EA has flat out said that fans shouldn’t expect The Sims 5 anytime soon. But if you’re looking for a new release from the franchise, you’ll be happy to know a new Sims game actually did just come out July. Did you somehow miss this momentous news? I certainly did, and that’s because it’s actually just a board game. The Sims Board Game arrived at Target on July 20, 2025 and it seems to have gone largely unnoticed.
Which makes a lot of since to me. It’s been a long time since I’ve played The Sims 4, but having spent a decent amount of time in that game I can’t really conceptualize how it would effectively transition to a tabletop experience. The board game itself is a collaboration with Goliath that was announced back in February and garnered a bit of news coverage from various gaming outlets, but now that it’s available to buy nobody seems to be talking about it.
The Sims Board Game Is Now Available
The Sims Board Game
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I have no plans on ever purchasing or playing this game, but for the sake of this article I watched the official how to play video recently published on the Goliath YouTube channel. It’s about five and a half minutes long and after sitting through the whole thing, I’m still not sure how to categorize this game or even how to actually play it. The gameplay and rules seem unnecessarily confusing despite the narrator suggesting just “tossing out the rulebook” early on in the video. The main theme of the game is that each player tries to earn points by completing aspirations and various actions throughout play. The first player to eight points wins, with the bonus option of playing to 10 points instead to make the game longer.
As confusing as the gameplay seems, what turns me off to this game the most about this game is that it’s meant for 2-5 players. That immediately removes the thing about playing The Sims I enjoyed the most: That I got to do it by myself. Introducing one or more players into the experience seems like a recipe for disaster. It’s being marketed as a family board game, but I could never imagine trying to play this with my actual family.
Although it initially launched at Target, The Sims Board Game is currently available to preorder from Amazon with an August 15 release date. If you feel like giving it a try, it is actually pretty reasonably priced at $19.99.
