Electronic Arts tirelessly expands the possibilities of The Sims series, bringing the game ever closer to a true life simulator with every title and expansion. The latest addition to The Sims 4 is Nifty Knitting Stuff pack, the second community-voted pack added to the game following Laundry Day Stuff. The previous pack allowed sims to clean their clothes, gather laundry, wash and dry it off for that spotless look, also adding a number of country style outfits.
Representing the Arts & Crafts theme, Nifty Knitting adds a new activity for your sims to participate in and a new aspiration for your characters: Lady or Lord of the Knits. If you want your sim to be a relentless knitting machine to unlock all of the new content in the pack, there is no better aspiration to choose. Increasing the level of aspiration would require you to create a great number of knittables, gift them to other sims, sell your creations on Plopsy and more.
Inspiration gets the yarn in your sims’ veins flowing! So let’s start some music, grab super stash yarn basket, plop in the rocking chair and get those needles going!
To get access to a lot of the new clothes, rugs, plant holders and other decorations represented in the pack, one of the sims in your active household will first need to level the knitting skill high enough to be able to craft those items and add them to the wardrobe/place around the house.
The only other option is to browse and purchase items from Plopsy – newly added digital store for knittables. The offers on the store are limited but frequently refreshed so with a bit of persistence you will be able to unlock everything for a steep price.
Similarly, your own sims can earn some quick Simoleons while also creating decorations and new items and clothes for your household. Unlike other creations, you can’t sell knittables immediately. Instead, you will need to list the item on Plopsy and wait until someone expresses a wish to purchase it. After an offer has been made, you will need to manually mail it to receive your cash. It sounds like more work than it really is!
If you feel like it, you can dress your Sim head to toe in the knitted stuff to represent your dedication to this art – from cute beanies to colorful socks, your sim can show off their level of mastery by simply entering the room. More than that, you can dress your entire family that way! From onesies for the little ones, to sweaters and dresses for your adults! Fill the house with knitted decorations: rugs, plant hangers, poufs, knitted toys and more, not to mention newly added furniture.
Sadly, as far as content goes that’s about it. While knitting in rocking chair is fun and relaxing and gives your elderly, artsy or elderly AND artsy sims something to do, it doesn’t have anything on the creative hobbies that have been with the game from the beginning, such as painting that also has an entire job associated with it. The Nifty Knitting Stuff Pack should have either been free or introduced a variety of crafts at the same time: tailoring, crocheting, embroidering, what have you.
To me, the expansion is not worth its price which is $9.99. For example, one of the other The Sims 4 Stuff Packs matching Nifty Knitting’s price is Tiny Living but the amount of content it provided can not be compared to the niche of Nifty Knitting: allowing players to downsize housing space, adding murphy bed, two-seat loveseat, all-in-one stereo and more. Additionally, simply by the virtue of what Tiny Living had added, it had a much bigger interaction with other Sims packs and content expansions than the latest fan-voted pack.
If knitting is something you personally like or have been waiting for a long time to see in The Sims series, you will love the pack. If you are more of a general Sims player and want to expand what the game allows you to do, you might be left disappointed by how niche the latest addition is.
The Sims 4: Nifty Knitting Stuff Pack is out on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. The publisher provided an Origins key for the purposes of this review.
