8 Baby Uberhood Challenge

The Uberhood Challenge, originally known as the "Moonbeam Trail" was invented by aledstrange, who originally undertook the challenge with Blossom Moonbeam in 2012. After people showed interest in trying the challenge themselves, they later posted up a set of rules for the "Uberhood Challenge".

"The main idea of this challenge is to make one premade sim live in the different Maxis hoods, and have at least one child with another premade from each one of those hoods. Also, as the family grows, all the children must move with your sim to the different neighborhoods. How you play this exactly is up to you."

While challenges like the 100 Baby Challenge, which are mainly about "breeding" sims have never appealed to me much, I had always wanted to try this challenge! For one thing, it's significantly shorter and more achivable than 100 babies, and I think moving to different neighbourhoods with each pregnancy keeps the challenge from being too repetitive and monotonous. It's episodic, in a way.

I was really interested in the storytelling aspect of the challenge, too. The idea of moving from place to place, never quite able to settle down for one reason or other, carrying symbolic reminders (in the form of children) of their journey along with them was really appealing to me. The underlying psychology of a character who would get into situations like this makes for a really interesting story, I think. I've also always liked stories with multiple romances in them, the idea that we don't have one true "soulmate" but multiple people who can touch our lives in different ways, and sometimes who the character ends up with is just a matter of circumstance or timing...

Another take on the challenge I really enjoyed was The Conquering Nose, by Peni Griffin. Her story (featuring Rhett Hart, from Widespot) really moved me. It also did some really interesting world-building (with a ultra-Conservative government which banned birth-control!) which made the challenge more believable and interesting, I am not doing anything like that in my story but thought it was really cool, I had to give it a shout-out!

Lilith (and her sister, Angela) is one of my favourite sims. A long time ago, I also really wanted to write a story where she runs away from home and ends up in Strangetown. But I could never really figure out an actual plot for this scenario, and I've always enjoyed letting the gameplay itself guide my Sims 2 stories. So, I thought it would be fun to take that idea and use her in this challenge! I think that if you imagine Lilith's childhood being one of neglect and mistreatment, it's plausible that she would develop an avoidant personality and trouble forming stable relationships in adulthood, which seemed well-suited for a challenge like this. I'd also never seen the challenge attempted with a teenager before, and thought starting out with one would add some extra challenge and drama.

Series Playlist

I am documenting the story on my YouTube channel! It is a Let's Play series, with some machinima-style "cutscenes" used to enhance the storytelling when needed. This format was really inspred by Ani Bats and Antisocial Bunny), I love the way they used machinima to flesh out the story in their series! I always wanted to try making a machiinima series but it seemed so daunting, this hybrid-approach is a really fun approach for me that lets me keep the gameplay, too.

Please check out the links below if you'd like to learn more about how I am playing the challenge.