Download The Sims 4 for Windows

The Sims 4 is the latest major title in the popular Sims series. Like its predecessors, it allows you to create a community of virtual people, each with their own distinct appearances and personalities.

The first three titles in the Sims series quickly became firm favourites, and Sims 4 brings some new additions to the popular formula: it overhauls the Create a Sim process to be more intuitive, it updates the game's building tools, and most of all, it brings greater depth by giving the Sims individual emotions.

While previous Sims titles included a mood attribute, the emotions feature is more nuanced. The game has sixteen main emotional states, including Angry, Confident, Flirty, Bored, Inspired and more. These have a variety of causes: for example, an unpleasant interaction may lead to anger, while a task fulfilled may make a Sim confident. In their most extreme cases, a few of the emotions may lead to death.

The new Create a Sim feature uses a straightforward interface allowing the user to pick basic attributes such as age and gender, before designing a Sim by picking facial structure, skin colour, hair, clothing and more from a series of drop-down menus. It is designed to be simple and intuitive to use while offering a wide range of options.

Right now, the game is available across a wide range of platforms including Windows, Mac, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The Mac edition is currently digital-only, and will need to be downloaded when purchased.

The game is rated T for teen by the ESRB. This means that it may be unsuitable for children under the age of 13, and so parental discretion is advised for younger players.

Unfortunately, no. As Sism 4 reworks the game's technology from the ground up, there is no way to transfer existing content from earlier games in the series. Any player who is attached to their earlier creations will need to keep hold of the previous titles.

Yes. The expansion packs include Get to Work (adding more occupations), Get Together (adding group activities for Sims), City Living (adding a new city and extra careers) and Cats & Dogs (adding pets). Also available are the game packs Outdoor Retreat (adding a national park setting), Spa Day (adding spas), Dine Out (adding restaurants), Vampires (adding the ability to turn Sims into vampires) and Parenthood (adding more features for child, teenager and parent Sims). Other downloadable content is also available.

The game courted controversy for removing features included in earlier titles to make way for new additions, such as the emotions feature discussed above. Following complaints from fans, however, some of the removed features were made available again as patches: these include the toddler life stage, swimming pools and more.

New content for the game is released multiple times per year, allowing a constant stream of additions for any player who wishes to keep on enhancing the virtual world of The Sims.