Lo-fi Sims competitor Tiny Life adds a retro furniture kit and solves a famine in its latest update

Early access life sim Tiny Life — notable for being a very faithful indie Sims-like you can grab on Steam or Itch for under £13/$15 — received a new update yesterday, bringing with it a handful of tweaks, bug fixes, and a surprise new concept: free themed sets!

The Retro Rarities Set — co-created by Tiny Life community member clovedove — includes 12 new furniture items and six new hairstyles inspired by late 20th century aesthetics. Is Smegcore a thing yet? Because that's the best word I have to describe this kitchen. Anyway, solo dev Ellpeck has also complemented the set with two new very '80s wallpapers and a new flooring design.

If, like so many life sim fans, you've been inspired by the recent Barbie movie to create some plastic-fantastic builds, the vivid mix of bright and pastel colours in this new furniture set has arrived at just the right time. And, while I genuinely hate to pit two games against each other, I can't help but note that this is the kind of themed micro-DLC pack that EA would likely charge you a fiver for.

Tiny Life's update numbers are currently as adorably miniscule as its title. The Retro Rarities Set is the star of Update 0.36.0, but the latest patch also adds pretty ambient fireflies to forested areas at night, while at the same time removing some other bugs that were entirely more harrowing — like the one where a visitor to your Tinies' home would get fired from their job for the crime of hanging out, or the one where Tinies from other worlds would just starve to death out of nowhere.

Long-time Simmers will already know that life sim patch notes are typically a gold mine of delightfully nonsensical statements, so I'll leave you with my favourite from Tiny Life 0.36.0: "Fixed depth positions of scaled particles on parents." I'm not sure what it means, but there's a poetry to it that's kind of beautiful, don't you think?