Other than the cutesy make-over, very little has been revealed regarding MySims, in development exclusively for Wii and DS, until now.
The latest issue of the Official Nintendo Magazine (UK) reveals that you start off in a small rundown town, with a rubbish house and not so many residents. You make it your mission to brighten the place up, which attracts new people to your town.
Even though the character design looks simple, the game doesn't skimp on editing features - you can tweak individual facial features, skin, clothing style and even add tattoos.
Where Sims 2 keeps you restricted to your house most of the time, MySims has you wandering around the town meeting people. "By using the relationships menu you can keep tabs on who likes you, who thinks you could do with a wash, and who wouldn't spit on you if you were on fire", ONM reveals.
More interestingly, MySims features a simple block-building mechanic which lets you "build things like chairs and tables from scratch instead of just ordering them from a catalogue." You can also modify houses in an equally flexible way.
Another new feature is one called "Essence" which lets you extract the, err... essence of objects you acquire. Then you can use this Essence to decorate your many created objects. You can also plant seeds to grow flowers, adding a Harvest Moon-style farming system into the mix.
Although past screenshots have so far only showed the town, ONM also reveals details of a Volcano area, where "miserable" characters go if they hate your town.
There will be 80 characters in the Wii version and around 30 in the DS one.
You can read the full preview in issue 14 of ONM which goes on sale tomorrow. MySims is due out in Autumn.
It does bare striking similarities to Animal Crossing, but that can't be a bad thing.
But it also draws in gameplay mechanics from Harvest Moon too, and with all the custom-building stuff in there it could put Animal Crossing to shame in terms of interactivity and things to do.
I've never been a Sims fan but I'm actually looking forward to this.
What it really needs is an online feature. Even copying AC: WW's friends town visiting system would be a great addition to this already-awesome looking game
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