Incredible Mod Adds Schools To The Sims 4

Sims modders have always been some of the best in the business. But even by their high high standards, this new “Go To School” mod for The Sims 4 has to be the coolest, most ambitious player-made project I’ve seen for the game so far. It adds a whole school system to the game. Impressive!

Go To School is the latest project from Zerbu, a well-known and prolific Sims modder. It expands on a new-ish template that The Sims 4 established with its recent Get To Work expansion, which added discrete workplace locations that Sims could travel to and, y’know, work at during their normal vocational hours.

Go To School does something similar, the main difference being that instead of adult Sims going to their offices, its child and teenage Sims going to elementary and high school. While they’re there, student Sims can participate in new activities like field trips, themed costume days, even play hookie. I bet this goes great with the teen pregnancy mod…at least, for Sims players looking for more dramatic storytelling potential in their games.

Players have been tinkering with Go To School for the past few days. Most sound very excited, and impressed by the fact that a fan-made mod works nearly as well as the official expansion pack that preceded it. The mod, which requires Get To Work to function properly, adds new type of lot (schools, duh) into The Sims 4 world, as YouTuber Jae. showed:

Once that’s set up, a chunk of the map is officially staked out for educational purposes:

Model elementary and high schools have already started to pop up on The Sims 4 gallery, meanwhile.

XUrbanSimsX made an extended playthrough video that’s a lot of fun:

As she shows in the video, pre-professional Sims work similarly to their older counterparts with the new mod. Just as Get To Work gives you an option to “Join” a Sim when they head to work, you can now travel to school:

As for the schools themselves, they look pretty great. Here’s her elementary school:

And the high school across the street:

And once you get to the school? Well, some things are a little odd given how…mod-like Go To School can be. There aren’t any adult teachers, for instance — though Zerbu said he’d like to add more robust features like that in the future. For the time being, players can guide their Sims through school activities like drawing:

Or working out at the pool:

(I’m pretty sure I had a dream that went something like this when I was in high school)

Or participating in thoroughly wholesome activities at the school computer lab:

Or conducting some sort of mad scientist experiment:

…before heading home at the end of the day, where — naturally — your work from the day is evaluated with a letter grade:

Emilee’s work was “merely satisfactory?” Guess she’s gonna have to try harder next time.

It’s awesome to see fans and players produce work as wide-ranging and ambitious as something that adds a de facto school system into The Sims 4. Despite the controversies The Sims and its developers have faced when, say, they neglected to feature toddlers and swimming pools in the original Sims 4 release, it’s hard to remain entirely pessimistic about the state of the game when a passion project like Go To School finds it way into the game.

You can download the Go To School mod from Zerbu’s Tumblr page.