Sim2: Strangetown Apartment Block

This unassuming concrete, flat-roofed structure might not look too remarkable, but it was quite an innovation when an enterprising builder erected it in Strangetown along the long, dusty main street.  Four families can live here, paying rent each week instead of having to buy a house outright with cash. Each unit has a patio, there is a social area on the east side with a grill, and a communal bar and hot tub tucked away in the back corner where Sims enjoy congregating.  There is a faded name above the door, but everyone just calls it "the Apartments", even though there is another apartment building in town now.














Amelia Newson grew up in this tiny one-bedroom apartment, the youngest of six children born to Gabriella, one of the founders of Strangetown.  It was a happy but cramped childhood, and when Terran moved in with Amelia, she made it clear she would agree to have only one child.  Their son Americo is just about to start school, and Amelia has done well in her Politics career. She is currently a Senator and is campaigning to be Mayor.  Terran stayed home with Americo while he was little, but now owns the Bluewater Baths and Salon in Bluewater Village, and employs four neighbourhood Sims as stylists.

Apartments are a pretty cool feature.  The challenge I'm playing means that sometimes Sims only start out with 7000 Simoleons, which is not enough to buy even the smallest house.  They get a lot more room and only spend some of their cash, and hopefully they can make enough money during the week to keep paying their rent (which is paid every Monday at 9am).  Neighbours are always coming and going, which makes it easy to keep a Sim's social needs met.  If neighbours are good enough friends, they'll just come over whenever they feel like it.  As you can see in the photo, most of the time the other apartments are grayed out.  But if you knock on the door and are invited in, the apartment brightens up and goes "live", and your Sim can interact with the Sims and objects there.  I've used this feature occasionally to have my Sims sleep or eat in another apartment, and of course it's great for Sims to make even better friends by hanging out together watching TV or playing chess.  Whenever this becomes inconvenient, though, there are interactions you can play on the doors that lock them for just the household.

Amelia's Lifetime Want is to get to the top of the Politics career, and since she only rolled to have one child, she might actually make it and be my first Mayor.  There can only be one Mayor at a time, so I'll have to figure out some way of keeping anyone else from being promoted.  Terran had some stupid want like 50 first dates, so I rolled a random non-career way of him making money.  He used to have a stylist chair and do makeovers out of his house, but Amelia has tons of cash she inherited from her parents, so I had them buy the Salon.

The other three families in the building happen to be playable families that I created and are in my neighbourhood, but it doesn't have to be that way.  The game automatically populates the apartments that aren't currently rented with Sims.

This apartment building and the Salon that Terran owns are both pre-made buildings that come with the game.  There is a fairly easy process to turn any building into an apartment complex, so I'm looking forward to trying that out with some of Plasticbox's multi-family houses.

The Salon is the first time I've really tried to hire neighbourhood Sims to work there.  The challenge I'm working on is heavily focused on businesses, so it's good for me to get them up to rank 5 quickly.