The Sims 4's free infants update has spawned

The Sims 4 has now birthed its free Infants update, which takes the runtiest part of your digital doll's lives and expands upon it. Sims during those pre-walking years now have full needs and wants, which means the Sims around them will need to spend more time caring for them lest they grow into maladjusted adults.

At launch, The Sims 4's children were flimsily represented, as they skipped from inanimate "baby" to walking-talking child. A previous update added a "toddler" phase. Now that "Infants" have arrived, the former "baby" phase has been renamed "newborn" and shortened to only last a couple of days.

Infants can't walk, but they can crawl, poop, play, and cry. and other Sims of all ages can interact and nurture them. There are new items to help , including a Changing Station and an Infant Playmat. How you treat your Infants can have long-term consequences, as the more family members interact with them, the more "special reward traits" they develop that affects their skill at forming healthy relationships later in life. Raising a child is high stakes - and in the game, and in the game, and in the game.

There are different ways to make an Infant of your own, from WooHoo, to adoption, to a new "Science Baby" action which allows you to "use genetic material to have a new baby through science." Or you can just load up the Create-A-Sim tool to design your own baby, with new outfits, hairstyles and the normal traits.

You can read some more details about how infants work on The Sims blog. You can also read the complete patch notes, which contains mention of other bug fixes and features, such as the ability to determine under Create-A-Sim whether a Sim can produce milk.

Infants are free and out now, but in two days the Growing Together expansion will release. It adds more complex family dynamics to the series, at which infants can sit at the centre.