A new The Sims mobile game has been spotted on the Google Play Store and before you get too excited, no it’s not anything to do with The Sims 5. The game, which is currently titled The Sims Labs: Town Stories is part of the recently announced The Sims Labs platform, which serves as a testing ground for upcoming products and features.
The Google Play Store listing describes The Sims Labs: Town Stories as “an all-new exciting building simulation game”. It’s set in the town of Plumbrook, which your player character has recently moved to. Judging by the screenshots, the gameplay seems to involve traditional The Sims-style building and interacting with town residents.
Although the game appears to not currently be available to download, an anonymous account on X / Twitter has shared what appears to be some early gameplay footage. They claim that the game is semi-open-world and uses a mix of assets taken from The Sims Mobile and The Sims FreePlay.
Their footage shows the player interacting with fan-favorite The Sims character Bella Goth, suggesting that there will be some call-back references for long–time The Sims players. The overall interface looks quite reminiscent of previous mobile installments, with a couple of elements, such as a bright blue player level bar, that I can immediately identify as borrowed from The Sims Mobile.
Given the use of all these presumed placeholder assets, it’s also quite obvious that this title is still in very early development. A number of visual bugs are present too, especially with its character animations and extremely flat lighting. Still, a new The Sims game is always pretty exciting and I’m looking forward to finding out more about what this could be.
If you would rather stick to a game that is currently released, The Sims 4 is available now as a free-to-play title on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 in addition to Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PlayStation 5 via backwards compatibility.
