Gamers confess the worst things they've done in The Sims

The tyranny of the 1 x 1 room and more

Everyone knows The Sims series isn't about getting a career, a family and a luridly wallpapered house, it's about putting Sims in swimming pools and then taking the ladder away before watching them breaststroke aimlessly to their deaths.

"The Sims is a life simulation," the game would remind you disapprovingly, when the death toll in your household approached genocide levels. But death is a part of life, as, unfortunately, are slapstick injuries involving hot tubs, hired clowns and lutes.

An Ask Reddit this week asked gamers to share the most f*cked up thing they had done in the title, and they didn't disappoint. Here's some of the best responses…

1. "Painting Goblin"

"Every time I play The Sims, I start my family with a painting goblin. I make him/her morbidly obese with green skin. I make sure to give him the following traits: likes to be alone, likes art, hates the outdoors.

"The first thing I do, once I have enough money, is build a small room in the basement, send him down there, and then remove the stairs. I set him up in a tiny little area with only an easel, a toilet, a refrigerator, a bed, a shower, and a trash bin.

"All he does all day is paint. That' s it. He paints and paints and paints and paints.

"Eventually his paintings become very good and worth a lot of money. Every few minutes I go downstairs and sell whatever painting he has finished, and then I return to playing the game. My family always ends up feeling blessed because of their fortune, and they never find out about the horrible secret living beneath their home."

2. Simple but elegant

"One time I killed a Sim by drowning. Then I made everyone show up to his funeral in swimwear."

3. Dating Death

"I recently found out you can kill old Sims by overexertion in The Sims 4. My Sim is going around town f*cking all the old people to death and once Death shows up she proceeds to make friends with him. I'm counting up graves until my Sim can bang Death."

"I managed to get a 'heat of the moment' kiss in on him after a few 'accidental' deaths. I took a picture of it…"

(Picture: NinjaDude5186/EA)

4. "Not too sadistic'" you say…

"It's not too sadistic per-se, but it involved a lot of deaths.

"I wanted to make a church with a full, complete graveyard. So I build a small, simple structure, move in a family of 8, get them all inside, remove the door, fill it with fire. Yay, 8 new tombstones!

"Repeat like 9 times, and you've got a full graveyard of tombstones. Then I build the church and move in a priest to live there and tend to the grounds.

"Unfortunately for the priest the grounds had been tainted by the dark rituals of the past and several dozen ghosts would materialize every night. Tormented by the crowds of spectres, he himself died three days later due to never being able to sleep."

5. Painting Goblin 2.0

"My prison filled with slave-artists was pretty grim. Everyone got a single cell, bed, toilet, sink, artist easel. There was a warden that lived above them on the ground level (all the cells are underground of course), who cooked for them, but they could only eat if they were turning out sellable art.

"Most of them went insane and died."

6. Stepfather from Hell

"So, in my most recent Sims playthrough, I found this girl that I really wanted my Sim to marry. Problem is she already had a husband, so rather than just doing the (relatively) normal thing and just increasing the relationship and convincing her to break up with him, I instead became best friends with her husband, convinced him to move in with me, and then drowned him in a pool so I could marry his wife.

"Then I moved in with his wife (who lived in a HUGE mansion) and killed the rest of her family because I didn't feel like taking care of the other Sims that she lived with but I still wanted the house."

7. Disproportionate punishment

"My teenage son decide waking up to his alarm and getting on the school bus was unimportant, so I locked him in a 1x1 room until he peed himself and died in the puddle."

8. Human Simtipede

"Okay, so I make lots of friends with my Sims, then I invite all of them over, and lead them into a room in my backyard.

"The room has a refrigerator, sink, toilet, and bed. Then my Sim leaves and I delete the door. I have 10+ in there already and am waiting for people to come over. I want the whole city in there.

"After a while the Sims decide they're done at your house and want to leave so they keep saying "goodbye!" while waving, but since they can't leave its a monotonous chant of them saying 'goodbye goodbye goodbye GOODBYE'. It's hilarious."

9. Utterly bleak

"I briefly fell asleep while playing and when i awoke, CPS had taken the child away while the parents were gaming."

10. Requiem

"In Makin' Magic I had a brilliant dog called AJ who was loved by the whole family. He never had an off day and brought sheer joy to his owners. Decided to train my wizardry and get the spell that allowed you to turn pets into humans, so AJ could be even more a part of the family.

"He turned out to be the biggest fucking assbag as a person and was abusive to his family, so we had to take care of him. I built a monolithic tomb, and trapped him inside. The family stood out front playing music to him as he slowly starved. They bought a new dog and played with it happily outside his eternal resting place to torture his trapped soul. Eventually a dragon burnt down the house and killed them all.

"What a game."