For the past year, videos of the virtual interior decorating system have been showcased on the Paralives channel. From the looks of it, the house building and decorating system may eventually rival House Flipper.
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So far most of the development videos have been focused on the houses, but the next step in development is already here: the people. On Tuesday, May 19th, Paralives Studio released this video of Maggie herself, its first Para.
Already the character customization shows considerable promise, even though so far there is only one “Para” (Paralives’ name for their simulated humans). The interface to configure Maggie’s skeleton and weight distribution is similar to what EA introduced with The Sims 4, so players should already find the controls intuitive. As for Maggie herself, she has a lovely style.
Being slightly cartoonish, Paralives Studio is able to cleverly sidestep the dreaded Uncanny Valley, when a character is both too real to be unrealistic and too unrealistic to be real, something which everyone agrees can be quite unnerving. Maggie is close, but her doll-like face and smooth skin is enough to keep her from falling into that trap.
For now, prospective players have plenty of time to get involved with the game’s creation and share their ideas with the developers. Already there is a following on Reddit of over 6,000 users and growing.
Paralives is being developed for PC and Mac. The release date is to be determined.
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Source: Kotaku
