Behind The Scenes: Exploring the Paralives Patreon Archive

The Paralives team announced on August 25 across all their official pages that all Paralives Patreon posts are now public and available to everyone. The Paralives Patreon posts are especially interesting for those who want to know more about the game's development history, are curious about why certain decisions were made, and what has changed since their Patreon started in 2019.

Let's explore the highlights from the Paralives Patreon posts across more than 300 publications over the years the Patreon was active, including design choices, development obstacles, bugs, polls, and much more!

2019 - The First Year

The first-ever post from the Paralives Patreon was made on July 3, 2019, after Alex Massé received a lot of attention for the ambitious life simulation project he was working on, as he was still the only developer for Paralives. In this first post, he thanked everyone for how well they had received the idea of Paralives and included a funny GIF as a thank you.

The first year was full of brainstorming, asking the community to give opinions on which features should be included, and gathering feedback on possible features for the game. From the beginning, you could tell that the community around Paralives was an important factor in shaping the game development, since basically every new idea was voted on.

In 2019, the community voted on important names like Parafolk (for the characters) and Paradime (for the currency). On December 11 of the same year, Alex announced that the project was no longer a solo project and this announcement was almost the last post of the year, followed only by the happy holiday wishes.

2020 - Pandemic and Early Paramaker Development

The first 2020 post, published on January 2, recapped the previous year's progress and outlined goals for the new year, including finishing and showing the Parafolk concepts, revealing gameplay details, hiring additional people to join the team, and other plans.

By March 2020, the Paralives team had gotten an office, decided on the name for the character creator through a poll (Paramaker was the winner!), and also started thinking about the possibilities of clothing in the game not being free, as well as beginning the initial development of the Paramaker.

The COVID pandemic then emerged as an external challenge. The team put its members' health first and warned fans that development might be impacted.

Despite the pandemic, the team kept developing and sharing news. Maggie and Sebastian, the first Parafolk, were designed with community input on their personalities and backgrounds. A team member left after disagreements and some drama, and new team members joined throughout the year.

During the year, they also started to talk about family trees and the genetic system, developed a new logo, modding tools, and by the end of 2020, the Paralives Patreon had grown to 8,775 Patreons.

2021 - Award and Early Showcases

At the start of 2021, the team called for community support as Paralives had been nominated for the Most Anticipated Canadian Game award from CanadianGameDevs.com, which they won.

By 2021, the Paramaker was already evolving into the form we see today. Early in the year, the team worked on visual refinements for all life stages, gathered community input on skin tones, and shared early animation tests, relationships, body types, and tattoo placement.

They also posted about the bugs and challenges they found along the way as a way to share funny moments and show transparency with their Patreons, especially for the Parafolk creation.

By the end of the year, they shared two new complete Parafolk: Marvin and Elli (Sebastian's child).

At the same time, they were also working on Build Mode and Live Mode for the game. Features like grid-less building, split levels, curved walls, resizing objects and customization, modding tools and much more were considered from the very beginning. They started building and sharing the first complete houses.

They also posted about the challenges of working with mirrors (which weren't at their full potential even at early access release and received an update some time later) and how they were making junctions more fluid.

The first music demo for the game was made and is still available to listen to here. By the end of 2021, the game's vision had become much more defined, and it was beginning to resemble the Early Access version we know today.

2022 - The Art Style Drama and Photo Mode

The team started the year by outlining their vision for the cooking system, generations, and development goals for all modes, and continued to gather feedback from the Paralives Patreons.

Throughout the year, they provided many updates for all the major modes (Paramaker, Build Mode, and Live Mode), sharing improvements, ideas for the interaction menu, new animations, the Paramaker clothing layering system, sound effects, censoring options, life stage textures, and more.

During the year's development, the team also posted about bugs they encountered, both to document their testing and to show how they resolved issues.

In 2022, criticism around the art style became more evident within the community. The art style started to spark a lot of discussions and create some tension within the community. The main point of the discussion was that the Parafolk's art style didn't match the style of Build Mode. With a growing community, new voices also started to completely dislike the design choices, especially for the Parafolk design. During the year, the team addressed the issue and made adjustments to the art style, while also collecting feedback about what people were thinking about the changes they were making.

2022 was also the year the team started implementing a new mode called Photo Mode, intended exclusively to help players take in-game pictures with much more freedom without depending on mods.

2023 - New Game Assets and a Confident Team

2023 was a year of greater stability for the team. While criticism about the art style was still happening, both the team and the Paralives community felt more confident about the game's identity, especially thanks to the changes made the previous year. They shared many new assets for the Paramaker, Build Mode, and Live Mode, and new songs and sound effects also received a lot of attention throughout the year.

A lot of effort was put into the Paralives language (Parli), new animations, interactions, doing activities together, need management, reactions, and much more. This was also the year the map was explored further and revealed in more detail.

The team closed the year with a strong, confident retrospective post that reviewed all the improvements they had achieved so far.

2024 - Playtesting Sessions and Improvements

With the basic modes much more stable, in 2024 the Paralives team focused on adding new features, skills, and careers, along with general improvements for every mode, playtesting sessions, and bug resolution throughout the year.

In the last post of the year, the Paralives team created a recap post covering major announcements, including their compromise of having no paid DLC, their event participations, the announcement that Build Mode was ready for Early Access, and that they had held 8 playtest sessions with over 50 people who gave them direct feedback about the game.

2025 - High Expectations and the Release Date Delay

2025 was another year in which Paralives received many more assets, game mode polish, genetic system improvements, and the reveal of plans to add collectibles. The year was also marked by numerous recorded gameplay sessions in Live Mode and the Paramaker, speed builds, and videos covering sound effects creation and other development topics.

On June 9, 2025, the team announced the first release date for Early Access. The growing tension in the life sim community (especially due to the EA buyout) contributed to really high expectations for Paralives. On November 14, the team announced a delay on the release date after more playtesting sessions revealed the game wasn't ready for Early Access. A new date for 2026 was set.

2026 - The Year of Early Access

Before Paralives' release in Early Access in 2026, the Paralives Patreon posts focused mostly on showcasing improvements and the issues they had fixed, as well as introducing new animations, townies, town builds, interaction polish, and an overall effort to make the game and its town more engaging for players. They also shared with the community along the way that they were receiving more positive feedback from playtesting sessions.

Paralives was officially released on May 25, 2026, in Early Access on Steam for PC and Mac, and it is now receiving frequent updates. The full release is expected to occur in about two years.

After the Paralives release, the team announced that they will no longer share updates through Patreon and that official announcements will be made on their social media, official website, and Steam. You can keep up with the latest news for Paralives here on Sims Community too, of course!

All Paralives Patreon posts are now public and available to anyone who wants to learn more about the first six years of Paralives' development!

Wrapping it up

The Paralives Patreon is a rich source for learning more about game development, and it's something we don't always have access to, especially for free. It shows how much the community means to the Paralives team. It's highly recommended that you read through the original posts, as this article only covered a few highlights from each year, but much more have happened and is documented on their Patreon!

Hope you enjoyed this journey through the highlights of Paralives' development, and stay tuned here on Sims Community for more updates on Paralives and other life simulation games!

Now we want to hear from you! What do you think about the Paralives Patreon going public? Did you enjoy learning more about the development process? Let us know in the comments!