In addition to the Sims games being open-ended, life simulator sandbox games with no win status, various games have offered various challenges for players to pursue, should they wish to do so.

These differ from the Story Modes in The Sims Stories and many console games (In particular The Sims Bustin' Out (console)) in that players are not required to do these challenges to access most parts of the games' gameplay. They must also be of significant length (ruling out almost all The Sims 3 opportunities), and must be a challenge seen in the game itself (ruling out Player challenges).

Game(s)	Type	Short summary
&EP07	Quests	This section is in need of additional information. You can help The Sims Wiki by expanding this section.
&BG &EP01 &EP02	Skill challenge	Most skills in The Sims 3 have 3 available challenges each. Usually these involve doing certain tasks often enough.
&BG &BG	Achievements	Possible to get for many different reasons, for instance, but certainly not limited to, preparing 200 Perfect meals,[TS3] collecting 5 insects,[TS3:SN] get sunburned,[TS3:S] befriend the Grim Reaper,[TS4] discovering 10 Aliens in disguise,[TS4:GTW] or successfully bathe your cat.[TS3PETSC] On PC the achievements require being logged on to an online account, while on consoles the achievements can also be obtained offline.
&BG •&BG (Patch 42)	Lot traits and challenges	•The Sims 3 has a 20% chance when an active household moved into a new house or houseboat to get one of 5 possible challenges that take a few in-game hours to win. •The Sims 4 has an extensive system of lot traits that range the span from positive effects (Skill gain rates, tension relief[TS4:JA]) to ones that sharply increase the difficulty (Off-the-grid, Volcanic Activity[TS4:IL]), though none of them have known win conditions.
&EP01	Adventure	Serving as one of relatively few 3D adventure genre modes in the franchise, having a Sim complete all tombs in a given vacation sub-world (Al Simhara, Champs Les Sims, and Al Simhara) is a significant feat given the difficulty of some of the harder tombs (e.g. Chateux de Landgraab).
&EP01	Photography collections	Each of the 12〜19 (Depending on the installed expansion packs) collections range from taking a few real-life hours (The easiest ones) to being monumental undertakings likely to take a week or more in real time (In particular "Best in Class"). Trying to complete all 19 with the same Sim is the hardest known challenge in The Sims 3 by far.
&EP02	SimBot creation quest	Among the hardest opportunities in the game, the Sim must have level 10 Inventing skill, be a good gardener, have unlocked heart-shaped gem cutting in the mailbox (or have a Supernatural gem cutter), and be good at finding very rare gems and metals.
&EP10	Unlocking hidden islands	Only possible in Isla Paradiso. The archipelago has 8 hidden islands that becomes one of the Sim's owned lots when unlocked. Unlocking all 8 as the same Sim requires multitasking diverse activities like the Lifeguard career, resort ownership, scuba diving, bottle collecting, and opportunity quests.
&EP11	Legacy Statue	The Almanac of time contains 5 challenges to pursue. Completing a challenge will make the Sim be displayed on the challenge's Legacy Statues in the Oasis Landing business park, and the Sim can potentially be displayed on all 5 statues at the same time by completing all 5 challenges.
&BG (Patch 12)	Legacy challenge	Running one or more active households through set numbers of generations. Sub-category of Achievements.
&BG (Patch 15)	Challenge event	In-game challenges that are timed in real-life time. Many resemble festivals and concerts, and some are special events like what the PlantSim Challenge in 2017 was.
&BG (Patch 120)	Scenario (The Sims 4)	A massively expanded version of many Sims' games households' default descriptions, now with the ability to start scenarios from a scenario menu, and with the game tracking the progress in-game towards the scenarios' goals.
&BG (Patch 174)	Reward events	Events that work very similarly to challenge events were first introduced in February 2025.
&GP06 &GP07 &EP03 &EP17 &EP19	Storyline	Initially introduced for Selvadorada based on World Adventures' tomb adventures, the system was carried over to StrangerVille as a fully fleshed story mode, and in certain other worlds as less intense challenges.
&BG (Wii)	50-day lifetime happiness challenge	When starting a new savefile, the game challenges the player to amass as much lifetime happiness as they can in the first 50 days of the savefile. Reaching an unclear amount and then reaching 50 days, will unlock a New Game Plus that allows placing more objects on the player's residential lot.
	Mystery Journal	While specific to the Mysteriologist profession, the quests are substantially more complex than what the Investigator[TS3:A] cases were.
+	Game Center achievements	Apple devices only. Subcategory of Achievement.

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