The Sims 3: Lunar Lakes is a new town that has just been released along with Hidden Springs. They are both very different in nature though!

The landscape of the town in Lunar Lakes is nothing like I have ever seen in a Sims game before. Everything is very spread out and the town is very large. Since a moon is usually not a smooth landscape, some of the houses are even inside giant craters! I find those to be a bit more difficult to start with though, because all of your services like the grocery, bookstore, and parks are in the town, so your Sims will have to travel further to get to them. The actual houses that are pre-made for you to choose from fit the alien theme perfectly. They look very futuristic, but they are all very different as if people from all over the world took their own ideas of the future and put them all next to each other. The resulting town is a masterpiece of architecture. I spent quite a while just going through the existing households to see what was there to choose from. There is even a household of clones! The Lunar Lakes package adds quite a few buildings, objects, and clothing to the items available in your game. Rest assured though, this moon apparently has an atmosphere, so there is no need for space suits.

The basic gameplay hasn't changed. You are still in control of a household consisting of one or more Sims. They will need to get jobs, pay bills, feed themselves, have entertainment, and pretty much anything that normal people need in real life. They are somewhat intelligent on what they need to do for themselves, but to keep them as happy as possible, you are going to need to step in. The Sims will not purposefully fulfill their own goals. Sometimes they will by accident, but usually that is all up to you. Their wants and desires are going to be based on the personalities that they have. Additional opportunities will come up that you can accept if you want. Some of these increase your work performance and some simply get money. Once again though, you will have to make sure your Sims do them in the time they have. This means that the more Sims you are trying to control at once, the harder your game will be.

The big new item in The Sims 3: Lunar Lakes is the Tree of Prosperity, which you can find in Buy Mode for 1000 Simoleans. It is really quite unique and looks more alien than just about anything. It continually changes color throughout the day and based on what color it is when your Sim picks and eats the fruit (fruit is eaten automatically when picked), it will increase your skills. This can be quite helpful! The fruit is ready to be picked when the tree is glowing a color, so make sure to harvest it as often as you can!

After you click New Game, select Lunar Lakes from the drop down box under Select a Town. You are given the option to create your own Sims (Create Sims), choose one of the households already on the map (Choose Household), or pick a pre-made family from the library to start with (Move In Household). If you want to use one of your saved households from a previous game, they will show up under Move In Household. The one real difference in Lunar Lakes and Hidden Springs is that every household already set up on the map has $10,000 available funds, no matter the family or house size. This means that if you choose a bigger family with a larger house, they will be really low on funds when the bills come due if you skip work! You will be able to tell how difficult the family is based on the number of bars (1 - 6) on the household, but really, the difficulty is just based on how many people are in that household, which means that when you start having children, your game will get harder and harder (just like in real life).

The Sims 3: Lunar Lakes plays exactly like any of the other Sims games, so there's no reason to go over the "how to." The one thing that I realized I had forgotten how to do is move an item into my inventory. Just in case you forgot too, go into Buy Mode, click on your Inventory, then drag the item there to put it in your Inventory. So now on to other matters.

As with most Sims games, there is actually a storyline that goes along with the game, other than playing out whatever fantasy life you want. In Lunar Lakes, the major part of the storyline focuses on The Crystal Mine. It is a truly unique feature not found in any other Sims game. This mine is where the Tree of Prosperity that I mentioned earlier was found, so you already know that magical things are in the mine. Since I am still making my way through this area, I will leave it to you to discover more about it as you play.

Of all the Sims games that I have played, Lunar Lakes is probably the most interesting Add-On pack yet. For such a low price and a quick download, I highly recommend you get it today. You can't miss out on this fascinating world!