Sarah Boon

*Please note some of the language used in this mod conflicts with my own views. I do not support disorder and deficit based narratives of autism. These terms will only be used when I am directly quoting from the mods description and content*

So several years ago now I came across an autism mod and reviewed it on this blog. To date, it’s still one of the most popular posts on Autistically Sarah! However the mod is no longer available, and after browsing my computer files, I clearly didn’t save it either! (oops). However, nobody contacted me to say the link didn’t work, I can see from my stats that multiple people everyday have clicked onto the download page for the mod. Apologies if you’re one of those people, I only realised myself recently when I started to do the research for this Blog (as I became aware there are several more autism Sims 4 mods on the internet now). I’m assuming it must have been taken down recently but I’m not entirely sure!

I found 3 autism mods (well one of them was technically a neurodiversity mod), but only one of them actually worked on my Sims game, So here is my review of the mod that worked, False Hope’s ‘Autism Spectrum Disorder’ mod. 

There are two parts to the mod, one for toddlers and one for children through to elders. The reason for this is the mod is a trait in Customise A Sim (CAS) that you need to select for your sim to use the mod’s features, and toddler traits work differently to the older groups in CAS. Hence, they are two separate traits. I like this part of the mod though, because it means there’s some variety in what autism is like at different ages, which somewhat reflects reality. Autism when you’re a child differs a lot more compared to when you’re an adult. Still, to have some variety within the game is a step in the right direction.

When using the mod, I found that what influenced my sim’s emotions were autism related and covered a lot of aspects that reflect daily life as an autistic person, e.g. sensory overload, causing stress and engaging in interest creating joy. It was lovely to see autistic joy in the game, even if it wasn’t labelled as that in the mod. Within my game play, I did find that it would take a lot more for the toddler sim’s emotion to be impacted by autism. I was never able to fully reach the meltdown or anger outburst stage that is mentioned in the mod’s descriptions for toddlers who I gave the ‘Autism Spectrum Disorder’ trait. However, the opposite was true for the other age groups, and it would take very little for them to respond to both the positives and negatives that autistic people experience, perhaps a closer reflection to reality compared to the toddlers!

A lot of the language used in the mod does feel like it mainly has been influenced directly from the diagnostic criteria. The diagnostic criteria is very much based on viewing autism through a clinical and deficit based bias, often coming from assumptions based on observing autistic people rather than autistic people’s internal experiences (which more closely reflects our realities). Personally, I would have liked to see a mod more influenced from autistic people’s lived experiences than the diagnostic criteria. However, I am not sure if this mod was created by an autistic person or not, and it is possible that the mod does reflect their autistic experiences which could be different to my own. 

Overall I do think this mod reflects autism in the game relatively well. Like with my previous review, I think the ultimate sim mod would be one where autistic traits are customisable to recognise that autism is a broad spectrum. One of the mods I tried to use did seem to do this, but sadly it didn’t work at all in my game. If you’re looking to make your Sims autistic, then this mod is certainly a replacement that does the job for the previous Sims mod I reviewed! 

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You can also support the blog by purchasing my book ‘Young Autistic and ADHD: Moving into adulthood when you’re multiply neurodivergent’.

Mod download
https://www.patreon.com/posts/autism-spectrum-42346757