There are quite a few features from The Sims 3 that players have spent years begging EA to add to The Sims 4 (see: color wheels and texture selectors for Sims' hair, clothes, and furniture). Now, 11 years after the game's initial launch, players are finally getting one of their wishes granted via the addition of the Imaginary Friend. The bad news? This thing is absolutely terrifying.
The Imaginary Friend is being reintroduced to the franchise in The Sims 4's upcoming Adventure Awaits expansion pack, which also adds features like summer camp for kids, the ability to build and customize playgrounds, more functional gym equipment in the Buy Mode catalog, and a brand-new type of vacation type called a "Getaway." The only downside here is that The Sims 4 version of the Imaginary Friend is straight-up nightmare fuel.
Imaginary Friends were first introduced in The Sims 3, and while these toy-robot-meets-stuffed-animal beings weren't exactly cute per se, they weren't nearly as creepy as the wide-eyed, freaky-looking version coming to The Sims 4 when Adventure Awaits launches next month. In The Sims 3, Imaginary Friends were delivered to the home of Sims who had recently given birth to or adopted a child. The Imaginary friend was listed as a gift from Grandma, regardless of whether the Sim-kid receiving it even had a living grandparent in the game. As child-Sims played with their Imaginary Friend, they'd start to form a relationship with it, and players would often find the Imaginary Friend lurking in strange parts of the Sims' home — like gnomes, Imaginary Friends could move on their own, though the player never actually saw it move. One minute it was calmly hanging out in your Sim-kid's crib, and the next, you'd find it inexplicably sitting in the corner of another room.
With a strong enough bond, the Imaginary Friend would eventually transform into a bigger, child-sized version of itself, and could interact with young Sims, but would also revert to its inanimate form when prompted. Once a Sim who formed a strong bond with its Imaginary Friend grew up into a child, the Imaginary Friend could be turned into a real Sim via the Imaginary Friend Metamorphum Potion. Prior to becoming real, Imaginary Friends could only be seen by the children they belonged to, but once they were made real, they became controllable members of the household, and took on the appearance of a human child (though they often had unnatural hair or eye colors, and odd clothing). From there, they'd grow up and — since they weren't related by blood to the rest of the family — could even marry the Sim that owned them as a child once both the child and the Imaginary Friend had aged up into adults.
Based on the trailer for Adventure Awaits, The Sims 4's Imaginary Friends work in a similar manner. Child-Sims who have a high relationship status with their Imaginary Friend doll can use the "turn into Imaginary Friend" interaction when it becomes available, which will turn the creepy looking doll into a bigger, even creepier-looking animated companion that only they can see. While The Sims 3's Imaginary Friends definitely looked a bit off, The Sims 4's Imaginary Friends take on an even stranger appearance, resembling the type of animatronic mascots that are normally reserved for horror games like Five Nights at Freddy's.
Hopefully, this freaky sentient mascot form is only temporary, and players will be able to transform these Imaginary Friends into (mostly) normal-looking human Sims via a potion or some other method. The Sims 4 Adventure Awaits gameplay trailer is set to go live on Wednesday, Sept. 10, and may reveal more info about how Imaginary Friends work, but if it doesn't, curious players will just have to wait until The Sims 4 Adventure Awaits launches on Mac, Playstation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X on Oct. 2.