Highlights

  • The Sims 4 genetics system is not entirely realistic, which can sometimes lead to unexpected baby colors.
  • One player recently had a first-hand experience of its quirks after ending up with a brick-red baby.

One The Sims 4 player has recently found themselves quite surprised after their character gave birth to a brick-red baby. Their unusual experience underlines some of the quirks of how The Sims 4 handles genetics.

For the most part, Maxis's hit life sim attempts to implement genetics in a somewhat realistic manner, albeit with simplifications. E.g., while real-life babies often share eye color with one of their parents, the actual genetics at play are much more complex and depend on both sets of genes at play. In contrast, babies in The Sims 4 will usually simply inherit the eye color from one of their parents. Meanwhile, their skin tones will typically be a mix of those of their parents, so if one partner is dark-skinned and the other is light-skinned, the baby should end up somewhere in the middle.

sim using cupid's corner app, looking at matches
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Brick-Red Baby Baffles Sims 4 Player

But things can get a bit more unpredictable when dealing with The Sims 4's miscellaneous skin tones, which were added to the base game back in December 2020. Reddit user katemonkey can attest to that fact, having recently found themselves utterly baffled after their character gave birth to a brick-red baby called Datura. Elaborating on the genetics at play here, the fan explained that Datura's mother is a purple half-alien, whereas her father is a human whose skin is a medium shade of brown. They hence expected the baby to turn out purple or maybe lavender, but definitely not bright red.

The player also revealed that they put quite a bit of effort into managing their character's pregnancy, having made sure to eat lots of strawberries in order to ensure that their The Sims 4 baby would end up being a girl. Although they (possibly half-jokingly) implied that practice influenced Datura's skin tone, there is no actual evidence that eating any type of food has such an effect on in-game babies.

The surprises didn't stop there; following some more WooHoos, katemonkey's sim gave birth to another child with a different father, who also didn't turn out to be any shade of purple but was actually pale white. It was only on their third attempt and partner of choice that the player got a lavender baby that they were initially expecting.

Anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation can change their babies' skin color in The Sims 4 by making use of cheats. On PC, that process requires pressing CTRL + Shift + C, typing "cas.fulleditmode" without the quotation marks, and then pressing Enter. Doing so makes it possible to change any sim's skin color by interacting with a mirror.