25 Fun Things To Do in The Sims 4 if You’re Bored

As someone who has played The Sims since 2000, it is pretty easy to get bored of the game from time to time. Even players who only started playing with The Sims 4 are constantly telling me that they’re getting bored and looking for new ways to play.

Thankfully, The Sims is a sandbox game that has no end point or real goals you have to meet so there are literally thousands of ways for you to play the game. If you’ve recently gotten bored of the game, here are a bunch of fun things to do in The Sims 4 to hopefully mix up your game.

1. Try a Predetermined Storyline

One of the biggest things that can stop players from truly having fun when playing the game is the habit of playing out the exact same family time and time again. We start up the game, go into create a sim and create the same traditional family with two parents and two kids and play through their life, but this can get extremely boring after the 10th time.

A way to break this cycle is to grab a storyline that someone else created to mix up your gameplay entirely. There are thousands of storylines you can follow if you’re looking for one including things like having a parent pass away when the kids are young and raising them as a single parent, having one parent who adopts children, and more.

You can check out this video that goes over some great storyline ideas, or you can check out evil storylines that will add a bit of chaos to your game, or wholesome storylines if you love family gameplay.

2. Grab a Gallery Family

One of the best parts about The Sims 4 is the ease of which you can grab a family that was created by another player and start using their creation in your game. You can easily grab a family from The Sims 4 Gallery and have no idea what kinds of traits or aspirations they’ll have which can get you to play with aspirations that you may hardly ever touch.

Using gallery families is also great because other players will use create a sim items that maybe you’ve never touched, giving a different vibe to the characters you get to play. You can also find families that have different family structures than you’d normally play with, like grandparents, aunts and uncles or step parents being included as well.

3. Try a Challenge

One of my absolute favorite ways to mix up the way I’m playing The Sims 4 is to try out different challenges. There are dozens of fun challenges for you to try that range from family gameplay like a legacy challenge to chaotic/evil gameplay like a black widow challenge. These challenges add so much to your game because it can get you to start up the game and play with parts of it that maybe you never touch.

Many challenges have dozens of rules that you can follow, or you can just stick to the basics for a more open kind of gameplay if that’s what you’re into. You can choose challenges like 100 Baby if you love playing with toddlers and kids, or a legacy challenge if you’re trying to play with one family for a long time.

4. Play With Townies

Something I’ve always loved about The Sims is that you don’t need to create your own families and storylines to have a good time. There are dozens of premade families in the game that come with their own relationships, careers and aspirations that can guide your gameplay in a way that maybe you’ve never thought of before.

You can play with characters like Johnny Zest who wants to become a comedian and was disowned by the Landgraab family and get Johnny to fall in love and succeed at his career, while avoiding his parents at all costs. You can play with the Roomies household and play through the storyline of New Girl since the characters are loosely based on the show.

There are genuinely dozens of options for you to choose from that will all bring you down different directions in the game and open you up to the love of these adorable characters.

5. Add a New Mod

If you’re playing on console, I’m sorry but mods are the best way to completely mix up The Sims 4. There are dozens of incredible simmers who make mods that add depth to the game or add gameplay EA could never add (like extreme violence). These can really mix up how you play the game and can add things like:

• new careers
• new aspirations
• new traits
• new gameplay
• and so much more

If you’re looking for new mods to add to your collection to change up your gameplay, you should check out this article about 100 mods for the game that you need to try!

6. Do Townie Makeovers

Although EA tries really hard to create interesting characters, sometimes they just miss the mark. There is so much fun to be had with giving every single character in the game a huge makeover, including maybe changing their traits and aspirations to make them more interesting and allowing you to use each and every pack you have.

The best way to do this is to use the create a sim full edit mode cheat to have access to every small change you’d want to make, including changing their facial structure, aspirations, and traits. Changing up every townie in the world will have you feeling more connected to them and wanting to interact with them in new ways.

7. Create a Super Sim

There is a way to play the sims called a super sim challenge that literally makes you play with every single part of the game. Doing this challenge makes you create a single sim who strives to finish every single aspiration, get every single reward trait, work in every career and max out every single skill.

The reason why this is a great option for mixing up your gameplay is because it forces you to touch parts of the game you may never play with because you may think you aren’t interested. This can throw you into things like the scientist career that many players forget about, or the baking skill that you may never use. This is super fun for your super sim!

8. Play a Legacy Challenge

There are thousands of players out there who can’t manage to get past a single generation of a family. You start a new family, have them have children, then once they pass and their children age up you start a brand new family. This is not the only way to play The Sims 4!

If you are one of these players who can’t get past a few generations, you should try out a legacy challenge. This challenge has existed since The Sims 2 and opens up so much more opportunity for players to get attached to their characters. In this challenge type you’ll need to play through 10 generations of your sims lives all on the exact same lot.

Playing The Sims 4 in this way gets you attached to your sims and their stories in a totally different way, and makes you work harder for your sims because you want the best for them.

9. Complete a Collection

Did you know there are a bunch of collections in The Sims 4 for you to complete? These are rarely completed by players and a lot of players don’t even know these things exist. Just in the base game there are a ton including:

• Metals
• MySims Trophies
• Crystals
• Elements
• and more

You can focus on one collection at a time to get the special plaques your sims receive when finishing these collections and have a whole collectible room in your sim’s home. Doing these collections will get your sims out of their home and interacting with things you may never even touch.

10. Get New DLC

Something very unique about The Sims compared to other games is the amount of DLC that we are offered each year. There are dozens of packs you can purchase for The Sims 4 that can add small amounts of content to the game and change up how you play. If you are getting bored with the game but have been eyeing an expansion pack for a while, grab it and see the new ways you can play the game.

If you’re a traditional family player, maybe get an occult pack like Realm of Magic or Vampires to jump into a completely different type of gameplay. If you are always playing with a single sim, get your hands on Parenthood to jump into some family gameplay.

11. Try a Scenario

With an update in 2021, The Sims team added a new feature called scenarios that add in-game challenges for you to try. The ones that came with the launch were finding love after a break up and making money and the team are now adding new ones for you to play for a limited time.

These scenarios are nice because they can get players out of their regular gameplay and have them try something new. It’s nice for players too since these scenarios are built in to the game and you don’t have to track your progress on your own.

12. Download a Save File

Did you know that if you’re playing the game on PC or Mac you can download another players save files and put them into your game? Yup. This is one of my favourite ways of getting entirely new worlds in my game. There are extremely talented simmers who spend time rebuilding the entire world and adding new characters, editing relationships, and so much more.

Playing the game in these save files is so fun because there are brand new families that you’d never think up on your own and new characters for your sims to marry, be friends with and turn into their enemies. They also edit all of the homes to make them make more sense and be more beautiful.

Some of my favourite save files that are available to download are as follows:

• Uberhood by Another Plumbob
• Simsie Save by lilsimsie
• Plumbella’s Save File
• Simlicy Save

13. Play Evil

Are you a wholesome simmer? Are you constantly playing with the same traditional family and having them go to school and go to work? Why not try a completely different type of gameplay where you become a little bit more evil and maybe… participate in sim torture!

There are a ton of evil or chaotic storylines you can play through that will make your gameplay much more fun, and there are dozens of death types for your sims to try out. Some options for evil gameplay include having a pufferfish nigiri dinner party, locking sims in your basement to paint to earn you money, or creating a house with long pools for the hallways so a hungry and tired sim must swim (and maybe drown) before they can eat.

You can even use the pond from The Sims 4: Get Famous and add some fish and have your sims jump in and see if they deserve to live. There are so many fun and evil ways to play the game and honestly, it’s way harder to get bored if you’re playing evil.

14. Try Rotational Gameplay

There are a ton of players out there who are doing rotational gameplay which is a very interesting way to play the game. To participate in rotational gameplay you would have more than one household in a single save that you are playing, you could even play every household in the save.

To make this happen these players will turn off autonomous aging so they can have complete control over everything that happens and when sims get to age up and/or die. Why is rotational gameplay better?

Well, having multiple families interact with each other and become friends and age slowly will get you more attached to these characters and bring you back to play more often since you don’t make a ton of progress with a single family, you make slow progress with many families.

Playing rotationally will have you playing with each family for a few hours before rotating to the next one and getting to hangout with someone new, allowing for new complex gameplay.

15. Change Your Lifespan

In The Sims 4, there are 3 types of lifespans you can play on that will change how long your sim’s are alive. These are short, normal and long and you can change your sim’s lifespan length in the game options. Why is this fun? Well, it can change how you interact with your sims over their life.

Playing on a short lifespan is going to have you having to make extremely quick decisions, getting married and having kids super quick, and your sims will be passing away more quickly so you’ll feel a sense of urgency to get things done.

Playing on a long lifespan is going to have you having more time to make decisions and putting more time into playing out the slower parts of your sim’s lives like dating instead of jumping into marriage.

16. Start with Zero Simoleons

One thing that a lot of players find is that it is too easy to earn an income in The Sims 4 because the game isn’t challenging enough. A way to combat this to have more fun when playing the game is to start with zero simoleons and force your sim to live off the land.

Doing this will have your sims spending more time out in nature, looking for more collectibles, and having to sleep outside for a while which sounds bad, but is actually pretty fun in the game. When you start with no money when playing you are going to feel so much more accomplished the longer you are playing and the more income you earn.

17. Plan Your Family Before You Start

Something I tell a lot of players to do if they are looking to stop being bored with the game is to plan out their families before creating them. What does this look like? Well, take out a piece of paper or the notes app on your phone and start writing down everything about your sims.

You’ll want to figure out the things they like, the things they hate, who they are romantically interested in, and definitely figure out what kinds of hobbies they love or hate. The reason this is important is because it will have you feeling like these sims are real people with interests and personalities, as opposed to super one dimensional characters with just 3 traits and an aspiration.

When you have more feelings toward your characters you’re much more likely to open up the game and play for hours because you want the absolute best for these characters.

18. Add New Holidays

If you have The Sims 4: Seasons you have the ability to have holidays in the game, this includes both pre-made holidays like Winterfest and Love Day, but you also have the option to create your own custom holidays. There are dozens of holidays you can add that are based on your personal religions or just traditions you have in your family. You can add a holiday for just about anything in The Sims 4.

The reason this is helpful when you’re bored with the game is that holidays are able to help break up the monotony of daily gameplay in The Sims 4 and helps guide what you should do with your time on those days. If you’re in a gameplay rut this is an incredible way to do it.

19. Switch Out Townies for Your Sims

Since The Sims 4 has been out since 2014, it is possible that you are very sick of seeing the same old townies over and over again. This can make the entire game feel extremely repetitive when you have the same Oasis Springs townies coming to your home for the Welcome Wagon every single time you start a new game.

A great solution to no longer being bored with these characters is to switch out all of these townies for characters you’ve created yourself. This is a great option because you can add more children and toddlers for your sims to befriend, more elders to make the world feel more real and aging, and more interesting families to befriend.

20. Try a Different Type of Family Structure

If you’re the type of player who always has the same two parent, two kid family structure then you should definitely switch up the structure of the families that you play. Repetitive gameplay is a quick reason to get bored with The Sims 4, so this is a simple change for you to make.

Some great examples instead of a traditional family include things like step-parents, single parents, widowed parents, grandparents caring for children, kids being raised by their siblings and so much more. There are hundreds of family structures you can go for.

Another thing you can try is that if you are always playing with straight couples you can bring in an LGBT couple to your gameplay, or if you’re always going for LGBT couples you may (for some reason lol) want to throw in a straight couple to your gameplay.

21. Renovate the Whole World

The main thing that The Sims 4 does better than the rest of the games is build mode. The build features in this game are absolutely incredible and building homes has never been easier or more fun. If you’re getting bored with regular gameplay, why not try building?

You can spend weeks or even months renovating all of the worlds in the game to create an entirely different vibe. We all know that EA tried their best when building the homes in the game, especially the base game homes, and they need a bit of work or to be replaced all together. Add some new families to these homes and you’ll eventually have strong desires to go back and play with these homes and families you’ve created.

22. Try Random Aspirations

There are dozens of aspirations in The Sims 4 that you can play through that can have you going down different paths of the game and playing with different parts you maybe never touch. If you’re always playing with family aspirations like super parent or big happy family, maybe you’ll want to play with something entirely different like friend of the world or master mixologist.

We can all fall into ruts when playing the game and play through the same things over and over just going through the same aspirations each time, so why not go ahead and try something completely different!

23. Let The Drama Flow

When a lot of players are in-game they want to hangout with their happy little families who succeed at work, school, and relationships. However, this can get boring as heck really quickly because drama makes the world go round. To truly have fun with The Sims you need to be allowing the drama in.

Think back to The Sims 2, there was so much drama and that’s why people loved it! Don leaves Cassandra at the altar, Bella has gone missing, Daniel is cheating on his wife and his twins hate each other. SO MUCH DRAMA and the game was so much fun.

You can have a perfect family, or you can tons of fun by letting the characters cheat on each other, letting teens skip class and get bad grades, letting people get into arguments or fights, and letting fires destroy your home.

24. Make Friends for Kids and Teens

If you really want to get attached to your sims, the key is to have them be interesting as kids and teenagers. If you just have them going to school and doing their homework you’ll have no affection toward these sims and won’t want to continue playing through their lives.

A great key to this is to make sure that you’re allowing these sims to be interesting characters, not just set dressing for their parents perfect life. To do this you need to make sure that your sim’s kids have friends! These can be best friends, acquaintances, crushes and eventually lovers that really make their lives feel more full and interesting.

You can invite these kids over on weekends, hangout with them after school and just enjoy their company so much, which will definitely have you having more fun with your younger sims.

25. Play with Occults

Something that The Sims franchise does well is cater to all sorts of players. Of course, The Sims has content for people who want to play with regular life but there is also content for the supernatural lovers out there and sometimes if you’re bored with the game going in and playing a family of Vampires or Spellcasters maybe just be the answer to your woes.

There is a ton of deep and interesting gameplay in both Realm of Magic and Vampires that can be discovered if it’s something you don’t touch or haven’t touched since launch. Start a vampire legacy! It’s fun I promise.

Final Thoughts

There you have it, friends! Twenty five ideas for gameplay in The Sims 4 if you are just craving something different, these can be implemented one at a time or mix and match to really mix up your game and try to have the most fun possible. What ideas do YOU have for interesting gameplay? Let me know in the comments under this article. Happy playing!