The Sims 4 Adventure Awaits Expansion shines a spotlight on life away from home, sending Sims outdoors into the new world of Gibbi Point.
While feeling similar in theme to 2015’s Outdoor Retreat, the DLC adds a kayak-load of brilliant content that makes it well worth it despite a few letdowns.
The Sims 4 Adventure Awaits screenshots
What is Adventure Awaits about?
Adventure Awaits is The Sims 4’s 20th Expansion Pack, with a big focus on Child Sims. Expect Modular Playgrounds, Imaginary Friends, and a new Formative Moments system – new tasks which grant reward traits that follow them throughout the rest of their life.
If you thought Businesses & Hobbies was lacking in the hobbies department, you won’t be disappointed here. Archery, butterfly catching (and caring for caterpillars), papercraft, retro gaming consoles, alongside new fitness activities for diving, free weights, and spin biking, all culminate in a hugely fleshed-out pack.
Getaway to the Outdoot Retreat
When I first heard about Adventure Awaits, The Sims 3’s World Adventures or Island Paradise DLCs were what I had in mind: multiple new vacation worlds, Mummy lifestates, houseboats, or even hotels. What Adventure Awaits offers, though, is something that feels like a large Outdoor Retreat Pack refresh.
Gibbi Point, inspired by New Zealand, is stunning. There are all the usual spots for fishing, points of interest, and unique NPCs to interact with for quests and uncovering lore. There’s also a huge geyser, and you can take the new kayak out for a trip in open water. It’s really engaging to explore, making it one of the best worlds since Life & Death’s Ravenwood.
Three lots with the new Custom Venues type appear in Gibbi Point: Love Highland, which has a romance-based elimination challenge as its Getaway; Camp Gibbi Gibbi, which serves as a summer camp; and Revive & Thrive, which has Sims prioritizing their fitness. The latter both feature two of the game’s new Build/Buy objects, too: blenders and diving boards. What a treat.
At first, it felt quite disappointing that there are no ‘hotels’ in this pack, but the Getaways feature is so robust and impressive that there’s enough customization here to create something unique, like a staycation or bed and breakfast.
Instead of Getaways functioning like an actual resort, it’s closer to a trip away from home, complete with a schedule.
When setting one up, you can freely customize what certain Sims get up to, picking from a library of premade roles and activities for them to do together – swimming in the sea, working on their Archery or Diving skills (I’m still astounded it took over 10 years to get short diving boards and water slides), or going about their day and playing Rock, Paper, Scissors based on a schedule. This works brilliantly, and it’s easy to spend time completely hands-off and just watching what’s going on.
A Toy’s Story
Imaginary Friends and Formative Moments are clear standouts for the pack, adding plenty of depth to the Simology system. The former allows Child Sims to interact with one of four new dolls, and as they play with them more over time, they can be turned into an Imaginary Friend (and even a real Sim eventually).
This adds so much dynamism, and it’s fun seeing the Sim interacting with thin air when switching over to another household member. This goes hand-in-hand with the new Play Pretend interaction, with doodled representations of what a Sim is thinking spawning around them. This is the kind of thing that really makes The Sims: small touches and memorable interactions, while still leaving room for you to fill in the gaps for your own storytelling.
Formative Moments like Be a Survivalist and Childhood-specific Sentiments like Fictitious Friend add even more personality and history to your Sim and their relationships. Both function similarly to things we’ve already got in-game, with the former increasing skills or how fast they make friends based on different challenges you complete. Extra ways to shape a Sim’s sense of self are never a bad thing.
Last-minute letdowns
The pack isn’t perfect, though, with some small oversights really holding it back from greatness.
It’s odd that Sims simply disappear and reappear when getting in and out of their kayak, and the new butterfly and moth terrarium – which can be used to display what you’ve caught – is way too big. It would have been better to have a smaller variant of one alongside it, as this really only belongs in an outdoor lot.
CAS and Build/Buy are quite lacklustre, and the new Park Worker career not being an Active one is a huge oversight – there’s even a Park Ranger tower in the world that would have been a perfect spot for one of the tracks.
Something I’ve noted in my last two Sims reviews for Enchanted by Nature and Businesses & Hobbies is similarities to, or what feels like an addition to, already existing Packs in the game. Sadly, this is still the case for Adventure Awaits.
You could argue that’s the nature of a game as old as this, but it would be great to see more content that’s not been touched on yet in TS4 in an entirely new theme, so we’re not revisiting similar ones already explored – I’m looking at you, Life & Death.
That being said, the content that is here is just too good to be mad about.
Verdict
Adventure Awaits isn’t just a pack for outdoorsy Sims; it also fleshes out the Child lifestate with elements that follow Sims throughout their lives.
Packing in the series’ usual whimsicality in the form of unique Imaginary Friends and a ton of new skills and hobbies to partake in, Adventure Awaits has exactly the sort of depth and creativity a DLC should have. If we can get more Packs like this and Life & Death, The Sims 4 still has an incredibly bright future 10 years after its initial launch.
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