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The Sims 4 Kids Room Stuff is the seventh Stuff Pack entry to The Sims 4 and features new items, clothing, hair and some extra gameplay. Is The Sims 4 Kids Room Stuff worth the price or is it something your Sims can live without? Hopefully I’ll be able to give you enough information on the game to help you make a decision!
What’s new?
The Sims4 Kids Room Stuff comes with around 85 new additions to Build/Buy Mode and Create a Sim. All of the content included in this Stuff Pack is centered around the (very much neglected) Child age group. There is also a new TV station and radio station which suit the Child age group perfectly.
The overall theme of this Stuff Pack is very much catering to the young ones with decor tying in with one of the new Gameplay features, the Voidcritter’s (more on that later). There’s a new bedroom set that features a wide variety of styles to spruce up your Sims rooms. Your Child Sims will also be able to use a new puppet show to entertain other Sims.
New Gameplay
The most notable additions to The Sims 4 introduced in this Stuff Pack are the Voidcritter’s and the Puppet Show. There is also a new TV station which features some new shows for your Sims to watch. In keeping with the theme of The Sims games using footage from various other games in The Sims franchise, many of these shows use footage from a MySims game which gives it an “animated” look. The sound effects from these channels are amazing and much like the TV stations and movies we already have, I found myself watching these shows to figure out the story. We also get a new “Tween” radio station (I still don’t know what a “Tween” is, but OK). There are only 4 new songs in this station, so if you listen to it a lot you will be hearing the same songs repeatedly. The songs themselves are catchy (darn teen-pop music) and feature the standard Simlish language used throughout the game.
The Voidcritter’s is a very well thought out and executed feature in The Sims 4 Kids Room Stuff. While The Sims Team could easily have just given us a battle station and left it at that, they decided to take it much further. To get started in the Voidcritter side of this pack, you need to find at least one Voidcritter card. You do this by hunting in bins or frog spawners in the world, or by purchasing them from a computer. You’ll then find a Booster Pack in your Sims inventory that you can open to reveal a randomly picked card.
These cards themselves count towards a new Collection for Sims and there are 20 in total to find in the world. The Voidcritter card collection is more involved too. Child Sims are able to trade these cards with other children by either using a social interaction or clicking the desired card in their inventory. I recommend using the inventory trading method as the social interaction will just trade a random card from your Inventory. This can be annoying if you have spent time training your card to have better stats and it is suddenly given to another Sim.
Yes, you read that right! You can train your cards to have better stats which helps level it up for battles against other cards! The battles themselves are very well animated, your Sim chooses a Sim to battle against and both Sims will put their card in the docking station and the Voidcritter’s doing battle are shown on the screen. Various animations play out depending on the “Element” that the Voidcritter belongs to and how the battle is progressing. Now, while Teen and older Sims can’t use this station, the can watch the battles and will react accordingly.
The Puppet Show is another new Gameplay object introduced in this pack and comes in the form of a big box with two side doors and a little “stage” area. Your children Sims can either play in the Puppet Box for fun (and increase their Social Skill), or they can put on a show for other Sims (older Sims can watch the puppet show, but can’t perform in it).
Initially, there are only two shows that your Sim can perform, but as their Social Skill increases, so does the number of shows they can perform. The shows and puppets themselves are very well animated and it’s adorable listening to the children change their voices for the different characters in a show. The puppets themselves even have smaller speech bubbles over their heads when they are talking which is another little touch I find adorable. Sims watching the show will react to what’s happening too, they’ll cheer at good scenes and gasp at the puppets fighting! It’s small touches like this that makes the puppet show seem more “alive” rather than a Sim just sat staring blankly at it. I do wish that Sims could “shoosh” other Sims when they are talking though, much like they can when watching a Movie”. It’s annoying trying to hear the children over the adults chatter all the time (irony much?).
While it isn’t a new feature to The Sims 4 Kids Room Stuff, players who have The Sims 4 Get Together installed may be happy to know that the Puppet Show and Voidcritter Battle Station are activities that can be set in the Groups option.
Build and Buy Mode Additions
There are 40 new Build and Buy Mode items and 3 new Styled Rooms included in The Sims 4 Kids Room Stuff. Thankfully, everything included in this pack makes sense for it. It’s all very “kids bedroom” styled, but is also highly versatile. Items will come in bright colours and some have “stencils” on them. But these same items will have the standard wooden colour pallet used in the game and styles without the stencils included to make them much more useful. You can change the colour out as your Children turn into Teens and the items won’t look out of place. I’m glad that The Sims Team did it this way because it means you aren’t limited to what you can do with the new items.
We also get a lot of decor too, I’m particularly fond of the Voidcritter wall stickers, it’s a nice way to give the new gameplay a physical presence in your Child’s rooms! Add to that the fact you can display the void critter cards on shelves and you can really make your kids love Voidcritters! This approach isn’t unrealistic either, when I was a kid I LOVED Pokemon and did something very similar, so I’m getting hit by nostalgia with the Voidcritters.
Other additions include the new butterfly items that you can stick to the wall. I can see these becoming a fan favourite and I also imagine that many builders will use these to their advantage, especially in the garden. Overall, the quality of the items are fantastic as is the selection of colour options.
Create a Sim Additions
You can jazz up your Sims kids appearance with around 40 new additions to Create a Sim. While some items are designated as Masculine and Feminine, all of the items can be used by either sex now since a recent update meaning you won’t be limited to what can be used.
The clothes are very well made and are very much suited to this age group and the general theme of this pack. Many tops have various designs and motifs on them, and the mesh has been repeated several times in the CAS menu. This was done intentionally by The Sims Team to make choosing designs easier (we would have had a single top with around 70 style options otherwise). My only disappointment with the CAS items is the lack of Voidcritter tops for kids. We had the wall stickers in Build Mode and that design could easily have been copied and pasted over to a top in CAS.
Other than this, I am extremely happy with the variety and selection of items we now have for children in CAS.
Value
The Sims 4 Kids Room Stuff retails for $9.99 USD and contains around 85 new items. The items are all of high quality and fit in with the “theme” this Stuff Pack was aiming for. However, the items themselves can also be used in a non-kids room, further adding to their possible uses. The new gameplay is also fun to watch happen as a player.
Final Thoughts
The Sims 4 Kids Room Stuff is probably my favourite Stuff Pack yet for the game. It helps flesh out items that we can use for kids and this type of pack and content has been long overdue. It’s very hard for me to find any faults with this pack, it adds much needed content and given that kids content often feels like an afterthought in The Sims 4, it’s great to see what can be achieved when the focus is solely on the little ones.
Overall, I am very happy with this Stuff Pack and everything it adds to the game. I know that I’ll be using the content a lot as I am a family player in The Sims 4. I know that not every player likes playing as younger Sims so this is probably not the pack for them, but for people who do like playing with the younger age groups in The Sims 4, I can’t recommend this pack enough to you!
The Sims 4 Kids Room Stuff is now available worldwide. Thank you for taking the time to read this review and I hope it has helped you make a decision about the Stuff Pack. Take care and have an amazing day!
Peter (Wee Albet)
