Stay at Home Dad Challenge (With role/personality types)

Next on the list is the Stay at Home Dad Challenge.

The gist of it:

You are a stay at home dad while your ambitious wife works her way up the corporate latter. You job is to take care of the kids and make sure they grow up to be the best Sims they can be. Sounds simple, right? There's a catch: you can only control yourself. Well you can control the other characters on their days off but where's the fun in that? Plus no cheats that effect mood, motive, and skills. You are also restricted by certain things you can and cannot do such as:

• No services except fireman and police
• Must help all the kids with their homework
• Cook every meal, no leftovers 
• No watching TV until all chores are done and the kids are asleep
• Be romantic with your wife frequently

As the dad you are responsible for:

• All cooking, cleaning, and childcare
• Teach all children to walk, talk, and use the potty
• Garden and fish for ingredients
• Give all the kids birthday parties.

To start the game begin with a couple and three kids. Choose traits based on the personality types listed in the rules. Complete all the tasks and age the toddlers into kids once they learn all their toddler skills. Keep playing until your dad dies (preferably of old age).

For the complete list of rules and traits visit the original challenge page.

My Game Play:

Meet the Romano's

Nathan is family orientated, frugal, handy, neat, and a natural cook. Jenifer is ambitious, athletic, a perfectionist, a workaholic, and a computer wiz. Their kids are Odis, Dreanna, and Peter. I chose their names based off of the personality types from the list.

Here is their house. I am particularly proud of this one. I do not normally spend much time on creating looks or houses. I usually like to get right to the game.

Jenifer is a business woman so this house is a breeze to afford (if you don't count that I used Motherlode to get it, haha). At first things seem to be going well.

Nathan keeps all the kids together, taking turns to potty train them. Jenifer chooses to spend time with the kids and help care for them. Things start to go a little downhill from there.

I mismanage Nathan's time so dinner is very late and the kids are crying. Jenifer is also unimpressed with his cleaning skills (he didn't have much time between cooking and taking care of the kids). She is also tired and chooses to put the kids to bed because, who else? I love the look on her face in the middle picture. Her personality really shows.

 

"You've got to be kidding me" face

Nathan tries to save face by being romantic. He gets rejected very quickly.








The next day Jenifer chooses to hang out in front of work, reading, rather than go back to the chaos of the house. 

Nathan begins to feel the pressure. He is pretty miserable. It takes so much time to cook, clean, and take care of the kids' basic needs that there is no time for anything else.

Something has got to change. I start having Nathan takes some naps and get him on a schedule. Cooking dinner starts at 3:00 pm and is on the table by 5. I push the kids' moodlets to the brink so I can focus on cleaning up and teaching them skills. My new strategy is to focus on one kid at a time so I can get him maxed and aged up to a kid.

Things begin to improve for the Romanos. Nathan is feeling better, Jennifer is accepting the romance, and I quickly get to age up Odis.

Odis

The days begin to go about the same. The days are filled with cleaning, not sleeping enough, and having kids' birthday parties. Soooo many birthday parties.

Finally all the kids have aged up. Now it's Ethan's turn to live life. He is so used to cleaning, though, that he continues to choose that the most.

The whole family.

Now it's Ethan's turn to live life. Before I know it, though he is an old man.

And like all things past their prime....

The review:

This challenge is nice. It is restrictive but that is what makes it fun. It's also quite challenging to not control the other characters. At the same time it can be very frustrating. During the rules you have to choose personality traits for all the characters. However, you cannot really guide those characters to use their traits and most of them do not choose to do things that involve their trait. The only way is to get some sort of mod that would increase the freewill beyond game control. The game also gets quite repetitive as there are no other challenges than the initial rules.

Fun: 3.5/5. Fun but not "Can't wait to play the game" fun.
Difficulty: Medium. It is difficult to complete everything in the rules list (like gardening and fishing between taking care of the family).
Time frame: Afternoon - a couple of days depending on how many kids you want to create
Playability: 3/5. Easy to follow the rules and restrictive enough to keep it a little challenging

Overall rating: 3/5