Sims 4 Ghosts. What's New?

It's nearly midnight, children!  Now sit down around the fire and I'll tell you a spooky story about ghosts in The Sims 4... first things first:

Spooooooky!

1.  What is “The Sims 4: Ghosts”?

Ghosts was one of the major 2014 updates to Sims 4. As you know, ghosts have been haunting the Sims for a while now, tapping their spooky fingers on your shoulder when you’re in the toilet, haunting your garden, lurking around corridors.

In Sims 4, they could only be non-playable characters originally.  When your Sim died, a non-playable character (NPC) ghost attached to a gravestone near your Sims house and hangs out doing a bit of haunting. 

2. What’s different about ghosts in Sims 4?

This update made ghosts more than just the shadowy NPCs they’ve been in the past!

We think this is a great touch as it makes the game experience feel much more responsive.  Many people wanted the ghosts feature in the latest installment of The Sims. As the launch of ghosts, Electronic Arts stated:

“It’s been a month since we launched ‘The Sims 4,’ but in that short time we’ve received a ton of great feedback as you’ve started exploring the game,” “We’ve designed ‘The Sims 4’ to be a live service, so we can continually evolve the experience, add new content, and incorporate as much of your feedback as possible.”

With the ghosts installment, now you can make friends with ghosts, build a relationship and even invite them to join the household.  Once you’ve done that, the ghost can become a playable character. 

Once a ghost becomes playable, it’s a controllable character like any normal Sim and it can get a job, have a relationship and do household tasks…but of course, being a ghost, it will always have a few extra special supernatural abilities.

3. Ghosts have some spooky abilities

The skills and abilities that ghosts have is mostly determined by how they died, and how they’re feeling.  Some of the extra fun properties of ghosts (as well as a few things they can’t do) are listed below:

• Ghosts have little graphics changes that reflect how they died – e.g. if your ghost died of hunger, there will be a small wispy cloud floating near its stomach.  If it died by Cowplant, it will be able to help plants grow, or kill them if it’s in a bad mood!
• Ghost’s body colour matches their emotions.  If a ghost is angry, it goes red.  If it’s dark blue, it’sad.  A ghost who is feeling fine will be white, and a flirty ghost is a lovely shade of pink.
• Ghosts can walk through the walls – when they feel like it.  If they don’t feel like it, they won’t!
• Ghosts can possess objects, making them move around or break.  Luckily the ghost can also repair them!
• Ghosts can’t die, and they can’t have children (as far as we know! – happy to be proved wrong on this one.)

You're going to kill me?! Don't make me laugh...uggh..aggh ...aaaaahhhh!

4. How do you get to be a ghost?

It’s pretty obvious, but to get a ghost you have to kill a Sim.  There are quite a few ways of dying, including laughter, mortification, overexertion, hunger, old age, Cowplant, anger, fire or electrocution. More about death later.

5. Now you can even die by drowning

Along with ghosts, EA also reintroduced swimming pools to The Sims, so now your Sim can die of drowning.  To cause a Sim to die by drowning, put a fence all the way around the pool so they can’t come out.  These ghosts can cause water pools to appear out of nowhere – spooky!

We think it’s great the EA is so responsive to user feedback.  Now that ghosts are here to stay, what’s the next feature that you want to see in The Sims 4? Let us know by leaving a comment here!