Following an article from last month, which outlined how I've never been so invested in a Sims 4 family than with my Not So Berry Sims, so many of you have been desperate to hear more about the Berry Simming hobby as a whole. While it's a deep hole of a pastime, and can seem intimidating to those just starting out, I thought I'd take some time to break it down for you.
Berry Simming is essentially an alternative play-style, one that can be applied to most (if not all) Vanilla Legacy challenges available across the net. A Vanilla challenge here means any challenge that's not already Berry themed—meaning those that are usually played with standard skin, hair and eye colours—and a Legacy challenge is just one that has you follow your starter Sim through several generations, while ticking off achievements and appointing new heirs.
So, if you're already into livening up your playthroughs with Sims challenges, Berry Simming is just the next step towards personalising those experiences, to complement a more vibrant disposition.
While there are several levels of involvement, getting the full experience means first downloading a host of rainbow of skin, hair and eye colour mods, in order to turn your sims into a tasty, rainbow array. Here are the updated Noodles Sorbet skins to get you started—a lot of search algorithms tend to direct you to the non-updated version, before the new slider feature in Create a Sim broke it. There's a recolour repository here for you to spool through, and look out for recolours on The Sims Resource (TSR), as well as colourful new meshes and object sets to decorate your Berry Sim's home with.
Once you've packed your mods folder full of goodies, you should decide whether you want to follow an official Berry Sim challenge, such as the Pastel Patisserie challenge or the Sweet and Sour challenge, or whether you'd like to follow a standard Legacy challenge with a rainbow twist (which is actually how Berry Simming came about). Imagine subverting the dark and brooding vampire legacy aesthetic with an uplifting, colourful coven.
You can even invent your own Berry challenge if you're feeling super creative. But, to start off, you might want to try a premade Berry sweet challenge, or dip your toes in with the Not So Berry challenge. But if you're ready to dive in headfirst, it's time to experiment with your newly expanded hue options.
In creating your own Berry Sims, the general rule is that you try to match their name and personality to their colour scheme. This could be a simple association, like a blue sim that's a gloomy child of the ocean, named Sapphire Sky or something, but it gets more interesting if you work around a theme. In a flower themed playthrough, for example, your blue sim could be named Nile Lotus, have a spiritual tendency, and be full of sunshine due to the flower's association with the Egyptian sun God, Ra.
Each generation should also have aspirations and goals that match their colour and theme. Nile Lotus could be obsessed with conservation, or be on a mission to collect and cultivate every blue flower in the game.
One of the main draws for me is trying to design your Berry Sims home in accordance with their colourway, and the strange colour schemes that arise when you have two or more Berry Sims living in the same household. I've found blue and yellow to be one of the safer options, and that's saying something. If you're having trouble trawling through to find all the right-coloured items, don't forget you can filter your search by colour in Build and Buy mode, as well as Create a Sim.
I was a little sad when I discovered that breeding a blue and yellow sim does not yield a green baby, but if you enable testing cheats (here's every cheat code you need to play God), you can re-condition the natural flow of genetics however you like.
The final bookend in your Berry Simming experience comes in documenting their antics. Tumblr is the place to be for Berry Sweet Sim blogs, but Wordpress and even Twitter are viable options for keeping tabs on your Berry Sims. The most important thing is to embellish your blog with lore and backstories, and keep an intimate log as they work toward their goals.
Make sure you tag your stories with Berry Sim-related labels, too, so other Berry Simmers can find your work! You never know, your story might end up the next big Berry Sim sensation.
