Best Challenges For When You’re Bored of The Sims 2

As a life simulator, The Sims 2 can get monotonous after a few generations or murders. Thankfully, the creative community for The Sims 2 has, over the decades since the game first came out, created challenges that you can try out if you ever need to spice up your file. Here’s a list of some of the best challenges you can try in The Sims 2.

The Legacy Challenge

The Legacy Challenge (original creator: Pinstar) is a very popular challenge with multiple variations to the base rules. At its core, the goal is to start with a single Sim (the founder) who founds a family line that, ideally, lasts 10 generations. Variants of the Legacy Challenge include the Alphabetacy (26 generations, which each new generation named after a letter of the alphabet) and the Rainbowcy (each generation has a color scheme).

Sharing legacy challenges is popular, as well. In the past, people uploaded their families and stories onto sites like LiveJournal. Most simmers post on Tumblr these days, though. Aside from receiving comments about your story or Sims, you can hold heir polls to have your readers decide on who inherits the family.

The Apocalypse Challenge

The Apocalypse Challenge (original creator: Pinstar) is also a very popular challenge. It’s similar to the Legacy Challenge in that your goal is to found a family that lasts for 10 generations. However, the Apocalypse Challenge places restrictions on the town, and you can only lift them after meeting career or skill requirements. For example, the Hopelessness restriction forbids you from moving in or marrying Sims. Only after your founder top a career can you marry and move in a spouse.

The Zombie Apocalypse Challenge is a variant of the Apocalypse Challenge. Aside from slightly different rules, the lore for this one centers around a zombie outbreak causing the apocalypse. So, to really get in the spirit of things, most people recommend using mods like the Zombie Apocalypse mod or the Fight Club mod to turn your neighborhood into the set of Zombieland or The Walking Dead.

Build a City Challenge

The Build a City Challenge (original creator: clintcasey85), or BACC, is similar to the Apocalypse Challenge in that you start with restrictions that you have to lift by reaching certain skill or career milestones. However, the goal is to create a thriving city, rather than surviving the end times. Depending on the rules you use, how you unlock buildings and add to your population level differ. But the point of the BACC remains the same. Some people fuse the BACC with other challenges, such as the Legacy Challenge. 

The Asylum Challenge

The Asylum Challenge (original creator: Scout) has your Sim in a mental health facility. In order to escape, you have to reach your lifetime want while keeping the seven other patients alive. The catch is that you can’t control any of them. The challenge imposes limitations on what you can buy to furnish your asylum or entertain the other patients. While you can influence them to do things, you can’t ask them on a date, invite them out, or make them get a job. If anyone dies on the lot, you need to keep their tombstone there and turn your asylum into a haunted one.

The difficulty of the Asylum Challenge lies more so with how stupid Sims in The Sims 2 are. The base AI for Sims isn’t that great, and mods can sometimes exacerbate the issue depending on what you want them to do, or what mods you have working together in your game. You also have to randomize their Aspirations and personalities. So, if you’re unlucky enough to get, say, a Fortune Sim who wants to own 3 top-level businesses as your controllable Sim, that can also add to the difficulty level of the challenge.

The Rags to Riches/Poverty Challenge

The Rags to Riches, or Poverty, Challenge (original creator: Ellatrue) focuses on guiding your Sim family through financially difficult times. Aside from starting the challenge with only $100, you can only go to certain community lots. If you play for points, you lose points every time you get a promotion at your job. Conversely, if you don’t want to play with a points system, some players opt to use cheats to take away money from their Sim every day. The challenge ends when the youngest grandchild of your founder dies of old age. 

The Black Widow Challenge

The Black Widow Challenge (original creator: discordkitty) is exactly as it says on the tin. Your goal is to create a female Sim, marry a guy, cheat on him, kill him after he catches you cheating, and then start the process all over again. The goal of the challenge is to have at least ten graves on your lot—all victims of your jezebel ways. That’s the Sims 3 version, though. In the original, the challenge ended after the ghost of a jilted spouse or lover scares your Black Widow to death.

Some variants of the Black Widow Challenge exist. For example, some versions of the challenge forbid the Black Widow from holding a job, meaning they have to get money from marrying in spouses and taking their insurance payout after they die. Other versions require you to meet specific conditions before you can kill your current husband and marry a new one. For example, your husband might need to reach level 5 of their current career or have a certain amount of friends.

I’m Surrounded By Idiots

The I’m Surrounded By Idiots, or ISBI, challenge (original creator: DylanTK, GloamingMerle) is like a combination between the Legacy Challenge and the Asylum Challenge. Your goal is to complete multiple generations with your founder and only controlling one Sim (torch bearer) per generation. Unlike in the Asylum Challenge, you can control a non-torch bearer Sim. However, you can only issue them one command per life stage, which adds a layer of strategy and luck.

When you play the ISBI, you should keep track of how many disasters occur when you can’t micromanage your household. These include fires, aspiration failures, CPS visits, and the like. Some people record this for fun, while others play for points.

100 Baby Challenge

The 100 Baby Challenge (original creator: Amiisays) is all about babies! The goal is to have 100 babies in as few generations as possible. You need to raise all the kids, too, and you have to have a different baby daddy every time. Some rules prohibit the use of the Elixir of Life, which means your Sim needs to have as many babies as possible using the game’s default lifespan. This challenge also forbids the mom from holding a job, which makes sense considering they would be on maternity leave every day of the year.

Breed Out the Weird

Breed Out the Weird is similar to the Uglacy, which is a variant of the Legacy Challenge. In this challenge, you create the ugliest-looking Sim you can as your founder. Your goal is to breed your Sims until you have a pretty one, or at least one that doesn’t look like an affront against nature, in as few generations as possible.

A variant of this is the Prettacy. The Prettacy is the opposite of an Uglacy, meaning you start with a really pretty Sim and then breed them until you get a really ugly one. Most people opt to play the Uglacy, though.

Every Room Is a (Blank)

While all the other challenges focus on playing in Live Mode, this one is a build challenge for those who prefer that in The Sims 2. Every Room is a Different (Blank) is a challenge where you create a shell of a house. You can use a random number generator to decide on the number of rooms if you want. Then, when you’re furnishing, each room needs to be a different theme. 

Examples of themes are expansion packs. For instance, one room has to look like a dorm room (for University) and another one can only use items from a particular stuff pack. For extra matchy-matchy goodness, you can even make Sims that match the aesthetic or theme of particular rooms, and have a photo shoot.

The Sims 2 is available on Windows PC.