids and holding down a job, or turning to crime, prison and smuggling instead. There is nothing to look at and nothing to build, which keeps it low on this list. It earns its place because it is the fastest way on a phone to run a whole life story, and because it takes about the same delight as The Sims does in letting you be terrible.
22. Avakin Life
Platforms: iOS and Android (released December 2013). Free, with in-app purchases.
Avakin Life takes Create a Sim and build mode and puts them online. Its App Store page promises thousands of hairstyles and facial features, more than 30,000 fashion items and a dream home anywhere from a tropical island to a city penthouse, plus parties and events with real people around the world. What it lacks is the simulation: you are dressing an avatar and hanging out, not looking after a family of characters who have minds of their own. If what you love most about The Sims is how your Sim looks and where they live, it is a decent free stand-in on a phone or iPad.
21. Virtual Families 3
Platforms: iOS and Android (released September 2020 on iOS). Free to download.
Virtual Families 3 is about the closest thing to The Sims’ dollhouse view on a phone that is not The Sims. You look after a little family in a country home, watch the kids grow up, renovate and decorate room by room, and choose a career path for your characters, and its developer, Last Day of Work, says it was designed to go differently every time. The scale is much smaller than any PC game here, and the controls are built around tapping. If you want something newer from the same studio, Virtual Families Our New Home arrived on iOS in June 2025.
20. Growing Up
Platforms: PC (released October 2021).
Growing Up takes the childhood and teen years of The Sims and makes them the entire game. You go from toddler to adulthood, managing a daily schedule, learning skills, exploring the city, making friends and surviving school, and when you reach adulthood the game reveals the career and partner your choices led to. Then you continue the family line by raising a child of your own. It has a set path and a clear end, which is a real difference from The Sims’ open sandbox, but anyone who plays long legacies for the moments when kids turn into people will see the appeal immediately.
19. Nivalis Nights
Platforms: PC (released September 2026).
Nivalis Nights, from ION LANDS, the studio behind Cloudpunk, moves city living into a cyberpunk city that stretches from the ocean to the clouds. You grow a business, run restaurants and nightclubs, make friends and enemies, buy and decorate apartments, go fishing, and perhaps find love. It leans further toward management than The Sims does, so we place it here. Few games on this list have such a distinct setting, though, and our story on its launch has more on what the studio made.
18. Kynseed
Platforms: PC, Xbox and Switch (released December 2022).
Kynseed is the pick for anyone who plays legacy challenges. Its Steam page invites you to “embark on a lifetime of adventure”: you raise a family, customize a farm, run a business, craft items and fight fairy tale monsters, and it speaks of your family legacy as the thing you are building. A later free update added a tavern where you serve drinks, manage stock and hire staff. It plays as a pixel-art RPG, not a dollhouse, and the combat will not be for every life sim fan, but few games here make generations of one family the point as this one does.
17. Moonlight Peaks
Platforms: PC, Mac, Switch and Switch 2 (released July 2026).
If your favorite Sims 4 households are the vampires, spellcasters and mermaids, Moonlight Peaks is built for you. You play a vampire settling in a magical town, raising mystical crops, learning spells and potions, and befriending or romancing werewolves, witches and mermaids. The farm and town structure is closer to Stardew Valley than to The Sims, so it only delivers the occult half of the fantasy. If you would rather stay in The Sims, our list of the best Sims 4 occult mods scratches the same itch, and we also covered Moonlight Peaks coming to PS5.
16. Loftia
Platforms: PC, in early access (since November 2026).
Loftia is “a cozy multiplayer game about building a life in the sky,” set across floating islands where you farm, craft, decorate and explore alongside friends in a shared world. It is one of the newest games here and still in early access, so expect it to change. It has no household to manage, and friends take the place of the family you would steer in The Sims. For anyone who searches for a multiplayer Sims and has been let down, a world that keeps growing with other people in it is the best substitute on this list, and our Loftia guides can help you get settled.
15. Wylde Flowers
Platforms: PC and Switch (released 2022), then PS5 and Xbox Series X|S (December 2025), plus iPhone, iPad and Mac through Apple Arcade.
Wylde Flowers has the thing The Sims never gives you: a cast of fully voiced characters with real backstories. You play Tara, who moves to a rural island to help her grandmother run the family farm, tending crops and animals by day and learning to fly a broomstick, brew potions and control the weather by night. Friendships and romance carry the story, which is why it ranks above many bigger farming games for a Sims audience. It is a written story rather than a sandbox, so the drama is not the kind you make for yourself, but it is warm and strange in similar ways.
14. Fields of Mistria
Platforms: PC (released August 2026).
Fields of Mistria offers “a brand-new life” in a village between forest and sea, with an overgrown homestead to restore after an earthquake. As a spiritual successor to the farm-sim RPGs of the late 1990s, it puts its weight on the people, and our guide on how to marry in Fields of Mistria shows how far that goes. You can also rearrange your furniture whenever the mood strikes. It has no household to steer, so it stays in the middle, but there is plenty to do, and our Fields of Mistria guides cover it.
13. Heartopia
Platforms: PC, iOS and Android (released January 2026). Free to play.
Heartopia, from XD, calls itself “a multiplayer life simulation game,” and it is one of the few free games here built around the home. You design your dream house, take up six major hobbies including fishing, cooking, gardening and birdwatching, and meet other people in town every time you log in. Steam reviews are mixed, which keeps it from going higher. What it offers that most of the list cannot is a house-and-hobbies life on both PC and phones at no cost. If you came here looking for The Sims with other people in it, it deserves a try.
12. Coral Island
Platforms: PC, PS5 and Xbox (PC version released November 2023).
Coral Island describes itself as a “laid-back farm sim reimagined with multiplayer.” You farm with friends, raise animals, and build relationships with a large and diverse cast of characters, then head underwater to the Merfolk Kingdom. The crowd of townsfolk makes it feel like a neighborhood in a way that smaller farm games do not, and that is the part Sims fans will take to. You still spend your day on crops rather than careers, so it is not a substitute for a household game. It is a great one on console, though, and our Coral Island guides cover it in depth.
11. Palia
Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox and Switch (PC version released March 2024). Free to play.
Palia is a free “fantasy life sim adventure” about making a home among friends. You craft, explore, complete quests, deepen your connections with villagers, raise animals on a ranch, and design your space with building blocks and landscaping tools. Building a home alongside friends is something The Sims 4 never offered, and the villagers give you relationships to work on. It is not a simulation of a family, and it has a fantasy quest line pulling you forward, but it is one of the strongest free answers to the search for The Sims with friends.
10. My Time at Sandrock
Platforms: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and Switch (released November 2023).
My Time at Sandrock is the career mode of The Sims turned into a whole game. You arrive in a desert community as a fledgling Builder with a run-down workshop, gather resources, construct machines, and try to save the town from economic ruin. On top of that sit the relationships, including dating, and a town full of people whose problems become yours. Your workshop takes the place of a household, so it never feels quite like a dollhouse, but no other game on this list is built so completely around a day job.
9. House Flipper 2
Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox and Switch 2 (PC version released December 2023).
House Flipper 2 is build mode with a first-person view and a paycheck. You buy, fix and sell houses in its story mode, or “grab your power tools and build anything from scratch” in the sandbox, and up to four people can work together online. It has no people to look after, so the simulation half of The Sims is missing entirely. For anyone who spends more hours on floor plans than on the Sims themselves, though, it is the most complete home game around, and it is also on consoles where several of the bigger picks are not.
8. Big Ambitions
Platforms: PC (released August 2026).
Big Ambitions opens with “your bank balance is tiny, but your ambitions are big,” then hands you an apartment, a first job and all of New York City. You open small businesses or grow huge corporations, invest in funds and real estate, and move up from public transport to luxury suites and fast cars. It also asks you to sleep and stay happy, and that is what lifts it above most business games for this list. If your Sims tend to run shops and chase promotions, this game is that whole storyline at far greater depth, though it has no interest in family life.
7. Disney Dreamlight Valley
Platforms: PC, Mac, PS5, PS4, Xbox, Switch and Apple Arcade (released December 2023).
Disney Dreamlight Valley swaps Townies for more than 50 Disney and Pixar heroes and villains, and the appeal is nearly the same: you get to know them, hang out, and decorate a home and a whole valley around them. Its avatar and home tools give you plenty of room to design, and the characters’ quests are a good match for anyone who enjoys the storytelling side of The Sims. It runs on almost anything, which makes it a top pick for console and Mac players, and it keeps growing, as our story on Keepsake Sea shows. Its characters follow scripts, however, so the chaos never gets out of hand.
6. Stardew Valley
Platforms: PC, Mac, PS4, Xbox One, Switch, Switch 2, iOS and Android (released February 2016).
Stardew Valley shares more with The Sims than its farm suggests. You move to a small town, get to know its people one conversation at a time, marry one of them, have kids, and upgrade your home as the years pass, with no reason to ever stop. Its PS4 version plays on PS5, so every console owner can get it. Like The Sims, it has a huge modding scene, and our best Stardew Valley mods list is a good next step, while our Stardew Valley guides start you off with the best farm type. You do have just one character and a lot of farming, so we put the games closer to the household model above it.
5. Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Platforms: Switch (released March 2020), with a Nintendo Switch 2 Edition.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons gives Switch owners much of what people want from The Sims on a couch: a home to decorate, neighbors with personalities, and no way to lose. You shape a whole island, furnish your house room by room, and watch villagers drift in and out of your life on their own schedules. Everyone is a cartoon animal, you have no job or family to manage, and the clock runs in real time, so you can only do so much in a day. As a place to live, however, few games on Switch come close, and our Animal Crossing guides can take you further.
4. Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream
Platforms: Switch (released April 2026), also playable on Switch 2.
Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream puts you in charge of “an island full of silliness, drama, love, and other surprises,” and it may be the closest any Nintendo game has come to The Sims’ sense of humor. You create Mii characters based on yourself, your friends, your family or anyone you like, then design a world for them and watch what they get up to. It has the same pleasure of putting people you know into a little world and seeing them make bad decisions. The control you get is lighter than in a real life sim, and that is what holds it back from the top three, but if you are playing on Switch, start here.
3. Tiny Life
Platforms: PC, Mac and Linux, in early access (since May 2023).
Tiny Life is the most honest game on this list. Its Steam page says it “aims to capture the essence of games like The Sims series, but in an isometric pixelart style,” and it does just that. You control a household, look after their daily needs, build their skills, and forge relationships, or “just mess up their entire life in whatever way you can think of.” You create characters across different age groups, then build houses and community spaces such as parks and cafes for them to use. It is a small game from a small studio, with far fewer objects than a big life sim, but it follows the structure of The Sims more closely than almost anything else, and it costs far less than the two games above it.
2. Paralives
Platforms: PC and Mac, in early access (since May 2026).
Paralives is the game for people who want more of The Sims. It calls itself a “sandbox life simulation game” about “building homes, lives and bonds,” with a career, a love life, a family or a fortune to pursue in an open-world town of Townies. Building is the star: you can resize, recolor and stack items, with “truly grid-less constructions,” curved walls and split-level floors, and its Paramaker character creator goes deep. Its art style is also closer to The Sims than inZOI’s is. It sits at number 2 only because reviews on Steam are less warm than those for the top pick at this early stage. Our Paralives guides cover how to get married and how to try for a baby, and we have also answered whether it is coming to consoles.
1. inZOI
Platforms: PC and Mac, in early access (since March 2025).
inZOI is the best game like The Sims 4 because it is the only one that attempts the entire thing at full scale. You create and steer Zois, who act with their own free will and build relationships based on their personalities and life experiences, and the Steam page promises the kind of unexpected developments that make Sims stories worth telling, including rumors, trends and disease. You build houses with its customization tools, send Zois to school and work, have a baby and even land in jail.
Where it goes beyond The Sims is the world around the household. You can change whole cities inspired by real places, adjusting weather, properties and streets, and everything is rendered in a realistic style in Unreal Engine 5. Whether you prefer that look to The Sims’ cartoon charm is a matter of taste, and it is worth knowing that a game in early access still has work to do. The studio has been targeting the very thing that matters most, with an update aimed at how Zois behave and talk. Even so, nothing else on this list gives you as much household, neighborhood and city in one place, and our inZOI guides cover it from the first day.
Games Like The Sims 4 by Platform
- PS5: Disney Dreamlight Valley, Palia, Coral Island, House Flipper 2, My Time at Sandrock, Wylde Flowers and Wobbly Life, plus Stardew Valley’s PS4 version. Neither inZOI nor Paralives is on PlayStation.
- Xbox: Disney Dreamlight Valley, Stardew Valley, Palia, Coral Island, House Flipper 2, My Time at Sandrock, Wylde Flowers, Kynseed and Wobbly Life.
- Nintendo Switch and Switch 2: Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, Animal Crossing: New Horizons (with its Nintendo Switch 2 Edition), Stardew Valley, Disney Dreamlight Valley, Palia, My Time at Sandrock, Wylde Flowers, Moonlight Peaks, Kynseed and Wobbly Life. House Flipper 2 is on Switch 2 only.
- PC: Every game here except Tomodachi Life, Animal Crossing, BitLife, Avakin Life and Virtual Families 3. inZOI, Paralives, Tiny Life and Stardew Valley also run on Mac, and Disney Dreamlight Valley has a Mac version of its own.
- Mobile: BitLife, Avakin Life, Virtual Families 3, Heartopia and Stardew Valley, plus Disney Dreamlight Valley through Apple Arcade on iPhone and iPad.
Free Games Like The Sims
Palia and Heartopia are the two strongest free picks on the list, and both have paid extras. BitLife and Avakin Life are free on phones with in-app purchases, and Virtual Families 3 is free to download. If you are looking on Roblox, Brookhaven RP is the big one: its page describes building your life in a city, owning houses, driving cars and roleplaying with friends.
Games Like The Sims but Multiplayer
The Sims 4 has no real multiplayer, so the best options are life sims built around shared worlds. Palia, Heartopia and Loftia all put other people in your town by design. Coral Island lets you farm with friends, House Flipper 2 has online co-op for two to four, and Wobbly Life works online or on one couch.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the closest game to The Sims 4? inZOI, which gives you the same mix of character creation, house building and autonomous people, though in a realistic style. Paralives is a close second and looks more like The Sims, and Tiny Life has the most faithful structure on a small scale.
What are the best games like The Sims on Switch? Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream comes first, then Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Stardew Valley. Neither inZOI nor Paralives is on Switch.
What are the best games like The Sims on PS5? Disney Dreamlight Valley, House Flipper 2 and Palia lead for PS5, and Coral Island is a good farm-based option. Stardew Valley’s PS4 version also runs on PS5.
What are the best games like The Sims on Xbox? Disney Dreamlight Valley, Stardew Valley and House Flipper 2 are our top picks on Xbox, followed by My Time at Sandrock and Palia.
What are the best mobile games like The Sims? Stardew Valley is the strongest full game on phones and tablets, and Heartopia is the best free one. For a smaller family sim, try Virtual Families 3, and for a full life in text, try BitLife.
Are there free games like The Sims? Yes. Palia and Heartopia are free to play, BitLife and Avakin Life are free on mobile with in-app purchases, and Virtual Families 3 is free to download.
What are the best games like The Sims on Mac? inZOI, Paralives, Tiny Life and Stardew Valley all list Mac support on Steam, and Disney Dreamlight Valley has its own Mac version.