Do you ever think about the afterlife? The latest Sims 4 expansion pack, that appropriately arrived this Halloween, invites you to do just that.
While it may sound like a spooky, fun jaunt, Life & Death is arguably the most meaningful expansion pack introduced into the fourth installment of the game franchise thus far. Yes, there are ghosts and there are new shockingly creative ways for a Sim to die, but there are opportunities to navigate grief and create a legacy for your Sim, too.
The Sims has grown to become a vessel for catharsis over time, and especially in the years following the emergence of COVID-19. The game offers levels of creative expression, self-exploration, and a sense of control through its simulation that seems to be less and less present in everyday life as global powers shift and time unflinchingly barrels ahead.
In this latest edition of Teen Vogue Tries, four editors take on Life & Death through new features of gameplay and a brand new ghastly world to explore, learning more about themselves and their Sims than they ever could have expected.
Honestine Fraser, Senior Social Media Manager
So far, I’ve only logged a handful of hours playing, but I can confidently say this is one of the best expansion packs in the Sims franchise. I’ve played a few of the expansion packs, like Island Living, Cottage Living, and High School Years, but this one actually feels like an expansion. I personally feel like none of them have as much attention to detail or extensive world building as Life & Death.
Before I even played the game, I had a feeling we were all in for a treat just based off of the trailer alone. I’ve watched it a handful of times, and it makes me tear up because the storytelling is just done so well. It was heartfelt and showcases the complex feelings around death and grieving.
I like to spend a lot of time in Build-a-Sim, and for the sake of this review, I built two Sims: one alive and the other already dead. You can pick their cause of death, and some of them are pretty comical (death by laughter, death by embarrassment, death by a killer chicken) while others are more grim (death by drowning, death by fire, etc.). I also really enjoyed some of the added traits you can pick: the Macabre trait unlocks features like the Wednesday dance, and getting chased by death will place your living Sim in more near-death situations. The outfits in Build-a-Sim are spooky and chic, and I had a blast customizing my Sims into wearing some killer (lol) fits. I will say, so far, starting as an alive Sim is better than starting off as a ghost, because there are so many intricacies that come with it: creating a will, completing the Soul’s Journey or a bucket list, and more.
I’m still exploring the gameplay, but I am absolutely having a blast. There’s so much you can do with completing a Soul’s Journey, and I feel like I’m only getting started with it because there is just so much to explore. I’ve been a Simmer since I was 12, and I will admit I did fall off over the last year because I was kind of bored with the expansion packs — but this is by far the best one I’ve played.
Kaitlyn McNab, Culture Editor
Since the game's debut in 2014, new expansion packs for The Sims 4 have both excited and overwhelmed me. With TS4 boasting the most detailed expansion packs of the entire franchise, I usually know that a new expansion pack means I'll need to block out a minimum of 4-12 hours to explore the pack in its entirety. Life & Death was the first pack I've ever needed to play for multiple days to absorb its full gameplay experience. It makes sense — while other packs usually add new career paths, clothing and furniture, worlds, events, playable characters, or experiences, Life & Death is, in my opinion, the first to add all of these at once with the intent of an extended gaming experience. Triple-timing the game's speed will usually get you through the newly added content of previous packs within a few hours. But Life & Death was created with legacy in mind — which automatically made it the most appealing pack to me since 2023's Growing Together.
I am the kind of Simmer who loves to create generations of a Sim family, starting with a couple or two individual Sims who have a meet-cute (orchestrated by me, of course) and growing their lineage for as many branches up the family tree as I can. Life & Death allowed me to play to the fullest of my dream Simming experience, creating a family rich in connection, memory, and heritage without relying solely on my imagination. Throughout my childhood and now throughout my adulthood, my favorite part of The Sims has always been its extreme attention to detail. Life & Death is an extremely detail-oriented and attentive pack, to both the gameplay and the desires of its gamers.
There are so many praises to be sung about Life & Death: the clever and macabre clothing, the spooky worldbuilding of the haunted, the Order of Lenore exploratory mission-style quests I grew to love from previous game packs like StrangerVille and Jungle Adventure, the evolved complexity of emotion and Moodlets Sims are able to express, the immersion into the world of one of the most iconic NPCs, the Grim Reaper. But overall, the aspect of this pack I cherish the most is its focus on creating a dimensionality to the life of a Sim and their loved ones. Life & Death made legacy playable through heirlooms, wills, funerals, bucket lists, and the Soul's Journey.
While games like Vampires, Werewolves, Realm of Magic, and Journey to Batuu are cool, they're not necessarily for me. I have always loved the ability to play a grounded and realistic simulation, and that is what, for nearly two decades of my life, has sparked my creativity the most while playing The Sims. I know this pack literally added the Underworld, but it also added reality — and I was able to face the grief of missed opportunities, dreams just out of reach, and the physical loss of loved ones through this pack in a way I've never been able to do before with any other expansion. That being said, I'm looking forward to spending many more hours running from red-eyed creatures in crypts and crossing monumental moments off of my Sim's bucket list. I can't wait to spend more hours feeling and chasing fulfillment.
Claire Dodson, Associate Culture Director
I went into The Sims 4: Life & Death expansion pack wondering if it would make me less afraid of death. A tall order for a video game — but the Sims franchise has inched its way closer and closer to real life with each new pack (Get Famous actually does feel predictive, everyone can be a star); maybe confronting the unknown head-on would be cathartic instead of panic-inducing after a trip to Ravenwood.
The newest Sims neighborhood — not to be confused with failed Pretty Little Liars spinoff Ravenswood — is perhaps Sims 4’s most beautiful work yet. It’s haunted in a lovely way, purple and eerily lit, the steam rising off the pond where you can swim and live among the dead for a short time. I created an Addams Family situation from user-generated content in the Gallery (I was too afraid to kill off any of my other Sims) so that I could explore with no affection for my little minions. My ghost Wednesday and Uncle Fester jaunted off to to pursue Unfinished Business and enact general chaos, adding to the fun of haunting other citizens of the town.
Alas, I developed a bond even with these random Addams — sending human Pugsley off to explore the crypts and talk with the ghost cow plant gave me some actual anxiety. Anything can happen in Ravenwood, and there are many new features to keep even avid players occupied trying to get to all the town’s secrets. This pack is for the gatherers and the partiers; a full moon revelry festival complete with bonfire dancing and nudity is a fun touch.
In the long run, I’m not totally sure how the pack will affect my game. I’m a once-a-quarter, play-for-14-hours-straight Simmer who always has to start a new family every time I play. The result is that my town is populated with half-baked families growing on towards death without me; rarely do I take a Sim from creation to death. I love a good trapped-in-the-pool moment as much as the next person, at least through other Sims players on YouTube, but in my actual gameplay I like to keep all my little Sims close and warm, far from the claws of the Grim Reaper.
But finally, I made myself play a mother-daughter family I’d created months ago and sent the mom to her untimely death in order to see the funeral experience. It was interesting to see grief broken up into the satisfying emotional processing Sims 4 offers: weep, mourn, plan the funeral, buy a casket.
At the funeral, work through the tasks that will wrap up this normal life event: give a lighthearted eulogy, offer up some food, play music, gather friends. And at the end, there is only a moodlet with a timer — the knowledge that everything must end, a Sim's life or the relentless emotion of grief that prevents you from functioning normally. One day it’ll be a recurring moodlet with the more gentle pang of missing someone.
Luckily, in The Sims 4: Life & Death, Sims can exist forever as playable ghosts, able to be reborn as fully alive if enough work is put in with (or as) the Grim Reaper. Mother and daughter can be reunited next time I play. Death is only a temporary career path. Not so scary, in the end.
Jillian Selzer, Social Media Manager
I was already looking forward to playing this pack based off the trailer alone, but I didn’t expect it to become my favorite pack of the entire Sims 4 franchise. Up until now, there hasn’t been a pack that resonated with me so much since Cottage Living was released in 2021, and it’s exciting to have a solid winner join my pack lineup.
The layers Life & Death adds to the Sims lore is incredibly thoughtful and was sorely needed for the game. It was wild first meeting Bella Goth in a cemetery, given her storyline from the previous games. Couple that with a younger Don Lothario being the only living NPC to welcome me to Ravenwood, and I began to feel such a sense of nostalgia despite the fresh features in the pack. It gave the same vibes as the mysterious Sims 2 plotlines, and I loved it.
The gameplay itself was particularly impressive to me. Expanding Sim life beyond death made the game so much more interactive and exciting. I spent hours searching crypts, collecting my tarot cards, and completing my Soul’s Journey, and it felt like I was barely scratching the surface of what I could do, especially since that was all done before I became a ghost and played around with the rebirth feature. I’m also a sucker for an interactive career (Get to Work, I’m giving you your flowers, girl!). Taking on the Reaper career felt like I was pulling back the curtain on the NPC world.
The Create-a-Sim features and Build Mode items helped bring my macabre dreams to live, and were the cherry on top of an incredibly moody and spooky world. My only critique is I wish Ravenwood had a few more residential lots. I felt the need to evict a few different neighbors to build my ultimate legacy family of ghosts and occult members, and it didn’t feel like all of the community lots were super necessary (I find the nightclubs some of the least-used commercial lots in my gameplay).
This pack is a must-have, not just for the lovers of the Occult Sims, but for any Simmer who wants to bring depth to their game. It’s a wonderful anchor for the other darker packs that aren’t necessarily as strong on their own, like Realm of Magic and Vampires, and offers a throughline for the more dramatic themes of the game. That aside, it’s generally just an incredibly well built and detailed pack. I’ve only played for a handful of hours so far, and I feel like there’s still much more to discover. 10/10 Plumbobs.
The Sims 4: Life & Death is now available for purchase and play.
.png)
