Development Update - October 2026
Hi everyone! We’re testing out this new format to deliver frequent development updates from our team directly to you. In this first entry, we want to share a short overview of the work we’ve done since the Early Access release before diving into our plans for Paralives’ first Major Update.
The start of Paralives’ Early Access has been a bit of a whirlwind for our team, but in the best way possible given the progress that we’re making. We’re incredibly grateful to have received your support from day one. We feel so lucky to get to work on Paralives every day and are excited to be on this journey with you all!
Here's a short overview of what we've been up to since the release:
Focused on bug fixes and quality of life improvements: Our top goal this summer was to tackle game breaking bugs and issues encountered by players. Additionally, we’ve also added smaller QoL updates and tweaked existing features to improve the players’ experience along the way! So far, we've released 8 patches and 8 hotfixes, addressing these most pressing needs.
Prioritized optimization and long term development: We've made improvements to our current systems and processes, and upgraded our engine to Unity 6. These different changes behind the scenes will help our dev team take care of the game in the long run.
Grew the team: We've hired a new Senior Programmer, Senior Game Designer, as well as new QA help. We’re stoked to welcome these talented developers to the project!
Plans for the First Major Update
Your support and feedback has been incredibly valuable to our team as we work hard on improving Paralives. Since the release, we’ve combed through hundreds of thousands of feedback reports, emails, messages, and comments. These have helped us find out about recurring issues, as well as players’ most requested features and additions to the game.
After thoroughly studying what players have said they’d like to see in the game, we’ve finalized a focused list of what’s to come in our major update! Our goal for this update is to focus on gameplay fundamentals, improve existing features and make playing Paralives more fun and interesting.
Here are our priorities for this first Major Update:
1. Buffing Up the Basics:
To strengthen the core experience, we want to first improve the gameplay of existing Live Mode systems, such as:
Improvements to relationships
Improving the level of a relationship label such as friend, lover or enemy will unlock more things.
Townies will sometimes prompt you through Together Cards and you will be able to select a reaction, making conversations more dynamic.
We are adding more ways to stir up conversations and relationships in the desired direction through new Together Cards to make it easier to flirt, be mean, joke, get to know Parafolks, etc.
Improvements to interactions
We will add more interactions that can change the emotions of your Para or that can be triggered by a specific emotion.
We will make it so Parafolks will have talking animations when doing various group interactions such as eating, watching TV, talking while sitting, and more.
We will define more interactions that Parafolks can decide to do autonomously, according to their personality.
Jester vibe trait rework
We’re tweaking a few aspects of this personality trait so that the effects it has are more obvious and fit someone who is humorous rather than someone who is a bit erratic and has random thoughts and emotions.
Goals and requests
We’ll improve the Community Center’s bundles and make the rewards more interesting.
We will enhance the rewards for completing townie requests.
We will add more life goals and better rewards for them.
Better economy curve
Right now, money is a bit too easy to come by. We plan to tweak the starting money balance, the starting lots, the price of items and the salary progression so that it feels rewarding to earn money and be able to purchase new things. Also, we will be making it so that furniture and objects of a higher price tag are more efficient when Paras use them, giving something to look forward to when earning money and upgrading homes.
2. Expanding the Live Mode:
Aside from improving our core gameplay system, we will also be adding more content to the Live Mode in general since players are looking for more things they can do in the game to better develop the story of their Parafolks.
New skills: We’re working on two new skills and interactions related to them.
New Together Cards: There will be more ways to unfold your Para’s stories through conversations.
New relationship label unlockables: Improving relationships will unlock new Together Cards and effects when you spend time together.
New Story Cards: Storytellers will have new options for you each night as well as more parameters to customize your gameplay experience.
New jobs: We will be adding a few more jobs in a new field of work that we’re eager to reveal!
3. Improving the Build Mode:
For the builders, we’re making sure to hammer down the biggest bugs that can break houses in specific cases. We’re also adding new furniture and objects to get creative with!
Build breaking bugs: We’re working on fixes to issues such as floor and objects disappearing and corrupted lots that won’t load anymore.
New furniture and items: More assets will be added to the catalog.
Furniture and items efficiency: Furniture of lower value will be less efficient while higher value objects will have better effects on Parafolks. Better quality objects will break less often and replenish needs faster, for instance.
4. Improving the Paramaker:
Paramaker enjoyers won’t be forgotten as new content is planned for our character editor!
Fat and muscle sliders: We aim to increase the range to represent a wider variety of body shapes.
New hairstyles and clothing items: Some highly requested assets will be added, one example is more baggy clothes, which we have started to work on as illustrated above.
This current list is not final, it’s possible that some things may be pushed back while others may be added in.
This first major update focuses on improving the basics of the gameplay experience before our team takes on exciting new features in future major updates, such as weather, seasons, gardening, pets, cars, world editing and creation tools, etc. We want to make the game even better, and we know that there’s a lot of work ahead during this Early Access period to get there. We originally announced that this first major update would be released for the end of 2026 but we need a little more time to do all this well. As we tackle our to-do list, we’ll continue to share more about our progress until the update is ready. We genuinely want to deliver an update that will be fun for players and made with care!
Thanks again for joining us on this journey, we are so excited for the future of Paralives!
All the best,
The Paralives team,
Alex, Léa, Anna, Alice, Jérémie, Sonia, Andrei, Chloé, Gab, Richard, Alejandro, Charlotte, Lina, Carina, Denis, Caroline, and Nyx.
