The Sims 4 hits the slopes in new expansion Snowy Escape, with a trailer reveal today
Cowabunga, dudes!
EA have partially revealed the newest expansion pack for The Sims 4 - showing a modest glimpse of shoulder, if you will. But friends, it is a cold shoulder. The expansion is called Snowy Escape, and until a trailer is revealed later today, that's pretty much all we have to go on. That, and a screenshot collage of cheery Sims doing winter sport activities like they're all in an advert showing how being on your period doesn't have to stop you living your life to the max.
From this images (tweeted by the official Sims account yesterday) we can infer that snowboarding, climbing, and tobogganing with a child will all be on offer. One image also shows two Sims in front of buildings that look like they may be Japanese in design. No confirmations, but it'd be nice to have an expansion that didn't feel wholly North America-focused. For further demystification, look to the stream of the trailer, which goes live at 4pm BST/8am PT today.
The Sims 4 keeps up a pretty rigorous schedule of DLC releases. Recently we've had the Nifty Knitting stuff pack and the universally well-received Star Wars(TM) tie-in Journey To Batuu game pack.
Expansions (like wot Snowy Escape is) are the biggest type of Sims 4 DLC, adding a new area to build in as well as sprinklings of new character traits, clothes, items, and so on. The last expansion was Eco Lifestyle, which added a whole bunch of green livin' themed activities like dumpster diving. This instantly became my new favourite thing to do in the game.
Elsewhere in the expanded Sims development universe, the team are still working on improving skin tones for Create-A-Sim. A note from the team outlined how a recent update on existing skin tones improved "the blotchy artefacts and ashy appearance of darker skin tones on mid and high spec machines". In December they're adding "at least a hundred" new skin tone swatches in different tones, but "with a particular emphasis on darker skin tones". These are welcome changes! We must wait to see how the patches implementing them, and the Snowy Escape expansion, will break otherwise unrelated parts of the game.
I myself have never been on a Snowy Escape, but my hope is that this expansion will be like the 80s movies I have seen, and that you will be able to get in a feud with a team of ski bullies from a rival high school and suchlike. This hope is fed by the bodacious skiing dungarees that the snowboarding Sim is wearing.
Alice writes loads about The Sims 4 because she really likes it, so you can find loads of stuff about the latest DLC packs, fun custom content (including our list of the best custom content packs currently available on PC), and the latest Sims 4 news on updates and the inevitable glitches after updates.
We've also got a few guides for the Sims 4, including the all important list of current cheat codes, for when you need to hit that motherlode.