XCOM designer Jake Solomon is done with turn-based strategy and is now making a life sim inspired by small town dramas like Gilmore Girls

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(Image credit: Midsummer Studios)

Jake Solomon smiles for a company headshot

Solomon says he learned everything he knows from Firaxis Software co-founder and simulation game tycoon Sid Meier, who’s best known for the Civilization series. After working on Civilization games himself, the games Solomon later took creative lead on started to zoom in on characters and relationships with thesoldier bond system in XCOM 2, and then thefriendship systemin Marvel’s Midnight Suns, a game he affectionately describes as his “little hero dating simulator” that he “lavished way too much attention on.”

Marvel’s Midnight Suns(Image credit: 2K Games)

Peter Parker and The Hunter sit next to each other, reading.

Now he wants to ditch combat entirely, which it turns out was something he’d been hoping to do all along. Solomon said he was done with turn-based strategy last yearafter leaving Firaxisand hinted at his interest in life simulation. Now he says his dream as a designer has always been a game about high school and dating. “I think these things have always been kind of brewing in the back of my mind. And they’ve probably manifested in each game that I’ve designed,” he says.

Midsummer Studios' first game sounds like it isn’t solely about high school dating, but it’s definitely all about the drama of personal relationships.

The basics of Midsummer’s yet-to-be-revealed game, as they stand, are this: You’ll decide what kind of story you want to tell, whether it’s about romance, family, or something else entirely, and the game will fill the town with characters and generate relationships between them—it almost sounds like starting a game of Dwarf Fortress. From a Sims-like overhead view of the world, you can play through a story divided into scenes where your character has wants and needs and has to juggle those relative to time, or you can go into a creative mode to inhabit any character you please, edit relationships, give orders, and play around in your sandbox.

We want the player to feel like they have enough things that they want to do in any particular scene but they can’t possibly do all of them.Jake Solomon

We want the player to feel like they have enough things that they want to do in any particular scene but they can’t possibly do all of them.

“You’re guiding a character through their daily life in a small town—and a small town is a very narrative rich environment,” Solomon says. “Whether it’s Gilmore Girls, which is the one I bring up maybe too often to my team, or it could be Stephen King … It’s a narrative rich environment because everybody knows everybody.”

Each scene is less about managing want meters as in The Sims series and more about juggling your character’s motivations at any point in time. Scenes might have modifiers, like an unfortunate case of intestinal distress that will make your character want to go to the bathroom several times while trying to get through a date. If you aren’t feeling the scene you’re in though, creative mode lets you ditch the scene constraints entirely.

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“We want the player to feel like they have enough things that they want to do in any particular scene but they can’t possibly do all of them,” Solomon says.

Creating your own drama

The idea is to create conditions that are ripe for generating “emergent stories,” and though that’s often a buzzword, Solomon has some specific ideas about what that means from his own time spent playing The Sims.

“I love The Sims. You play it and this amazing stuff happens. I’ll be like: is my wife flirting with the old neighbor? What the fuck? And you want the game to be like:dun dun duuuuun!”

The Sims 4(Image credit: Maxis, Electronic Arts)

The Sims 4 - a Sim reacting with shock

“The audience that we’re interested in is the people, like if you go to Tumblr, they’re the people who share the stories of their characters through screenshots and they do a lot of really, really incredible work,” he says.

“What we’re wrestling with right now is that there have to be some curated storylines but I think we want them to be very, very high level,” he says, describing something that sounds a little like the events system in Crusader Kings 3, except with more dialogue. “The way we handle this is a character will come up to you and say ‘oh I heard your father is back in town,’ and this is a dialogue tree where the player has three very different options like ‘I never want to talk to that man again’ or ‘yeah, he’s here because he’s getting married and I don’t like his fiancee.'”

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The Sims 4(Image credit: EA)

Two Sims arguing.

As much as the XCOM guy pivoting to a life sim warrants a double take, he does seem togetSims players, referencing popularSims 4 modslike Wicked Whims and the differences between Alpha and Maxis Match custom content.

As for the potential of a modding community for this game, Solomon is enthusiastic, saying he believes that mods are “essential,” though isn’t positive yet on the exact details around the level of support and tools Midsummer will share with players.

Our guiding star is the idea of relationships and storyJake Solomon

Our guiding star is the idea of relationships and story

With all this talk about the live drama of a life sim, what about the build mode folks like me? Solomon says they want to eventually have decoration and interior redesigns and building your house from scratch, but as for having those things in for the initial launch he’s not so confident. “Our guiding star is the idea of relationships and story and so that allows us to kind of deprioritize other features.”

More about life simMy Summer Car, the absurdly detailed Finnish life sim about vehicle maintenance and drinking in your underpants, smashes into 1.0 after nearly a decade in Steam early accessThe Sims begins its 25th anniversary celebration next week with a Behind The Sims episode of news and announcementsLatestToday’s Wordle answer for Sunday, January 12See more latest►

More about life sim

My Summer Car, the absurdly detailed Finnish life sim about vehicle maintenance and drinking in your underpants, smashes into 1.0 after nearly a decade in Steam early accessThe Sims begins its 25th anniversary celebration next week with a Behind The Sims episode of news and announcements

The protagonist of My Summer Car smoking a cigarette outside while a truck in the background pumps out a septic tank.

My Summer Car, the absurdly detailed Finnish life sim about vehicle maintenance and drinking in your underpants, smashes into 1.0 after nearly a decade in Steam early access

The Sims 4 - a woman with red hair and a purple top exclaims with excitement

The Sims begins its 25th anniversary celebration next week with a Behind The Sims episode of news and announcements

LatestToday’s Wordle answer for Sunday, January 12See more latest►

Latest

Today’s Wordle answer for Sunday, January 12

Wordle today being played on a phone

Today’s Wordle answer for Sunday, January 12

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The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals#

Creating your own drama#

More Sims, more wins#

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals

Creating your own drama

More Sims, more wins