The Sims 4 Life and Death has been announced as the game's next expansion, and thanks to the reveal trailer, we know a lot of its features too. As expected, funeral events are coming, as is a Grim Reaper career, and a lot more activities for ghost sims.
Here's everything we know about the Life and Death expansion so far, and some of the educated guesses that I'm staking my simoleons on.
Release date and trailers
When is the Life and Death expansion release date?
The Sims 4 Life and Death launches on October 31, 2024. It's actually pretty unusual for EA to have already announced the expansion pack release date during the seasonal roadmap, so this time around we have plenty of time to get our affairs in order. Life and Death will cost $39.99 / £34.99 when it launches on Steam, Epic Games, and the EA App.
Check out the Life & Death reveal trailer
The reveal trailer for the Life & Death expansion and its accompanying announcement post give a lot of details on features coming in the expansion. You can catch parts of the Grim Reaper career, funerals, reading wills, and lots of ghost gameplay. If that song is as stuck in your head as it is mine, it's "Nothing Matters" by The Last Dinner Party.
Life & Death gameplay features
New world: Ravenwood
Life & Death is set in the new world Ravenwood "where the veil between life and death is especially thin," EA says. Like lots of other expansion worlds, this one also has three distinct neighborhoods:
- Crow's Crossing: "an eerie village rumored to be frequented by Ghosts"
- Whispering Glen: "steeped in ruins and rumors, it’s a paradise for collectors and historians alike"
- Mourningvale: "many Ghosts choose to call this place home"
Maxis mentions some other features of the world as well:
- A town cemetery
- A mysterious merchant
- A crypt
- Haunted houses
- A wishing well
- Tarot tome shrine
- A nightly "moon revelry festival"
Funeral events
One of the core pieces of the Life & Death expansion are the new funeral events. Here's hoping they launch in a better state than the My Wedding Stories pack.
"Players can choose which Sims attend and who the Deceased is, select a Dress Code and Color for guests to arrive in, pick from a variety of fourteen different activities, and determine the location and time," Maxis says.
In the trailer you can see sims comforting one another, making speeches, and literally pouring one out for the departed.
Bucket lists
Another big chunk of storytelling gameplay in Life & Death is the "Soul's Journey" which Maxis says is "an all encompassing reward system uniting Aspirations and Wants."
Part of that journey is creating and tackling a bucket list of activities starting as young adults. A sim's bucket list will automatically populate with goals based on their traits but you can also add goals yourself. If you manage to fulfill your sim's bucket list before kicking the bucket, they can be rewarded by being "reborn."
Those who don't complete their bucket list can stick around as a ghost with unfinished business.
Ghost sim activities
Speaking of ghosts, Maxis says that sims who die can stay in the playable family after death and either become a nuisance or help with chores. Oh, and they can woohoo with living sims too. They can even make money as ghosts by earning "essences" of fear or goodwill and selling them for simoleons. The side hustles never end, even in death.
I was betting on ghosts becoming their own full occult sim type or maybe a life stage that you can create from scratch in Create-A-Sim. The reveal post doesn't quite say that, but does say that as a sim acclimates to being a ghost you can "customize their looks in CAS." So I've got a feeling I may yet be right.
Other gameplay features
As usual, Life & Death comes with some other gameplay features we can expect in an expansion. Here's what's been confirmed so far:
- Careers: Reaper and Undertaker (Mortician or Funeral Director)
- Aspiration: Ghost Historian
- Traits: Macabe, chased by death, skeptic
- Reward trait: Ghost whisperer
- Skill: Thanatology
- Lot trait: Hallowed grounds
- Deaths: Murder of crows
- Woohoo: As a ghost
- Write a will to give heirlooms and dependents to an inheritor
- Types of grief to experience: denial, holding it together, anger, blues
- Attend grief counselling
- Interactions "Console about death," "offer awkward sympathies," "offer sympathetic joke"
