Who knew The Sims 4 could be played as a steamy, salacious, super-sexy stealth game? I mean, I guess it makes sense that devious, creative folks can turn the sandbox provided by The Sims into all sorts of different things (even psychological experiments and sweater-curse simulators), but I never really thought about playing it as a stealth game before. Until it sort of just happened.
So, all of this began when I randomly found myself longing for the mundane-yet-somehow-addictive gameplay of The Sims. Realizing I still had a copy of The Sims 4 in my PS4 game library (it was a free Plus game back in February of 2020), I decided to install the thing and give it a go. Obviously, the PS4 isn’t the best way to experience a Sims game (the DualShock can turn the camera into an unmanageable nightmare), but beggars can’t be choosers, nor can they argue with the prospect of free stuff.
When I fired up the game, I opted to play the tutorial. Now, it’s not like I’ve never played a Sims game before; it’s just that I’ve always played it on PC, where the keyboard-and-mouse control style makes the game feel intuitive within minutes. The PS4 controls are, quite frankly, awful. So I figured a brisk jog through the tutorial might empower me to navigate the game’s bizarre control scheme without seeking external help.
In case you find yourself tempted by this exact line of thinking, take note that the tutorial is anything but brisk. It’s actually a huge freaking slog. Everything that I would have figured out within the first ten minutes of gameplay (with a little bit of Googling on the side) are drip-fed over the course of several hours. I think I spent three full hours in the tutorial before I could no longer take it anymore and forced my character into the real world.
Well, the real Sims world, not the real real world.
This is where I should point out that I really don’t like Sims children, and I don’t want to deal with those little squirts running around all the time, so I took a Jurassic Park approach and made an all-female Sims world: I kicked out all the dudes and created new women Sims to replace them. No one’s making babies in this neighborhood.
Now, in my attempt at meandering through the glacially paced tutorial, I did learn one important piece of information that I doubt I would have thought of had I skipped it: Everything is better in the game if you have a stay-at-home roommate. You can have one Sim focus on a career path, spending their free time working on skills that will have an impact on the success of their work life, while the other takes care of things like spills, dirty dishes, and broken appliances.
Plus, you have the benefit of having someone to woohoo with, which makes Sims really, really happy, even after a hard day of work. And career-focused Sims have a tendency to be stressed out a lot.
My tutorial character was a woman by the name of Evangeline Yup. She has a job as an art distributor, and she paints at home as a hobby, which raises her Art skill and makes her better at her job. In order to keep up with both of these things (which eat up quite a bit of time), she would need a layabout roomie, though preferably one without the “lazy” personality type (which was the case for the tutorial-provided roommate).
So I created Mayday Moonflutter.
Mayday Monflutter is a social butterfly with a semi-gothic, semi-punk-rock exterior. I gave her the Friend of the World aspiration, which rewards her for being social. It also provides the Gregarious bonus trait, which makes it easier for her to grow friendships. I enhanced that with the Outgoing, Romantic, and Genius traits. Outgoing and Romantic are obvious picks, but I tacked on Genius because I was starting to develop this backstory in my head where Mayday is on summer break from her super-swanky college (ivy league, I’m sure) and ended up needing a place to crash for the summer. She probably found someone online who was looking for a roommate (who happened to be Evangeline Yup).
Anyway, Mayday ended up being absolutely everything she needed to be. Her Genius trait meant that she had a knack for fixing broken machines (appliances break down like wild in The Sims 4, at least in the cheaper homes), and her super-social, super-romantic personality meant that she and Evangeline hit it off right away. (Plus, Evangeline’s previous roommate, from the tutorial, had left a Charisma-boosting book that Mayday devoured immediately). Things between these two roommates progressed from cute to flirty to steamy at a rapid clip. They were making out within the first few days.
However, there’s a downside to having extremely extroverted Sims: they need disgusting amounts of attention. So when Evangeline was working, Mayday was getting restless. In order to keep her mental health from deteriorating, we had to make some bad choices. (By we I mean Mayday and myself, because I feel like I’m complicit by proxy in the grand scheme of a master manipulator here — remember, Mayday is a genius.)
In case you haven’t figured it out by now, this where things started getting weird.
Mayday started inviting other Sims to hang out while Evangeline was at work. Perhaps the biggest instigator here was Summer Holiday (really, who decided to name her this?) Summer, like Mayday, is perpetually starved for attention. The two of them would hit it off quickly, and things would progress from buddy-buddy hangouts to smooching very quickly. And, being starved for attention, Mayday couldn’t resist the opportunity to crawl between the sheets with this badly named lady.
This was admittedly a bit of a risk. If a Sim catches someone they’ve been romantic with so much as flirting with another Sim, they are overcome with an inconsolable sadness, and they’ll suffer a decrease in friendship and romance levels with the offending Sim. If Evangeline found out, this could have disastrous results. Thankfully, Evangeline works hard during the day and spends her evenings painting (she’s really dedicated to this art career), so it didn’t seem likely that she would find out so long as this just happened the one time.
However, this did not just happen once.
Summer Holiday is one of the premade Sims that comes with The Sims 4 by default. If you’ve met her, then you probably know she’s incredibly persistent. And once she hooked up with Mayday, she became insatiable, calling the house at all hours, begging Mayday to invite her over.
And, well, Mayday liked the attention. Evangeline was constantly distracted by her art, and she and Mayday weren’t really speaking anymore (though Evangeline was certainly not above a quick woohoo with Mayday to get those Fun and Social bars maxed out).
Now, to keep all this on the down-low, I decided to get Mayday and Summer away from the house on Evangeline’s day off, so they visited the local club to get some drinks and hang out for a while.
And that’s when Mayday met Nancy Landgrab. Nancy was immediately smitten, with the romance bar ticking upward during the very first interaction. It wouldn’t be long before Mayday started receiving phone calls from Mrs. Landgrab as well. If you think these phone calls were innocent, well, then you probably haven’t met Nancy Landgrab.
By this point, Mayday was starting to hang out at the club a lot more (which is something we have to be careful of, because I haven’t been able to reduce the male population enough to get them to stop showing up at clubs). So she met Candy Behr, an aspiring DJ (I think Candy Behr is a premade Sim that comes with the Get Together expansion pack, which I picked up when it was on sale).
I won’t keep going on like this,. I could — I really, really could — but I’m sure you get the picture. Mayday had acquired a robust collection of lovers while Evangeline was at home running on the treadmill and making bad art. Yeah, Evangeline’s art kind of sucks, if I’m being honest.
But that meant a lot of sneaking around. Since I can control both Evangeline and Mayday (or, Mayday controls me while I control Evangeline), I can have Evangeline take a nap to give Mayday enough time to get busy with one of her many, many lovers. And this became quite thrilling. Do Mayday and Candy have enough time to do the deed while Evangeline is out on a jog? Let’s find out! Can we invite Nancy over to distract Evangeline while Mayday sneaks into the other room with Summer? Why not? How about in Evangeline’s bed while she’s focused on a painting? Oh yeah!
Some of these scenarios got very close to disaster. A poorly timed woohoo could lead to Evangeline walking in mid-woo (or mid-hoo). There were times when I had to convince Evangeline to play on her phone for a minute, or to go outside and scout the fishing spot that’s near her backyard. It was oh-so-thrilling!
And that’s when The Sims 4 started feeling a little bit more like Metal Gear Solid. It feels a little bit like I’ve discovered a secret, sexy little stealth game inside The Sims 4. And there are so many different distractions to experiment with here to see what Mayday can get away with (and she’s been able to get away with a lot).
So that’s the story of how I became a pawn in Mayday Moonflutter’s Machiavellian game of infidelity. Am I proud of myself? Not really. Ashamed? Not that either. But I’ve learned to be more careful when wielding the Genius trait in The Sims 4. You never know what sorts of wild (and steamy) adventures you’ll end up on when your Sims start running the show.
