The Sims 4 Tiny Living DLC Secrets is a great puzzle game

The Sims 4 Tiny Living: I live in a small apartment and have a hard time buying furniture. But it’s also an interesting challenge. I’m always looking for ways to maximize my space, and I couldn’t be happier when I found something that could serve multiple purposes – a wardrobe with a fold-out desk or an armchair with pedestal storage . Now, if I sound like the most boring person in the world, listen: this can happen to you when you’re 35. I’m giving you an unsolicited glimpse into my exciting life because I find Tiny Living in The Sims 4 Goodies to be fascinating. I’ve never built a big house in a sims game. I always do small and neat apartments, so it feels like Maxis designed this DLC just for me.

Tiny Living challenges you to build a house out of 100 tiles – the size of a room in a typical Sims house. You’ll need everything your Sims need to live comfortably in this cramped, limited space, including beds, bathrooms, and cooking space. If 100 tiles isn’t challenging enough, you can try Micro Homes (up to 64 tiles) or Tiny Homes (up to 32), and that’s where the DLC comes into play. Suddenly, The Sims 4 is a great puzzle game. You have to somehow squeeze the entire contents of the house into a space no bigger than a toilet. This in itself is not that difficult, but the real challenge is to do it in an aesthetically pleasing way.

You can throw a single bed, a microwave, and a toilet in the room, enough for the game to recognize it as a work home. If you’re a London landlord, you can even charge desperate young professionals £6,000 a month to live in. But where’s the fun in that? My obsession with the Tiny Living DLC peaked when I actually started making these tiny houses look pretty. I don’t think I’ve moved a Sim into any of these – I just made them for the fun of making them. It’s incredibly relaxing to furnish these cramped spaces, using lighting, color, and well-placed furniture to make them feel comfortable and livable, rather than cluttered or claustrophobic.

Maxis bundled some neat new space-saving furniture with Tiny Living, including a Murphy bed that folds up into a wall, and a combination bookshelf/stereo/TV. They’re a welcome addition for the space starved, but I would have liked to see more of them. Even so, there’s enough furniture elsewhere in the game to get creative and maximise the potential of these glorified shoeboxes. The DLC’s combination of chill interior decoration and spatial puzzle-solving is incredibly fun and rewarding, and honestly, I’d play a whole game that was just this. I don’t really care about playing The Sims 4 ‘normally’—I just want to build lots of small, tidy, compact houses, then sit back, look at them, and go “Aaaah.”

For most players, a Sims game is a chance to build a dream house. Freed from pesky real-world limitations like time, money, and space, they’re able to construct any kind of colossal, lavish, multi-room mansion they desire. Personally, I don’t see the appeal. Maybe it’s just because I’ve lived in small apartments my whole life, including when I was growing up, but I much prefer working within limitations. The genius of Tiny Living is that it makes a game out of this compulsion, encouraging you to be as economical as possible—and rewarding you for it. It’s the most I’ve ever enjoyed The Sims 4, and the sole reason I still have the game installed on my PC. I might even let one of my Sims move into one someday.