Paralives: 10 Secrets and Easter Eggs

One of the things that pushes life sims from good to memorable is creating mysteries and storylines that have players hooked. Easter eggs and secrets are hidden all over Paralives. Some of them are fun popular culture references, while others point to a more serious story that holds the world of Melino in its grip.

I feel like I've gone through every emotion playing Paralives and discovering the secrets it's hiding. I've had a good laugh at some of these Easter eggs and references, and felt genuinely devastated at the implications of some of its darker secrets. There's a lot happening here in plain sight, and still so many fans have yet to discover.

10 Among Us Collab

Or is There Something More Going On?

There are a lot of Among Us references in Paralives. There are Among Us plushies, toys, outfits, and Paras can even play the game on their computers.

This is a cute collaboration between two independent game studios, and it could be just that, but there could also be a deeper meaning considering some of the mysteries in Melino. Some fans think there's a serial killer in Melino, or some other sinister force, already imbedded in the community. Some point to Sebastian, as his house has a secret passage to the ruins of the museum, which is also the location of a lot of skeletons.

9 Mama, This is Garbage

Alyssa???

Paralives has descriptions for the items you can pick up in Build and Buy mode. Some of these descriptions include Easter eggs pertaining to the developers and prominent Kickstarter funders, and others have references to popular culture. These are the kind I love the most.

One of the funniest descriptions is for the literal garbage you can find on the beach. Pick it up and read the description that says "Mama, this is garbage." This is a reference to a one-liner from RuPaul's Drag Race's fifth season, where a very pointed comment became a meme. Good to know there are Drag Race fans in the dev team!

8 Melino Ruins Memorial

A Message From the Devs

Melino's museum is the ruin of an old cathedral, and the option to restore it will likely be made available with future Early Access updates. There's a lot happening with these ruins that I'll go into more later, but one very sweet message awaits you if you head over to the memorial plaque.

The Melino Ruins memorial plaque is a touching message from the Paralives developers to you. It reads,

Paralives could never have existed without the unwavering support of our Patrons, who believed in our dream and gave us the means to make it a reality. Like this monument, our game isn't complete, but thanks to you, the foundation is solid and will allow us to keep adding more content in the years to come. Melino is a unique city, built with the love of a wonderful community; we hope you'll enjoy discovering its residents and secrets.

Together, we can build anything. We love you.

The Paralives Team

This message of gratitude and optimism made me surprisingly emotional, and is a big part of why I love indie games. AAA games can have a disconnect between the players and the developers, so seeing something so personal in a game really makes you feel like you had a hand in making this game happen.

7 The Clowns are Not Okay

This is For the Clown Haters

There's a fair amount of clown-themed decor in Paralives, and it appears intentionally designed to unnerve even the most clown-resilient people. There's a clown fridge, clown door, clown plushie, and a clown chair. This furniture set seems like it would be a fit for a children or toddler's room, even if the fridge is out of place. Para's can even express their discomfort with the fridge when standing near it.

Things get weird at 1am. The clown faces all stick a spotted tongue out, but the true horror is the clown plushie, whose face turns into something reminiscent of IT's horrifying face. There's something weird about these clowns, and it isn't anything good.

6 Cheat Secrets

Cute Deviations

Cheats are a staple in life sims, and Paralives is no different. In my experience, cheats are best used when you want to achieve something specific, like building a house without worrying about the cost, or ending up with two sets of triplets and my Para's needs are constantly in the red. Sometimes, something's gotta give, you know?

Paralives made the cheat input bar a little more interesting with some fun prompts. If you input "EIGHTBALL" into the cheat bar, you'll get a random response. Likewise, if you just write "CAT", a photograph of a cat will appear. Inputting "BEAR" will give a picture of a bear drawn from punctuation. It's little touches like these that make it feel like the developers are waving back at us.

5 The Powerpuff Girls

The Crime Fighting Sisters Make an Unexpected Cameo

As a child of the '90s, I grew up with the PowerPuff Girls and have so many fond memories of the show. Sometimes it's a bit surreal to remember that people making things are my age, so seeing references to shows I used to watch as a child is surreal but the nostalgia hit is so good.

The Wolf family are their own characters, but they're definitely based off the PowerPuff girls. Each Para is color coded in either pink, green, or blue, shares similar hairstyles to their counterparts, and share similar personality traits, such as confidence, being gloomy, and being kind to others. While their house isn't an exact replica of the PowerPuff Girls' famous design, it is a flat roof building with three distinct windows and one large one on the first floor.

4 Town Hall's Secrets

The Occult and Skeletons?

Now for the dark stuff, starting with all the skeletons around town. Town hall is the worst offender of this. If you head through the network of secret passages starting from the third floor, you'll end up in one of the towers. Inside are a number of skeletons, including one in a coffin, and another sitting in a chair facing a disturbing image of an eye, locked on each other in some kind of eternal staring match.

This isn't the only place there are skeletons, but here they're at their most numerous, and the positioning and accessories make this room particularly disturbing.

3 Who is Mustache Man?

It's Not Roberto Robert

If you look carefully at the newspapers and notice boards, you'll see the headline "Who is the Moustache Man?" And no, he isn't Roberto Robert, who is the train conductor and looks very different to the newspaper pictures despite also having a mustache.

Apparently there's a male Para with a mustache and sunglasses who walks around Melino stark naked. There are a number of bugs that manifest naked Paras, like Charlie who tends to appear in households when a Para is giving birth, but the Mustache Man clearly isn't one of them. Some players have speculated that he's a serial killer responsible for the skeletons scattered around town. Hopefully, this mystery will be resolved in future updates, because it's creepy as it is now.

2 The Kiran Patel Mystery

A Missing Kid

The Patel family, consisting of married couple Rahul and Asha, live on the outskirts of Melino. It's immediately clear that the family isn't coping. The garden is overgrown, there's trash everywhere, and the Christmas decorations are still up even though it's clearly not Christmas anymore.

There's evidence that they had a child, Kiran Patel. He had his own room, and a Christmas stocking shows his name. But Kiran isn't seen anywhere in Paralives, and some speculate that he's a missing child connected to the teddy bear found in the well. There's also a human skeleton with a backpack in the town, which some speculate is him.

1 Teddy in the Well

Environmental Storytelling with Sad Implications

One of the more tragic findings in Paralives is an abandoned teddy bear in a well. This could be dismissed as a simple lost toy, but it feels particularly sinister alongside the other evidence.

Alongside all the skeletons and the missing Patel child, this may be a clue that leads to something tragic. The teddy bear has been there for a long time going by its appearance, and may even line up with the timeline of Kiran Patel's disappearance. There are a lot of content updates ahead for Paralives, so this is a mystery that may just get an answer in the future, even if it's one that needs to be inferred through context clues, such as The Sims 2's Bella Goth disappearance.