I used The Sims 4 Adventure Awaits to re-create Love Island, and this expansion is 100% my type

Adventure Awaits is the latest The Sims 4 Expansion Pack from developer Maxis, introducing new features, ample skills and activities, as well as new interactions for the whole family.

In keeping with other recent packs, the focus here is really on rounding out gameplay mechanics, but there’s plenty to like about this new adventurous expansion. For one thing, its new Getaways feature brings more structure to traveling away from your home lot, and much like the addition of custom holidays and traditions back when Seasons released, there’s a lot of room to customize and configure your own.

The fun doesn’t end there; imaginary friends are back, and your child Sims get some great new features and social interactions. Formative Moments give you yet another avenue to buff your younger Sims and set them up for success in adult life, and the new custom modular playgrounds and pool accessories really bring life to both public and private lots.

Plus, a selection of new skills and collections make for a nicely rounded pack; but does it rank among the best Sims 4 Expansion Packs? Here’s everything you need to know.

Let's leave today, let's getaway

The core mechanic here is Getaways. Vacationing in The Sims 4 has existed for a while now through packs like Jungle Adventure and Snowy Escape, but Getaways mixes things up by establishing some more structure to your day. In four-hour chunks, you can assign different activities to your guests – or just choose one of the three preset Getaways to get you started.

You can also host your own Getaways as a relatively easy money-earner, and assign Sims to a range of roles to keep things running smoothly. I had a great time toying with this feature; one of the preset Getaways whisks your Sims away to Love Highland, a romantic gameshow where the Sims with the fewest romantic connections are eliminated each day.

You can tweak the rules of your trips a decent amount, though I think they could have afforded to be a bit more granular here, as there’s not a whole lot of elimination criteria; just skill and relationship gain-based.

I would love to see really specific options, or the ability to configure rules with dropdown menus; minutes spent doing an activity, amount of food consumed, number of artworks created – perhaps there will be some more options when the pack is paired with others, but more complexity would make Getaways a must-have for me.

As it stands, Getaways are still good fun, and I can’t wait to see the creative ideas people have for these once the pack releases.

Think of the children

Outside of Getaways, there’s another big theme in the pack: children.

For a long time, The Sims 4’s child state was pretty middling, with limited aspirations and skills to give your kids much character. More recently, however, EA has really gone the distance to make children fun to play with, and Adventure Awaits is a prime example. It’s definitely one of my new favorite packs for family playthroughs, second only to the obvious choices of Parenthood and Growing Together.

Kids get a load of new content, from competitive interactions to new objects, and it’s never been more fun to unleash your children on the local playground to find new pals. Now, child Sims can challenge each other to games like Rock, Paper, Scissors and Hide and Seek, though the latter was very glitchy for me.

The new competitive trait is really fun to play with, as if Sims don’t keep their ego in check, they’ll start to become prone to rage when faced with defeat – and nobody wants to play with a sore loser. Forming strong relationships with your childhood friends and family also unlocks Childhood Sentiments, which carry through into your adult relationships with those Sims.

New modular playgrounds mean the backdrop for children’s adventures can be a lot more dynamic, but for me, the headliner here is the reintroduction of imaginary friends. Simply purchase your child Sim an ImagineMe! Doll and choose from four personalities (Goofball, Competitive, Creative and Evil), and have your Sim build a relationship with the doll until it eventually transforms into an imaginary friend only they can see.

This was one of my favorite The Sims 3 features, and I was really excited to see it come back in Adventure Awaits. I’m far from disappointed, but as with many things in The Sims 4, it’s let down a little by the game’s low difficulty. It only took me five in-game hours to befriend, animate, and become best friends with my imaginary friend, which makes it less rewarding to eventually transform them into a Sim in my household when my child ages up. Still, I really like the designs for the dolls and think there are heaps of storytelling opportunities with imaginary friends, and I can’t wait to add them to some of my favorite saves.

In the end, it was the new Formative Moments feature that won my heart. Your child Sims will encounter situations that inspire a Formative Moment, which you can choose to activate in the Aspirations tab. You’ll have a few goals to meet, and then you benefit from that Formative Moment’s buff later in life. It’s a great way to encourage more varied play for kids, and a very welcome addition.

Adventure has no age limit

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All ages benefit from other new features, including the four new skills: Archery, Diving, Entomology and Papercraft. Archery definitely stands out, unlocking bow fishing at level four and offering some fun interactions. Archery competitions, however, were a little buggy in my preview build, but it seems like a small enough fix that may even be in place by the time of release.

Entomology will see your Sim exploring Gibbi Point to find butterflies and moths which can be bred, studied and housed in various locations around the world and at home, but I wish there were more butterflies to collect – again, perhaps having access to more expansions will bring different species to existing packs. Diving and Papercraft are both fun, but didn’t massively catch my attention, though some of the papier-mache creations make for adorable decor.

There are some new watersports, too, with the addition of Kayaks and Diving Boards, plus the classic The Sims pool slide. It only took them 11 years, but they’ve finally given me everything I’ve ever wanted. Jokes aside, I’m always happy to see water and pool-based additions, and they feel very at home in this pack without encroaching too much on Island Living’s territory.

The world itself encourages you to get out and explore, and I really like how different map locations are laid out. You can go on a quest to learn the secrets of the Plumbirds, experience weekly events around communal areas and trade Collectibles with locals; there’s plenty to see and do in Gibbi Point.

All-rounder, or rounder-upper?

Yes, Adventure Awaits brings some great new additions to the game, as well as some beloved features from older games in the series; but more than anything, it feels like a swan song to one of The Sims 4’s earliest packs, Outdoor Retreat, revisiting the camping and collecting themes with a little more depth and complexity.

Now, I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing; Outdoor Retreat is now ten years old and, as a game pack, doesn’t compare in terms of rich features. Plus, let’s not forget how clay-made some of the early game content looks in contrast to the detailed, characterful assets newer packs like Adventure Awaits include.

I think they could have pushed the needle a little further, though. Though there are ample new activity-based objects, in terms of home furnishings, it’s broadly just rustic cabin furniture, and we do have lots of similar items in different packs at this point. Some of the men’s create-a-sim objects are amusing to me as someone with many mustachioed, North Face-wearing millennial friends, but overall, the clothing is pretty mid this time around.

Some features do feel like they belonged in other packs, or should have perhaps come much sooner in The Sims 4’s lifetime *cough cough pool slides cough*, but I think a lot of players will get their money’s worth with this pack, and I know it’ll be frequently in rotation for me.

That being said, I really enjoyed my time with the pack, and I’m hoping it will shine even brighter when combined with the rest of the expansions.

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