I love building. So it’s only natural that eventually I started writing build challenges, too. Most of my build challenges are month-long shell challenges that I tour live on my Twitch channel. However, you are more than welcome to pick and choose any of my old shell challenges to play whenever you like. If you upload it, and stop by my Twitch channel on a Sims day, I will tour it for free! I try to make all my shell challenges (or as many of them as possible) into brain puzzles, or thought experiments, so they are fun to play at any time. Check my Shell Challenges page to get more information on these.

I will point out that I also list one exception here. First Exception – my Winchester Mystery House adaptation. It’s MOSTLY about the build, but involves some game play.

Just a notice saying I’ve posted a new challenge that I will be playing on stream starting tomorrow. It’s called the Winchester Mystery House Challenge, and it’s a “short” build and game play challenge based on a REAL LIFE haunted house. Anyway, the challenge is now linked from the above menus and below.

Winchester Mystery House Challenge

The challenge is inspired by both the famous Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California, and KaduMcFadu80’s Mystery Mansion Challenge on the sims forums. Basically, your job is to build a mystery mansion of your own. I include some gameplay in the challenge, however, feel free to ignore most of the gameplay by using money cheats instead, and just build each day. It is important to play the day in between each build time, though, because it gives you time to think about what to do next.

This challenge is all about stretching your creative muscles. You know the saying – “Practice makes Perfect”? – well, it reflects a truth that practicing something will make you better at it. I, personally, used to be quite bad at building, but through practice, I’ve gotten better. Now, CAS seems to be my achilles heel in Sims, and something I usually avoid… so I’ve decided to force myself to do some sim-making. There’s a lot of challenges out there for doing a number of CAS themes or build themes, but, as far as I know, there isn’t one that combines the two skills. I used ideas from as many different CAS challenges as I could find, and then changed them to suit what I thought would work. I tried to make things neither too specific or too generic, and to pick stuff that most people can relate to. I made a list of 100 of the best ideas I came up with (because that’s a nice round number) and randomized the list several times on the random.org website. The hardest part was then fleshing out each of the ideas. The list below is the result of hours of work, which was hopefully worth it. My hopes is that other simmers will find this challenge and help fill the gallery with themed sims and builds under the #100daycreativity hashtag.

This is sort of a companion challenge to my Build-A-Pack Challenge, only easier and less specific. Even a beginning builder can attempt this with plenty of success and learn a lot along the way. The premise of this challenge is to take a standard EA-built world.. take out all the sims.. and remodel the homes (and venues), one at a time. Every lot is fair game, and the possibilities are endless. The only thing I ask, and the major rule is this: no bulldozing. This is a remodel – whether it be just the furnishings and paint, or including additions like annexes, more floors, basements, pools, greenhouses, etc. My personal goal will be to keep the spirit of each house or venue somewhere in each remodel, but if you really want to change things up, you can move nearly everything around. Also, keeping the lot designation (residential stays residential, commercial stays commercial) is a good idea.. but it’s less of a rule and more of a suggestion. It may be that you find a home that would make a perfect restaurant, or vice versa. The only lots you absolutely cannot change designation for are the special lots in Windenburg (Bluffs, Ancient Ruins, and Von Haunt Estate.) and the lots in the two “vacation” worlds of Granite Falls and Selvadora. This is to keep those lots playable.

The basic premise of this challenge is to take an empty Sims 4 game file and repopulate the lots with themed houses based on each of the EA-released packs. I do have one available for download on my sims4fileshare account – http://simfileshare.net/folder/179665/. I came up with this challenge idea basically because there are so many of the packs I simply never use to build, and I wanted to give myself the opportunity and reason to use them. Obviously, each pack doesn’t have enough stuff in it to come up with whole lots.. so using other packs will be a must… but the point is to follow the theme. Since this is NOT a game play challenge, what your sim looks like and who they are don’t matter, but you’ll have to make one to start a new game file out.

This challenge is designed for the Simmer that likes building and has a good general idea of how to do it. If you’re a beginner builder, this may not be the challenge for you, you may want to try my Flipping Lots Challenge first. This page is designed to help you get started and get a basic overview of the packs you’ll be working with. Also included is a guide for building in each neighborhood, based on a very basic list of housing styles, the master list of released packs, and my own ideas for how to turn this idea into an actual challenge. Obviously, you don’t have to follow my guide exactly, it’s just a suggestion. I also provide a list of other theme ideas that you can use to build lots at the bottom of this page. I designed the challenge to build residential lots, but you’re also welcome to take the idea and run with it to build community lots.

To add a little bit more structure and “spice”, I added overall housing style requirements to each neighborhood. This is to give challenge players a general idea of what the OUTSIDE of the house should look like. I tend to get in a rut and build all the same type of house, and the pack themes are more internal, so this adds another layer of “difficulty” to the challenge. Obviously, I don’t get into all the multitude of styles houses can be built in, just a rough guide.