Take a look at the first videos of Project Rene in action

Well, this week has certainly been an interesting one – out of nowhere, EA has finally dropped Project Rene into playtest in select regions, albeit under a slightly clunky code name. Yes, ‘City Life Game with Friends’ is almost certainly Project Rene, and now that it’s here how does it hold up and what information can we glean from the videos available?

We do have a full preview in the works from Catherine that’ll go deeper into CLGF, since they live in one of the regions where it’s available, as such, this is just a taster. But for now, let’s take a look at the first videos of Project Rene actually in action!

In Slooow Motion

Coming from the folks over at Gaming Mobile, the below preview sums up pretty succinctly what you can expect from Project Rene/City Life Game with Friends. As I explained over in our primer, this looks to be a multiplayer-focused take on the Sims, with you controlling only a single Sim as your avatar rather than managing a family or group of friends.

The Create-a-Sim (Create-a-Friend?) system looks to be a bit more shallow than The Sims 4, offering only presets and already showing many unlockable cosmetics you’ll need Simoleons to buy. Your primary focus looks to be on managing your Sim’s needs, based on their personality type; i.e. expressing themself, in this case.

Dashing

The Cafe minigame where you can earn Simoleons (one of the mechanics mentioned in the leak) is also present, and in fairness has a little more depth than just a timer with some simple Diner Dash-style gameplay of taking customer orders and keeping them happy with prompt service.

Moving your Sim manually looks to be fine, but I admit even watching this on my computer monitor I was getting a little nauseous with the way the camera followed the player’s Sim and moved with them. It all felt a bit too “Rec” for my blood.

Wider view

Another channel called Adeptless offered us a much wider view of what’s going on. But it’s clear from this that no-one has really found anything particularly deep to do so far in CLGF beyond busking, working at the cafe and maybe messing around with the decorate together minigame (a prime target for trolling if I ever saw one).

Some thoughts

“Unfinished” is the word that springs to mind, even for a playtest. There was a lot of buzz around the virtual office water cooler about what this would show us, how snazzy it would be and all the cool new mechanics and ambitious additions to the series EA would make for this bold new step for the Sim franchise.

But instead, we’ve got a very, very narrow look at the game. No glimpses at the apartment that was hinted at in previous leaks – the one that you could decorate in more classic Sims style – and the small playable area does little to show off what we can expect from the full release when (or if) it arrives.

However, you should keep a weather eye open for Catherine’s in-depth breakdown! I’ve no doubt they’ll spot more than I have, and provide a lot more first-hand experience to boot, so stay tuned.