The Sims FreePlay Achievement Guide for Windows Phone 8, Part 1

Last week Windows Phone Central brought you a guide to the In-App Purchases of The Sims FreePlay for Windows Phone 8. Today we’re back with part one of our exclusive and thorough Achievement Guide! It will take many, many hours to get The Sims FreePlay’s 200 GamerScore, but we’ll help you do it.
Before we get to the strategies, note that Sims FreePlay does have some Achievement glitchiness. The game MUST be connected to Xbox Live in order for an Achievement to unlock. Sometimes it drops the connection during gameplay – without warning the player. If that happens, any Achievements you unlock won’t count.
To avoid unlocking Achievements while offline, always save and exit the game by pressing the Save and Exit button at the bottom right corner of the main menu. You can also do this right before you expect to earn an Achievement. That way, whenever you restart the game you’re sure to be connected.
Buildings required for Achievements
Here’s a handy town map I made and the list of buildings you’ll need to buy. Use it as an early roadmap towards the Achievements; you should buy every one of these buildings before the others unless required to do otherwise by a goal.
- Science Lab
- Hobby Store or Park (not required but recommended)
- School
- Children’s Store (not required but recommended)
- Community Center
- Pro Skater’s Dream Pad
- Car Dealership (or Mansion)
Miscellaneous Achievements
Lucky Dog!
Have a dog dig up 1 lifestyle point.
The first Achievement you’ll earn is a total gimme. A stray dog will move into your first home early in the game. It digs up items every minute or so; tap the dig icon that appears above the dog before it disappears. The first thing it should dig up will be a free Life Point. Dogs and cats can find Life Points later on too, but it doesn’t happen very often.
Ka-Boom!
Get 5 Sims promoted to Mad Scientist at the Lab.
The first building you buy should be the Science Lab. Then have your first five Sims start to work there by tapping the Job (briefcase) icon from the sidebar on the left side of the screen. The Scientist job has five levels to progress through:
- Test Subject – Pays 250 Simoleons and 400 XP per day of work
- Lab Assistant – Pays 350 Simoleons and 500 XP per day of work
- Science Teacher – Pays 450 Simoleons and 650 XP per day of work
- Inventor – Pays 600 Simoleons and 900 XP per day of work
- Mad Scientist – Pays 1,000 Simoleons and 1,150 XP per day of work
Your Sims earn experience in a career by attending work or using work-related hobby items. Using a hobby item doesn’t pay money, but it will help advance in a job far quicker than actually attending the job.
The scientist’s hobby items are the Chessboard and Telescope. You can buy a Chessboard from the Living Room section of the Home Store for 300 Simoleons or the Telescope from the Hobby Store for 3,490 Simoleons. Two Sims can share a Chessboard.
To make this Achievement go faster, buy 2-3 Chessboards and tell your scientists to use them repeatedly until they reach Mad Scientist rank. The Park includes several free Chessboards to use in its northwest corner, if you want to be really conservative.
Life of Excess-
Buy the Pro Skater’s Dream Pad.
The Pro Skater’s Dream Pad house costs Life Points to build. The costs of all buildings goes up as you progress through the game, so I suggest buying this one as early as possible in order to conserve Life Points in the future.
You can build the Dream Pad on a regular or premium lot. The cost for premium is a little higher, but it gives you a much larger yard to work with. Because you’ll generally use this as one of your main houses, you might find the extra space useful for assigning multiple Sims to gardening or outdoor hobbies.
The Achievement SHOULD unlock after moving a Sim into the home (as it did for me). This one has been particularly troublesome for some users though. If it doesn’t unlock the first time, all you can do is buy another house and try again.
Deep Pockets
Save 50,000 simoleons.
Just earn 50,000 Simoleons over time or purchase a large Simoleon package in the store. We outline the various ways of making money in our In-App Purchase Guide.
When you have the time to pay close attention to your Sims, having multiple Sims hunt ghosts is a great way to make money. As long as one Sim has reached the maximum level of ghost hunting, everyone can find high level ghosts. You’ll need one haunted item per ghost hunting Sim for this method. When you don’ have much time for your Sims, gardening is the best money maker.
Activity Achievements
100 Miles
Drive a total of 100 miles.
There are two ways to get a car: build the Car Dealership or buy a house that comes with one (the Mansion). Because the Mansion is so expensive, the dealership is the faster option. But this isn’t a super time intensive Achievement, so saving up for the Mansion might be the more fruitful choice in the long run. If you buy the dealership, the least expensive Prius will cost 8,900 Simoleons.
After acquiring a car and assigning it to a Sim, it will appear in front of that Sim’s home. Have any Sim select the car to take it for a drive, which lasts for three minutes. You can follow the car around on the map and tap the music notes its produces for money, but it’s not necessary or especially profitable.
You can’t actually track distance driven. Just send the Sim driving repeatedly and the Achievement should unlock after 30-45 minutes.
Popcorn, Anyone?
Watch 8 movies.
You can choose to watch a movie by choosing the appropriate option after selecting a television. The Marathon option does not count towards this Achievement.
Multiple Sims viewing the same movie will only count as one movie watched. But you can make it go faster by purchasing multiple TVs and assigning a Sim to each one. The Achievement should pop after the eighth movie finishes.
The Diet Ends Here
Bake 5 chocolate puddings.
After a while you’ll receive a goal to buy a stove. Once you own one, you should be able to bake a chocolate pudding. It takes two hours to bake one. To speed this up, you could buy multiple ovens in order to bake more than one pudding at a time.
Sim Negotiator
“Negotiate” with 3 Man-Eating Plants.
When you plant genetically modified seeds, there’s a significant chance that a Man-Eating Plant will grow in place of one of the target fruits or vegetables. The tomato is the first genetically modified plant you can get. It takes six hours to grow.
Once your modified plant is ready to harvest, a Man-Eating Plant might grow. If it does, your only choice is to negotiate with it. You can speed up the process by having multiple Sims plant modified seeds; the Gardening Patch is actually quite cheap.
To be continued
That’s all for part one of our guide, boys and girls. Check out Part Two and our full review. And don’t miss our Sims FreePlay In-App Purchase guide!
- The Sims FreePlay – Windows Phone 8 (1 GB of RAM) – 427 MB – Free – Store Link
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Paul Acevedo is the Games Editor at Windows Central. A lifelong gamer, he has written about videogames for over 15 years and reviewed over 350 games for our site. Follow him on Twitter @PaulRAcevedo. Don’t hate. Appreciate!
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People who hate windows phone are hipsters !!
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You should know you're one of them :p Troloool :)
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Is this worth grabbing just to get all the achievements or will it take too long to get all of them ? Never crazy about the SIMMS but, for a quick 200g I might give it a shot if it will only take a few hours to get them all ?
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We'll get to this in the second half of the guide, but there's one Achievement that will take a few months to complete.
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ok, cool...
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Is it the 1000 goals one? That looks like really a long grind!
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That's the one.
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Really like reading through these guides before starting the games. Good work
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Thanks man. I really enjoy doing them, and especially that you guys like them too.
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Um, whats the point of G points? Which u get for achievments?
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GamerScore is your permanent overall score across the various Xbox platforms: Xbox 360, Xbox One, Games for Windows Live, Windows 8, and Windows Phone. It's just a fun record of how many Achievements you've accomplished.
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Free to play cash grab. AVOID
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months Paul? No! Say it aint so! Not starting this one until I polish off Six Guns. Too many freemium makes me want to die!
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But considering the gameplay in this one is all time based, you could start now, just check in once a day and get your people doing long-term activities, and you'd be that much farther whenever you want to start actively playing it. Plus daily money bonuses, which would add up over time.
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Wish I had listened. Or at least have knocked this out before they nerfed all the exploits to compelte it faster. FML
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Months? Holy god
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Lol yea saw that epic fail :/
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That is some really nice work and will help a lot of people.
Paul man, awesome job! -
Always appreciate your support, Winning Phone. :-D
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Anyone know id this will be released for 512mb devices? Looks fun.
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As someone who has never played a Sims game but loved SimCity, are they worth getting into, and if so, is this the game to start with, or are the other Sims games on WP better: Sims 3, Sims Medieval? Not a fan of Freemium games, but this one looks better than those.
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This game takes forever to do anything. Things happen in real time. The downside to it being freemium I guess.
(I haven't tried any of the other Sims mobile games, so can't really say if they're different. But since you have to buy them I guess they won't be as time consuming.) -
IMO it is the best free to play Xbox WP game. But if you're not down with the time-based mechanics of this one, Sims Medieval would be the one to get. Both Medieval and Sims 3 play a bit more like RPGs (with the player only controlling one character at a time) and less like the true Sims games (controling a whole family or town).
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I want to download this but my other storage is at 5 Gb and I don't want to risk it :(
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I still think of avocado when I see Paul's name lol
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I still think pizza when I see yours
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Mike is the winner!
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Lol
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No, its not.
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Nice review Paul, I just found out about the chessboards, thanks for the tip! Only have two scientists, I might be playing for a while, goal is to get all buildings and maybe all achievements lol
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Good luck, man! Part 2 is coming up in a few minutes, hopefully. The actual review will be live tomorrow. :)
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Thanks Paul! I have resorted to story telling to keep myself entertained, the nemesis one is painful just because of the number of interactions required. Can't wait to read Part 2! Don't forget to mention the tiering of simoleons and life points as your levels advance, a huge point if you are going to spend $$$'s.
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Am I the only one having massive problems with the achievements? I've unlocked a few like "lucky dog" but some just seem completely broken. I've got 4 married couples now and none of them unlocked the "wedding bells" achievement. I did as the article suggested, save/exit/restart right before unlocking - no good. I must have baked a good 10 choc puddings now, no achievement. I bought 3 skater's dream pad, no achievement.
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Lumia 920? :(
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You can share chessboards for two scientist, but it's sometimes hard to tap on the chessboard. The "Join In" for watching movies actually works, as I did the achievement with two batches of four sims each.
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Ah, thanks. At TrueAchievements I read that it didn't work... Maybe the game was just being glitchy for the other guy.
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Lol, I'm actually cccuaresma1 there. :) Down to 1 achievement to grind.
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still not available on 512 ram :(
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Do you have to bake all 5 puddings from inside the same house? Tried 5 sims baking simultaneously, and tried one sim baking puddings ine after the other and it didnt work :(
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No, they don't need to be in the same house. Sorry to say but it looks like the Achievement glitched on you.