I was lucky enough to obtain at some point in my life both The Sims Life Stories and The Sims Pet's Stories,. in case you do not know these 2 PC version are kind of hard to find even pre-covid on the internet, but mine was given to me by my younger sister, they are basically smaller versions of The Sims 2 series on PC, they include new wall and floor tile not found anywhere inside any of the sims 2 base game or the expansion packs either,

The Stories series was actually meant for Laptop usage of the sims 2 on the PC, it includes 3 neighborhoods in Life Stories and 4 "I think" in Pet's Stories, first off, at first only 1 of the neighborhoods is freeplay at first, and the rest you need to complete the story in order to unlock the freeplay modes., on the other neighborhoods.

I've done all 5 of the stories found inside both, "The Sims Pets Stories and "The Sims Stories". and I kind of enjoyed the stories but I would rather play The Sims 2 regular series because I can do and build more. So? what do you all think of them The Sims 2 Laptop oriented Spinoffs like The Sims 2 Castaway Stories, The Sims Life Stories and The Sims Pet's Stories

I have Castaway. Been a while since I played it, though (Haven't installed it on my recent laptops). It's fun, but after a few playthroughs it does get the "been there, done that" feel. I kinda wish there were a few more story paths to choose from. Thanks to freeplay at the end of it, the game is possible to have some fun with after the scripted play is over and done with, and the extra objects are nice. Plus, it does new things with the TS2 formula, so it feels like a fresh breath if you're stuck in the "same-old" and want something a bit different for a while. It's even possible to use some CC for the game. But even freepllay gets boring after a while, unless you really like the island vibe.

Didn't bother with Life Stories - at the time I thought the description seemed too much like the regular game, and I've never been too interested in playing the scripted stories. A bit annoyed I didn't get Pet Stories purely for the extra pet items and added play, but at least those items and animations were converted over to TS2 so I don't feel like I'm missing too much.

(While on the topic of spinoffs, I also have Sims Medieval. It's fun but does get a bit restrictive and repetitive after a while since it's 95% rabbit holes for tasks, and definitely not the same playing experience as the other sims games - when I've played, and that's been a while too, I've mostly set up the characters with names, looks and relative roles from my favorite fantasy novels. Kept it interesting ).

(I also think I have one of the Sim City games, but no idea where it went. If I still have it, I haven't seen the game CD in ages. Could've just been a demo version. I just remember opening up the game once or twice, finding the game ridiculously difficult, and closing it back down. I did have the SimTown game, a child version of SimCity, which I played for hours at an end (probably more age-appropriate at the time than the full SimCity one ). Loved that game - but this was a while before TS1 and TS2 came out. That one was my first Sims-related game - not much of a challenge now, I'd assume, but still quite a bit of nostalgia involved)

I played through both Castaway Stories and Pet Stories. Never tried Life Stories. The main attraction of Pet Stories was the dog agility course, which has now been made for TS 2. I played Castaway a couple of times. It was fun. The main thing I wish had been transferrable to TS 2 was the ability to swim in ponds without fancy building. I meant to go back and make a primitive neighbourhood after I'd finished the story, but am yet to get around to it.

The lifestories spinoffs (and Sims medieval) are the only Sims franchise games I've never played. I've always been mildly curious about them, but they kinda sound like regular gameplay with some scripted events? Kinda like when you first open up a premade hood. It does sound kinda fun, a bit more relaxing than the hustle and bustle of my megahood with hundreds of households. Sometimes I do have ideas for smaller stand alone hoods where I can sit in and really enjoy my sims. I tend to fast forward a lot in my megahood, even then a rotation takes around 3 real life months (which funnily enough means that the first sim concieved when I was pregnant with my daughter, was the first sim born after I had my daughter ).

I'd be particularly interested in Castaway, I loved Sims 2 Castaway for the PlayStation. By far one of my favourite Sims 2 games (PC comes first, followed by psp). I have come across a few bits and bobs that have been extracted and put in Sims 2 but as I have never made an island style neighbourhood I've no use for most of the stuff.

I've had a lot of fun with Castaway and have been dreaming of having its lakes and larger lots in the main game. Once you finish the scripted story, there's not much to do though, since it's basically an inferior version of Sims 2, minus the two advantages mentioned earlier.

If we're counting Sims Medieval I tried that as well, but found that Sims 2 with medieval content allowed me to do more of the stuff that I wanted. Sims Medieval was very story restricted.

The Sims Castaway Stories was the very first Sims game I ever played, so it always feels special to go back to it; it's still my favorite Stories game because some limitations exceed TS2 (100x100 lots, anyone?) and it has some nice gameplay elements. Life and Pet Stories are nice, but they are kind of basic, to be honest.
I've finally managed to get my legit versions in working order without needing cracks and other stuff; for years I kept getting activation errors, so I had to work around that, and now I've finally fixed that and they work flawlessly!

I used to have Castaway Stories on my Mac laptop for a while, and I really enjoyed it. There were ways to get more lots in the neighbourhood and I was having lots of fun with all the characters, and planning setting up a "next generation" story about what happened when the female default character got marooned on the island after a plane crash 30 years later (I'd played with the male default character) finding out that the stories told by the survivors of the shipwreck weren't exactly true...

... and then I got a new laptop last year and discovered that Castaway Stories won't work with current Mac operating systems, and isn't available any more. So I'm stuck trying to see if there's a way to get a PC version or something, but no luck so far.

Edit: I found a used copy available for a reasonable price, so it's ordered - I'll see if I can get it working and continue the game.

I have all 3 and really enjoyed all of them and they help me and the Hood Building Group to remake most of them for Sims 2.
All were remade for only the base game so everyone could play them.

2 from Sims Life Stories:
Four Corners (aka Riley's Story) https://modthesims.info/download.php?t=557801
Bitville (aka Vincent's Story) https://modthesims.info/download.php?t=564424

3 from Pets Stories:
Garden Heights (aka Best in Show) https://modthesims.info/download.php?t=614989
Mesa Flats (aka Midnight Masquerade) https://modthesims.info/download.php?t=621995
Arbor Falls (aka Free Play) https://modthesims.info/download.php?t=631106

Thank you So much for the links I got them all of them thank you

(7-22-2021)
Hi I sent the creator a PM, that we all need to run hood checker on each one of these neighborhoods before playing them. Because they had a lot of minor corruption that is completely fixable using hood checker. Hood checker fixed all but the usually 3 stuck memories I have inside all of my custom neighborhoods, however there is NOTHING WRONG with these creations other then a few minor things that needs to be fixed using the following program, once downloaded to your PC as of date of this post.

HoodChecker 1.0.3 - Neighborhood Corruption Detector (Updated February 11, 2013)
https://modthesims.info/d/456523/ho...ry-11-2013.html

I streamed Life Stories and half of Pet Stories and rather enjoyed them. I really should get around to streaming the rest of Pet Stories. Maybe when my sister's bike is fixed, right now I have to take her to work and she does horrible shifts.