Sims are much harder to kill in The Sims 4. Oh, but they can die. It just requires a bit more tact on the player’s part. If you’ve been having a hard time tormenting your virtual pals, here are some tips to help you help them shuffle off their mortal coil.

This story has been updated since its original publication, most recently to include bunny and chicken murder via Cottage Living.

The sims 4 how to kill a sim
Know Your Enemy
When it comes to committing murder, The Sims 4 may appear tricky at first glance. But don’t get discouraged. This is still a video game. At the end of the day, your Sims are pixellated avatars like any other. They live like video game characters. And they die like video game characters.

Killing Sims isn’t as simple as walking up to some zombie and shooting it in the face, though, which is where the challenge comes in. There must be a specific cause of death for a Sim to croak, and “being shot in the face” isn’t one of them. Since EA removed swimming pools in The Sims 4, the fan-favourite practice of removing ladders and leaving Sims to drown is no longer an option either.

Learn Your Sims’ Weaknesses, Then Exploit Them
At present, there are ten different causes of death in The Sims 4. Seven are “natural” causes, and three come about from the game’s newfangled emotions. In order to kill a Sim, therefore, you must bring about a situation that produces one of these causes-of-death. Let’s attack each in turn.

Burn Your Sims Alive
Setting a Sim ablaze is one of the quickest and easiest ways to get away with murder — but only once you’ve got a proper fire going. That’s the tricky part, and may require some finagling in build mode. If your Sim has a very low cooking skill, try pointing them towards their oven and telling them to cook a complicated recipe. Another, arguably sounder methods involves tampering with a house’s fireplace. Direct your Sim to build a fire, then switch over to build mode and fill the surrounding area with combustible material — chairs, rugs, anything that looks like it shouldn’t be there.

Both of these methods ultimately come down to chance. So if you keep having trouble, remember to keep trying to set your house up in the least disaster-proof way imaginable. Try thinking to yourself: “Is this close enough to the exact opposite of what a household safety manual would recommend?” If the answer is “yes,” then you’re on the right track.

Send Them On a Botched Space Expedition
One of the main career paths you can send your Sims down in The Sims 4 is to become an astronaut. Little do they know, its also one of the easiest ways to send them to their doom. Once you’ve reached a high enough level in the astronaut career, you can then construct a “Steampunk Flyamajig” in your Sim’s lot and set them to building their very own rocket ship. Once you’ve done all that and have your rocket ship ready to go, there are two ways to prime Sims for death. First, you can direct a Sim to race with the rocket ship. If the Sim has a low enough rocket science skill, they will most likely end up crashing the rocket ship. Alternatively, you could also stick a piece of fruit in the rocket ship’s exhaust pipe using a given Sim’s mischief abilities.

Technically, death-by-rocket-ship is the same thing as death-by-immolation, since crashing the rocket ship only kills Sims by setting them on fire.

Electrocute Them. Twice.
Frying your Sims is proving more trouble than its worth? Well, maybe its time to try zapping them like the little bugs that they are. Plop a few electrical appliances into your household and wait for one of them to break. This shouldn’t take long if you use them as intended more than a few times. Once, say, the boombox starts smoking and shooting off sparks, direct your Sim to repair it. As with death by fire, this method only works with Sims that have a very low Handiness skill level. If they do, they will likely end up shocking themselves when trying to repair the faulty appliance. That will put the Sim in a “Singed” state, as indicated by his or her moodlet. If you direct the Sim to attempt another repair while still singed, a second shock will be enough to push them over the edge.

Starve Them
Depriving Sims of food might sound like one of the easiest ways to force them to bite the bullet. And it is, in a way. But it also requires unlearning some of the basic principles of playing The Sims in a properly tidy, doll-house sort of way. Alleviating hunger is one of the first thing every Sims player learns when trying to make their virtual pets happy. Imposing it isn’t as simple as forgetting to feed a Sim. To properly starve a Sim to death, you have to gate them off in such a way that they have no way to access food. An easy way to do this is by sticking them in a room, and then removing all the doors so they’re physically incapable of leaving.

Then, you just have to wait. And wait. And maintain the steely resolve that you’ve developed as the kind of soulless human being who can just sit back and laugh maniacally as your Sims slowly waste away — alone, hungry, and afraid.

God, this game is morbid sometimes.