Many things turn out to be similar between The Sims 3 and The Sims Social. But it sure doesn't seem that way at first. 

 

One problem I had was that the game starts by shunting you through a non-consensual tutorial. When it tells you to click on something and do the thing, you have to click on that something and do that thing. I would have been a lot happier and less frazzled if the game had just let me kick back, watch my Sim do her thing, and get a feel for the world first.

 

You begin with one acquaintance, Bella Goth. (I know!!!) Bella is going through an Alice in Wonderland phase at the moment, which means that her house is filled with all this wacky crap. (Is there an Alice movie in the works? Why is this a thing? I got a bunch of Alice stuff from my Dr. Pepper points, too.)

 

It's good that Bella is your friend, because the only other way to fulfill your Sim's Social need is to corral your actual real-world friends into playing The Sims Social and befriending your Sim. And believe me, your real-world friends will not want to do this after you spam the living daylights out of your Facebook feed with updates on every single little thing you and your Sim have done. I can't think of a better way to get muted on Facebook, frankly. 

 

This is just one of the diabolical ways in which The Sims Social resembles other Facebook games. There's also a Farmville component. The game pushes you (via the aforementioned non-consensual tutorial) to plant some strawberries in the four empty garden plots that come standard with every default home. Strawberries are one thing: they ripen pretty quickly. You can plausibly get a yield within the same gaming session.

 

But when I planted tomatoes, I found that not only do I have to water each plot with a separate action (more on that later), but it takes real-world time for them to ripen. They had 55 minutes left when I got tired and shut down my computer for the night. When I logged in the next morning, I found that they had withered - by not harvesting them, I wasted the eight energy points I spent in planting and watering them the night before.

 

Harvesting produce is an easy way to get Simoleons. But as I mention, it costs energy points. What are "energy points"? Stay tuned for the next in-depth article!