I Made an IMPOSSIBLE Shell Challenge in The Sims 4
I have a treat for you my friends, it is shell challenge time. This might be a new concept to you, so let me explain. Basically, a shell challenge means someone builds a box, a shell of a house, and then uploads it to the gallery for anyone to download and then make something out of. And I have just made a new one for you. The idea of this is really simple, you take this box, and this is what you have to work with, you have to turn this into a building. You cannot change any of these walls, you can do anything else, but these walls have to stay the same. And when
I say anything else, I mean literally anything else. You can rotate it on the lot, you can put a foundation, you can add balconies, you can add roofs. You can even change the wall height, you can put fences, you can put half walls, the only thing that you can't do is change any of the existing walls. And so by change, I mean you couldn't like, get rid of this weird bump out because you don't like it. That's cheating. You couldn't like, extend the house one tile,
that's cheating. You couldn't even like, add on a little bit to make a fake column, that's cheating. Now obviously you can put like, a floor plan inside to make a bathroom and a bedroom and all of that, but the exterior walls have to stay the same. That's the whole idea of the shell challenge. Everything else is fair game. So say it with me everybody, do not touch my walls. If you have a question about what's a rule that's fine, first ask yourself, am I touching Simsie's walls? And if the answer is no, then you're okay! If the answer is yes, then stop.
Again, it's very simple. So I have this build on my gallery, it's called the Spooky Shell Challenge. I have some small explanation of the rules here for you, and then you can download it and make it into whatever you want. It doesn't have to be spooky, it's just October so I called it the Spooky Shell Challenge. It also doesn't need to be a house,
you can make it into a museum, or a park, or a library, or you know, whatever you want to make it into, it can be that. That's the fun of a shell challenge is you can do literally anything with it, right? And so when you look on the gallery, what everybody else has done, you'll see like, super varied things because people have rotated it in different ways, they've gone for completely different styles, like this one's a library, this is a victorian house, like. But at the end of the day, they all have the same bones, like it's the same shell, and I just think this is so fun. So, if you want to play, go for it. Put it on the gallery with the hashtag: SpookySimsieShell, and I look forward to seeing yours. If you don't have access to the gallery
and you still want to do it, I'm gonna show you guys the shell with the grid on really fast so you can take a screenshot. So I'll leave this up for a second, pause the video, take a screenshot of the first floor. And then here you go, pause the video, take a screenshot of the second floor, and then you should be able to recreate this in your game if you want to. It's terrible.
I'm warning you right now, the roofing of this? Horrible. I did almost cry when I was trying to do it myself. But with all those rules explained, let me pop in and show you what I did with this. Alright, so we're popping in and first things first, I placed my shell this time in the Vampires world because I was originally gonna try and build a haunted house. Admittedly, it did not stay a haunted house, that plan did not work out. But I rotated it so that the front is not the front of the shell on the gallery, which obviously, you can do, and then I started placing the roof, which um, pained me because I think this is horrible. It really took me a lot to try and figure out what
I wanted this to look like, I think it ended up being okay in the end, but like I said, this took some messing with to do. So you'll notice me doing things like adding fences, adding porches, that's all fair game too. Again, the only thing you can't do is add walls. The whole idea of the shell challenge is that the shell is the same, the shell being like, those exterior walls that like, circle or whatever. It's not a circle, you know, the shape. The shape needs to be the same,
but the rest of it you can just do whatever you want with, that's the fun of it. And so like I said, I was trying to make a haunted house, and then when I started furnishing it, it was sort of less haunted than I originally intended, so it kind of is more just like, a Tudor style. I guess it's an old house, but it's probably been updated a little bit on the inside. It's also like, very black and white. Like, all the furniture is very black and white, there's lots of grays, there's a lot of that going on in here. Um, but that's pretty much it,
it's not so spooky, there's not like, cobwebs or anything, it's just a Tudor house that I built in the Vampires world. Which I guess is spooky in itself because you know, Vlad's house is right nearby, so the whole area is a bit cursed. Now I used a bunch of packs in this one, I've done a bunch of base game shell challenges too, and that's the fun of this as well is that you don't need to have packs to make a good shell challenge. Like, it depends what you're doing obviously, if you're trying to make a Tudor house, you kind of need to have Get Together because it gives you all the wallpapers and stuff, but you can make a base game version super easily. I'll probably end up doing one of those on stream like this week.
And I've also done lots of shell challenges that I've posted videos about before, so I can link the playlist and like, all the videos down below. It might be fun for you to go through and watch some of the shell challenge tour videos if you haven't seen a shell challenge before, because I think you will have so much fun. Those are like, some of my favorite videos to make because I go through like a week or two after the shell challenge has been up and we tour like, 10 or so really cool ones off the gallery, and it is just so fun to see what everybody does because everyone looks at this same box and then takes it in completely different directions, so I'll have some of those shell tours linked down below if you want to check any of them out. And also, you might be noticing that um, the house is rotated again. I ended up flipping it again, and I'm gonna flip it back. So right now the front is the back, and the back is the front,
I flipped it, you'll see. It's weird, it took me some doing to figure this out. And also, the back of this house is really weird. Like, you'll notice that I have a part that's sort of flat on the roof, I just did not know what to do with it and so I made it flat and I put like, some fencing around it. And honestly, it ended up kind of looking like Vlad's house. Okay, and I know looking like Vlad's house is not a good thing, but like, Vlad's house has a bunch of flat pieces like that on the roof, it's not that unusual to do a thing like that in real life, like it's not that weird. It's maybe a little bit weird on the building, but it's not a -- it's not
a normal-looking building. Somebody also called it a McMansion which I thought was rude, but they're probably not wrong. It is a bit McMansion-y, so. You know, what are you gonna do? It's a shell challenge, I couldn't move any of it. Now other thing, I had to delete all of the footage
of me trying to do the floor plan. So it's gonna skip from like, me doing the exterior straight to the floor plan being done and me doing the kitchen. I'm warning you right now, that's because it took me like an hour to do the floor plan in real life, and I'm sorry, but I cannot just speed that up and have you sit through that. You don't need to watch me like, do it, and then delete it, and then do it, and then delete it, and then do it again and delete it again, like it just -- it was horrible. It was truly horrible. I did it on stream, so I can link the like full -- it's two streams, it took me like, six hours. I can link that if you want to watch it, but I don't think you do. Maybe you do, maybe you were there, and you're like,
no, I don't want to watch that again, but yeah, it took me a while to do this one. This thing I've noticed about shell challenges, and you might experience this too, is that some of these are like, rage quit inducing, you know? Because the problem with building shell challenges is that usually when you make a house in The Sims, you have the ability to like realize oh no, the floor plan is not working, let me make it a little bit bigger so I can like, make this into more of a better-sized kitchen, right? Or like, oh no, the floor plan is not working, let me adjust the back of the house a little bit. Or the roof isn't working, let me just move this wall in one. And you can kind of, you know, build the whole house all at once so it all looks good together, but with shell challenges, you can't just move the walls. That's the one rule, is that you can't move the walls! So you just have to suffer and try and make things work, and so this whole house could be like, a little bit better, had it been a little bit different, but it's not. It's not better, it's not different. Also, I'm not practicing what I preach here, but there is a part of this house, that little like, 2 x 1 bump out, you can kind of see it if you look closely in the front by the front door.
Um, I did that on purpose because I wanted to see what other people would do with it, I just left it empty. So again, I am not a good example of this, but I'm really curious if people can use that little 2 x 1 as like, a useful cool interesting space. Because sometimes in my shell challenges I'll leave like interior walls that you have to work around, I didn't do that on this one, but I did have that 2 x 1, and I'm kind of curious if anyone does anything like, fancy with it. Makes it into a bathroom maybe? I don't know, but I'd like to see people do like, clever things with the 2 x 1 if possible. Sometimes I'll leave like, a 3 x 1 room in the middle of the house and then have people do something with it, and I've seen people make like fancy fireplaces with like, see-through windows, and turn them into indoor aquariums, like people do the coolest things when there's like, stuff left to work around, and I just love that about shell challenges, it's so much fun seeing what everyone else comes up with. Because -- I keep saying this, but it's just so fun, like I had this Tudor idea for this, but you might have a completely different vision of it. Like, you look at the other side and you're like,
oh, this could be like, some modern museum of art, you know, and you make it into like, a complete opposite thing and I just -- I think it's so fun. I think shell challenges are so fun. I'm not the person who invented shell challenges, I have done a lot on my channel. Not in the past like, year, but I've done a lot on my channel, like probably like, 10 or something, but they're pretty common, like a lot of people make them, a lot of YouTubers make them, but more so like, a lot of people on the gallery make them, so if you ever like, really enjoy doing shell challenges, this is the kind of thing that you could totally just find on the gallery and then like, do someone else's just for fun if it's a thing that you like to do. You don't need to like, be a YouTuber, you can just do it because it's fun. I love this kind
of thing, so I know a lot of you probably do as well. Okay, but as far as tours go, I'm gonna post a tour video like, exactly a week from now, or maybe a couple days later. Like, I'll probably start working on the tour video exactly a week from now, so you have a week to make the shell and stuff like that, if you want to be in the tour video. I do want to like, quickly preface that by saying that there are a lot of people who are gonna make shells, and there are not gonna be a lot of shells in the tour video. I am gonna tour them on stream on the 26th of October, so that's gonna be random, I'm just gonna grab random ones from people in chat and then do that. So there's like, more of a chance of me touring it in a video for the stream, but like, the YouTube video I'm only going to tour like, 10 of them. So if you're gonna be really sad
if I don't tour yours in the video, it might be best if you like, didn't do it. And I mean that in the sense of like, if you're only doing it so that I'll see it, I don't want you to be disappointed, so don't do it. If you're gonna do the shell challenge, do it because you think it's fun and you want to do it just because it's fun. And then if I make it for the video, then it's a bonus for
everybody, right? Like, I just don't want anyone to be disappointed, that's all, I just don't want to like, be sad that I didn't see theirs because I'm gonna try, but I just -- like in the past, because you know how the gallery is, like it hides stuff and it's so hard to filter through, like in the past, there's been so many that it is literally impossible to see them all because it stops loading them. So I just -- I do my best, I check throughout the weeks, like I really do try, but I -- the gallery breaks and it loses things and I'm not gonna see them all. There's gonna be too many. So I just wanna warn you all in advance, we're doing this for fun! It's because it's really fun to do shell challenges, right? Okay, so as far as the interior goes, you'll notice that I used a couple things that I don't like often use in my builds. For example, that Realm of Magic counter set, I never use that, but I thought it was kind of appropriate in here with like, the tile counters and the pattern, and I thought it kind of worked, so I use that in the kitchen. And then it doesn't have matching upper cabinets, so I use just the base game upper cabinets and I feel like they're a close enough color match that you can't really tell, but they're not actually the same color because there is no upper cabinets. Or the Realm of Magic ones, it's so annoying. I -- honestly,
this is a PSA to The Sims team. If you're gonna give me a kitchen set, but not give me upper cabinets, just don't give me the kitchen set. I would rather not have the counters than have counters with no matching cabinets, especially if they're like, a weird one like that where like, it doesn't really match other things. It's one thing if it's like, for example, the Island
Living ones where it has like, the waterfall countertops and like, matching shelving. I get it, that's the style of the kitchen, it has open shelving. But that Realm of Magic one is like, fancy with fancy tile countertops. It's like, a mosaic. That one? It's weird to not have matching upper cabinets, it doesn't make sense. One thing I liked about Dream Home Decorator, just in general that pack has great build stuff, but that pack Dream Home Decorator came with two kitchen sets, like two counters and cabinets, and I loved that because those were all kind of mix and matchable because they had similar swatches, and I think that's awesome. Like, I really like the idea of having more mix and matchable counters because then you can sort of combine things and do what you want and they're in pretty good like, neutral swatches, like there's some colors, but they're decent swatches, like. I'm into it. And I'd like, to see more things like that in the
future. I just want more counters in general. My number one asks for like, things for The Sims: always more kitchen sets, always, more couches always, and more beds. Also runner up, more plain rugs. More plain square rugs, more plain rectangle rugs. I just want more plain-looking rugs, but I want more beds first, which they did actually do all those things in Dream Home Decorator, so. That pack is up there with one of my favorites, but I just -- those things we use so much, and like those are the kind of like, defining features of a home, you know? Like, the living room, the big couch kind of like defines the space. The bed defines the space in a bedroom. And we don't have that many to work with, we have a bunch, but I build all the time, so like, I've made bedrooms for every bed in this game many times. And especially in the base game, like there are only
so many bedroom variants you can make with like, the base game cheapest bed swatches. I don't know what to tell you, they really should have added more swatches to that bed in the swatch update because I have used that like, you know, double bed, the cheap base game double bed, so many times because when you're making starter homes like, that's what you have to work with. That's just your option, is that one. And I have used every swatch on that bed about 50 times probably. Like. And what can you do? It's just all you have. So I'm begging them for more swatches on that thing. I really wish they would have added more swatches to that when they did the swatch update, but maybe they'll do another swatch update in the future. We've had two big swatch updates now,
and a few like, extras in between. Like, they had that big door update first, then this one with the windows and everything else, but they added some swatches to like, bathroom stuff when the Spa Day update came out, so like, they've done swatch updates. I would really like a bed swatch update, I'm crossing my fingers. Also, base game fireplaces, I would like some more swatches on. I know that might be a weird one, but like, that base game wooden fireplace? I'd like a few more swatches on her. I could list off a million items that I want more swatches on, moral of the story is we just need more swatches. But it's okay. Everything's fine. Everything's fine, I'm okay. Oh, I do owe one small apology and explanation, so I did use some destroyed curtains from the Spooky Stuff pack. I know it's weird, for some reason I think it works.
Like, the house isn't spooky or destroyed, it has like some distressed flooring and like, the distressed curtains, but I kind of picture the flooring as like, you know, restored hardwood. It's the original hardwoods restored and like, maybe they left the curtains up because they were like, kind of a vibe? I don't know. This house is weird. It's very much not my style, so it turns out being not good, I feel like. And that's okay, you know, because you will all redeem me with your shells. See, that's how it works. It's a team effort, I do a mediocre job,
you come in, crush my hopes and dreams, and then I look at your builds for content, see? Anyway, the build is done. I'm gonna pop in and give you a quick tour, but first, let me remind you what the original shell looked like, and also I need to tell you about something horrible that I noticed. So there is a wallpaper in this game that is um, very odd. It's this bat wallpaper, the vertical bat motif from Vampires. Now I used this swatch downstairs, do you see the swatch it's showing me? That's the swatch I put in the bathroom. Those are different, that's weird, that's okay though because I like this white and black one better. So I'm like,
that's perfect for the bathroom, I'll use it. Let me put it in the bathrooms upstairs. Oh, it's different. Huh? So this wallpaper, on medium and tall wall height is white in that swatch, and on short wall height, it's gray. Also, the pink swatch -- you're gonna hate this. Look. On tall wall height, the bats have like a little black outline. On short wall height, they don't.
And there's like, a few other swatches where the trims are different colors on the different wall heights, and I've never noticed this before because obviously you don't usually compare like, a wallpaper on two different wall heights right next to each other because you know, they're inside and you don't really notice the small differences like the trim and stuff. Well. Huh? Why are they different colors? And it's like, four swatches on this are messed up. How does that happen? How? But I thought you'd like to hear about that, so I showed you. So this is where I built mine, on this lot in the Vampires world. I did a lot of landscaping
off-camera, so I need to update you all on what the building actually looks like. Now, the landscaping also took me a very long time. Like, I really didn't know if I wanted it to be kind of overgrown or if I wanted to be more like, manicured and formal. So I went back and forth, but I ended up settling for this, and I think it
looks pretty cute. So here's the exterior, it's surrounded by a Strangerville fence, there's a little patio space with like, a table and a chess table and some planter boxes and stuff. I honestly really like this house, I think it turned out pretty nice. There's like, two chimneys. We have this little fake balcony to like, kind of separate the space. You can
see that I didn't like, add walls, it's just half walls and a fake balcony with a fake roof to make it look less flat there because that wall was so weird and long and flat and dumb. And then, you know, this weird part with the flat roof, I don't know about her, but that's okay. We tried. And then when you actually first go inside, there is an entryway. Um, yes, this balcony has nothing on it, but hear me out: this is the Vampire world, those guys can teleport. So if they want to sit on this balcony, they can just like, poof into a bat and go there. So it's fine.
This is that 2 x 1 space that I didn't use that I want you to use, so disregard her. Uh, but yeah, this is the entryway. And then through there, it leads you into this like, hallway with four archways. And that breaks off into a little office sort of sunroom space that I love. Um, we have that kitchen, my favorite room in the house is the kitchen. And see, you can't really
tell that the cabinets are different colors, but they are. Different colors and different styles, in fact, but just don't look at it, it's fine. And then they have a dining room too, kind of off that space. Then a living room with a big fireplace and bookshelves, and then that tiny little half bath with the weird wallpaper that changes colors. It's cute, the little bats have like a plumbob as their body, but you know, then they change colors. Upstairs, there's a big hallway, another chess table, and then we have two more bathrooms, like full baths. This isn't the same wallpaper, but it's the other one in the same swatch.
This is the floral bat motif, but I use that for like, both the bathrooms. Then there's like, a main parent's bedroom with an ensuite, and two small kids rooms. I guess one could be like, a teen's room because it has a double bed, and then one small tiny room.
But I like the color scheme of these, I thought the floor plan actually worked out kind of well. Definitely some weird shapes in this house, like the the floor plan's kind of odd, but I think that we split it up pretty well, like I think at the end of the day, this actually works. And I also don't think it looks like a shell challenge. At least from the interior, I think that this upstairs looks like it was intentional. In the sense that like, you wouldn't know that I was stuck with the walls where they are. Like, I think that I
broke it up enough that it looks like I did it on purpose. Which is a good thing. Honestly, I think the same thing downstairs, like the downstairs floor plan kind of flows pretty well. Sometimes these shell challenges are really weird, but this one I think turned out okay. At least I can just keep telling myself that. I'm not a huge fan of the landscaping, but I don't know, it wasn't my
strong suit. This style of landscaping is not my finest, so I'm just gonna not look at it. Look, I can't do this again, this shell had me near tears on more than one occasion, so I'm calling it quits. Again, if you want to play and do the shell challenge too, it's on my gallery to grab the shell, or you could get like the floor plan from the beginning of this video.
And when you finish it, upload it to the gallery with the hashtag SpookySimsieShell. The rules are simple, you can do whatever you want, it doesn't have to be spooky, it could be anything. The only thing you can't do is change my walls. Everything else is fair game,
just the walls, the same. Platforms, foundations, roofs, interior walls, fences, half walls, literally anything else is fine, just don't change the main walls. Do. Not. Touch. My. Walls. What was that? Do not touch my walls? Yes, that's correct. With that being said, I will see you all tomorrow. Bye everybody. Now, everyone, what is the only rule? Do not touch Simsie's walls. Yes, perfect. [ JAZZY OUTRO MUSIC ]
2021-10-23 14:09
