Like just breakdown what the Sims into its fundamental components. The characters, the fashion, the homes, the skills, the jobs, social interactions, possessions. It’s a lot of work.

That’s the thing that gets me is the core life sim gameplay loop is actually pretty simple, mostly because it was originally an architecture simulator with people you could play house with and then Maxis realized playing with the people was a ton of fun so they built onto that gameplay.

Basically you just need several values which count down over game ticks for the needs, modifiers on how much it each goes up and down and then add a bunch to the value when the sim does something to satisfy the needs

Social interactions are purely plus/minus a few points with a bit of RNG and modifiers for the traits, mood, hygiene level, etc.

Careers are basically just bad quests from an RPG. Your sims happiness (is the average need level greater than or less than X) chooses whether their career performance value is increasing or decreasing per game tick while at work, skills and work style (working normally, working hard, etc.) will modify the value that’s added or subtracted per tick, add in a skill check when that value reaches promotion and you have rabbit hole careers

Tons of games have structure building mechanics which I won’t pretend to understand from a game engine level but I’d say that’s a pretty well solved issue

Really the hard part is the graphics but if games like Minecraft, Terraria and Stardew Valley can be such hits with 8-bit inspired graphics, I think a strong core gameplay loop can outshine average Steam shovelware-grade graphics

So basically, if you want to create a Minecraft mod to play the sims, there’s the recipe. Honestly if I was any good at programming I’d take a crack at it but I don’t have the patience nor skill to do that at this stage