The Valentine's Day live broadcast for The Sims 3 provided us with plenty of information on the upcoming expansion pack The Sims 3 Island Paradise, and I've picked out the most interesting stuff to share.
The Sims 3 has a bit of a reputation for rehashes of content that was released for expansion packs for the previous game in the series – The Sims 2 – too. That was certainly the case with expansions like Pets and Seasons. But Island Paradise can certainly boast one entirely new feature: houseboats. These are actual residential lots that function almost entirely like normal houses do, but with a few key differences. For one, these houses can actually move. To keep them connected to the land on any of the multiple islands in the Island Paradise world, you dock your houseboat at a port, but if you want to move you can sail your boat out into the sea.
Once you're sailing, you can direct the houseboat wherever you'd like, and make use of your new location by fishing or swimming in the sea. You can even scubadive, and go down with your Sim to see what's going on under the water. And you can do pretty much anything you would be able to do in a house that was firmly on solid ground, so you can still watch television, cook etc. If anything breaks, a repairperson will actually head to your houseboat on their own speedboat, so you don't even need to dock for repairs.
If you want to start planning your houseboat, we're told they come in different sizes, and if you pick a small hull to pack your furniture into you may need to make use of the “all-in-one” bathroom object that only takes up one square. The expansion pack is due out in June, so you've got a while yet to sketch out your ideal houseboat paradise ready to create in the game.
