The Sims 3 had a large amount of downloadable content that was available through the game’s online store, including tons of unique towns that made good use of the title’s open-world environment. One such town is Hidden Springs, a small mountainside village that’s heavily inspired by fairy tales and fantasy. Hidden Springs has a lot of mysteries sequestered within it, including a lost princess and the Fountain of Youth.
Included with Hidden Springs were tons of items heavily influenced by the world of fantasy and fairy tales, often feeling right at home with content from the Supernatural expansion. Sims could explore the Museum of Magic and Supernatural or visit the Silver Zephyr Health Spa that many of the town’s residents swear has some kind of youth-rejuvenating effects. In fact, the water that flows through Hidden Springs are the source of many of the town’s mysteries that players can investigate.
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One such mystery is a missing princess who, according to the locals, may have sneaked away to hunt down the Fountain of Youth. As players talk with the other residents they’ll quickly learn that Francisca Vanderburg’s family has been thrown into distress due to her disappearance. Francisca’s brother is obsessed with tracking her down and has begun to ignore the rest of the Vanderburg family and their values.
Tracking down Francisca isn’t difficult as players can quickly find her in a small house by the forest, having run away from home due to her mother trying to push her into marriage. She’s become a writer and seemingly has no desire to track down the Fountain of Youth. Players who get to know Francisca will also find that she has a strong relationship with her brother but hates her mother. If the Late Night expansion is installed, then Francisca will also have a four-star celebrity rating.
The Vanderburg family drama is probably one of the first mysteries that players will run into in Hidden Springs that’ll introduce them to the town’s bigger mystery. Tracking down the Fountain of Youth is advertised as being one of the location’s features, though much like the real-world myth, many players have slowly discovered that it may not exist at all. The Fountain of Youth is available to be purchased in Buy Mode after Hidden Springs is installed, but it’s not actually located in the area.
The Fountain of Youth may be connected to the mysterious healing waters that have drawn so many Sims to Hidden Springs. Players can discover that many of the Sims living there believe that the water which fills the springs gives them longer lives and even reduce the effects of aging. While this doesn’t have a direct gameplay correlation, it does further the mystery behind the world’s supposed Fountain of Youth.
Trailers and developer playthroughs do seem to show the Fountain of Youth in an area that resembles the Hidden Gardens community lot. However, the Fountain of Youth is not actually located there in-game. There are many theories behind this that range from it being a glitch to the Fountain of Youth only having a small chance of actually appearing.
Either way, players shouldn’t count on the Fountain appearing in their games by default. It seems as though a vast majority of players reported that they had to buy the Fountain of Youth from the Buy Mode catalog. It is the most expensive object in the game, costing a grand total of 495,000 Simoleons. For how much the Fountain of Youth mystery is hyped up by the lore of Hidden Springs, it is somewhat disappointing that players can’t actually find it in the town without using cheats to add it themselves.
The story behind Hidden Springs and its many mysteries is actually expanded upon in another Sims 3 downloadable town called Lunar Lakes. There’s a park in this future-themed town that has a lot of objects that could’ve come straight out of Hidden Springs. On top of that, players can even meet the Vanderburg family’s descendants in the form of Sofia Vanderburg. Sofia is far more of an anarchist than the family she comes from, though she does share plenty of Francisca’s anti-authoritarian traits.
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