Life By You looked set to be the game that finally gave The Sims a run for its money, until it was beset by delays and then, in June, a surprise cancellation followed almost immediately by an unsurprising closure of developer Paradox Tectonic. Now, as so often happens in cases like this, previously unreleased images from the game are starting to come to light, giving us a look at what might have been—and it looks like it might have been really good.

The images come from the online portfolios of former Life By You artists Richard Khoo, Eric Maki, and Chris Lewis, and were helpfully put together on Twitter by Sims enthusiast and content creator SimMattically. Many of the images are basic shots of the character creator, but others showcase more visually impressive indoor and outdoor locales.

The sad irony is that many of these shots look better than the official Life For You screens shared by Paradox prior to the game's cancellation, and that hasn't gone unnoticed in the replies on Twitter: Many people seem genuinely surprised by how good some of the screens look. It might be that real-time performance in Life By You just never looked as nice as these prerendered shots with nicer lighting that its former artists are now sharing.

There's also frustration that, nearly two months after the cancellation, Paradox still hasn't explained why it decided to pull the plug. At the time, the company said Life By You “was lacking in some key areas,” and that “the road leading to a release that we felt confident about was far too long and uncertain.” 

Former Paradox Tectonic designer Willem Delventhal, however, said shortly after the cancellation that development was outperforming internal metrics, and that Paradox Interactive never provided any sort of explanation for the game's final delay or ultimate cancellation.

Whatever ultimately led to the end of Life By You, it's surely a shame: We said in a 2023 preview that it “looks like The Sims with its brakes cut,” and frankly after a decade of The Sims 4 I think that's what the life-sim genre could use. Maybe next time.

Check out a few more previously-unreleased Life By You images below: