"The only thing left this year to save us from life sim malaise is Paralives, launching into early access on December 8," PC Gamer simmer-for-life Lauren Morton wrote earlier this month about the fizzled "life sim revolution" she was anticipating for 2025. And now here I am to make her year even worse: Paralives has been delayed into 2026.
"This year, we ran many playtests with friends and fans, and we were confident that we could improve the game enough in time for December," Paralives lead developer Alex Massé wrote in an apologetic missive on Steam. "In the lead-up to early access release, we broadened our playtests with a more varied playerbase, and the latest feedback we received made us realise the game isn’t up to the standard we wanted it to meet for release.
"Players enjoy the flexibility and the customization of the Paramaker and Build Mode. However, there are still impactful bugs in the Live Mode and a lack of activities to do in the town, which dampened the enjoyment of the players, and we feel it is necessary to work on these before delivering the product to the community."
Talking about the challenges the Paralives dev team has overcome over the past six years, Massé said he's "proud of what we have built," but that the studio now needs "a bit more time to polish the simulation part of the game."
The release date in this video is now a bit off the mark, but the rest is valid.
The "bit more time" is actually quite a chunk of it: Paralives is now slated to launch into early access on May 25, 2026, nearly six months later than the initial release date of December 8. The development roadmap has been updated to reflect what the studio will be working on between now and then, which will include "a focus on fixing important issues and improving the first-time user experience."
The Paralives team will also hold a 45 minute stream on YouTube of "uninterrupted live mode gameplay" at 12 pm ET on November 25 to show off the current state of the game.
"We plan on keeping you all updated with streams and videos leading up to the new release date," Massé wrote. "We remain fully committed to making a quality and innovative game with the support of the community and to updating it for years to come after release."
