Review Insights · App Store
Virtual Families 3
LDW Software, LLC · 110,022 ratings · ★ 4.8
4.8
★★★★★
110,022 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 30 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"game"
21 negative reviews mention this · 70% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Why use ai？. As far as I know the game itself has no ai but the app cover does which is pretty disappointing as the usual artwork is why i liked ldw games as it’s nostalgic yet fits the aesthetic of the game. This not even the only game with ai covers. …" - momomochii👤
2
"money"
11 negative reviews mention this · 37% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Why use ai？. As far as I know the game itself has no ai but the app cover does which is pretty disappointing as the usual artwork is why i liked ldw games as it’s nostalgic yet fits the aesthetic of the game. This not even the only game with ai covers. …" - momomochii👤
3
"coins"
11 negative reviews mention this · 37% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Why use ai？. As far as I know the game itself has no ai but the app cover does which is pretty disappointing as the usual artwork is why i liked ldw games as it’s nostalgic yet fits the aesthetic of the game. This not even the only game with ai covers. …" - momomochii👤
4
"play"
8 negative reviews mention this · 27% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Why use ai？. As far as I know the game itself has no ai but the app cover does which is pretty disappointing as the usual artwork is why i liked ldw games as it’s nostalgic yet fits the aesthetic of the game. This not even the only game with ai covers. …" - momomochii👤
5
"families"
6 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Why use ai？. As far as I know the game itself has no ai but the app cover does which is pretty disappointing as the usual artwork is why i liked ldw games as it’s nostalgic yet fits the aesthetic of the game. This not even the only game with ai covers. …" - momomochii👤
6
"playing"
6 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Game restarted out of nowhere. I came back to the game after not playing since 2023 or 2024 and was able to continue where I left off back then. I’ve been playing for the past two weeks and made so much progress with the game and I’ve been enjoying it and I’ve played all…" - Ggrme
7
"virtual"
5 negative reviews mention this · 17% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Why use ai？. As far as I know the game itself has no ai but the app cover does which is pretty disappointing as the usual artwork is why i liked ldw games as it’s nostalgic yet fits the aesthetic of the game. This not even the only game with ai covers. …" - momomochii👤
8
"house"
5 negative reviews mention this · 17% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Pricing. I do not want to give a one star review. I feel like it is necessary. This needs to be taken into account. I played virtual family for years. I’ve played 1,2 and now three I’ve also played the island and villagers as well, and I have never …" - dissapointedfroggytree
9
"virtual families"
4 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Why use ai？. As far as I know the game itself has no ai but the app cover does which is pretty disappointing as the usual artwork is why i liked ldw games as it’s nostalgic yet fits the aesthetic of the game. This not even the only game with ai covers. …" - momomochii👤
10
"played"
4 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Pricing. I do not want to give a one star review. I feel like it is necessary. This needs to be taken into account. I played virtual family for years. I’ve played 1,2 and now three I’ve also played the island and villagers as well, and I have never …" - dissapointedfroggytree
11
"family"
4 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Pricing. I do not want to give a one star review. I feel like it is necessary. This needs to be taken into account. I played virtual family for years. I’ve played 1,2 and now three I’ve also played the island and villagers as well, and I have never …" - dissapointedfroggytree
12
"real"
4 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Pricing. I do not want to give a one star review. I feel like it is necessary. This needs to be taken into account. I played virtual family for years. I’ve played 1,2 and now three I’ve also played the island and villagers as well, and I have never …" - dissapointedfroggytree
📋 All 30 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
Why use ai？
As far as I know the game itself has no ai but the app cover does which is pretty disappointing as the usual artwork is why i liked ldw games as it’s nostalgic yet fits the aesthetic of the game. This not even the only game with ai covers. The newer ones have it and im just like why fall for the propaganda especially since you guys have the money to hire artists and the assets itself aren’t ai idk it makes me not want to play newer games and just the virtual families one & two. Also the newer games are a harder to get coins and more p2w which is high key cray.
Pricing
I do not want to give a one star review. I feel like it is necessary. This needs to be taken into account. I played virtual family for years. I’ve played 1,2 and now three I’ve also played the island and villagers as well, and I have never in my life been so appalled against the pricing of in game currency and real life currency. The lowest package you can buy for coins is $1.99 and that only gives you 600 that you could easily watch six ads and get. on top of that trying to purchase an amenity for your resort or a room for your home Is just absolutely outrageous. It takes me a whole month or more just to get that in game currency. $37,000 coins for an add-on to the resort is absolutely ridiculous. When I played the past virtual family game, I’ve never had to save up this much. I went through at least 20 or more families and I’m not even halfway done with the house. Making a little cheaper so it doesn’t take months to achieve.
F
Please they are not giving birth
keeps telling me i have no internet when i do im sitting here enjoying my disney+ so ik its not me
time for an update
Doesn’t allot correct coins
My salaries are not being dispersed correctly and is costly me thousands of coins. I was supposed to have around 10,000 more coins at this point based on yesterday’s projection but it has only gone up by 2,000.
Can’t get old account
New phone and it won’t transfer over
Good but I need help
How do I get the father I can’t unclog the toilet rather how do I do so
Too many bugs
I bought food for my family and can’t drag it to the counter. I’ve tried and tried. It just stays in inventory. No point in playing this game. Bought grains dairy and meats. The fridge is at 35 and the game won’t let me put the food in inventory on the freaking counter. So their food just keeps going down even though I keep buying food. Maybe it’s just on the iPhone. Bc every time I try to drag it down to the counter my phones menu just drops down instead. Could yall like fix that?
My ants in my house??
Please give me solutions
Money grab
Honestly, nothing to play unless you have coins. And you can’t actively earn coins unless you wait for a few coins a day (which is max 30min play time) everyday or pay money. And when I say pay money I mean that the value for in game play doesn’t even come close to what you’re paying…
ridiculous
spent 700 for a career change to end up with half my salary. i didnt know id be gambling for spending that much. instant uninstall
Waste of time, DONT spend real money!
I’ve already looked at the guide, so spare me. I can definitely appreciate a game where you have to grind, but it’s INCREDIBLY slow paced. Coins are damn near impossible to earn unless you’ve mastered the career which is also basically impossible at the beginning of the game when you have no career upgrades and you have to spend what little you have on food or meds. It’s as if you have to leave the game to make progress on its own because you certainly won’t make much watching them work. What’s the point? Then there’s the praise/scold system. I suspect the developers have weakened the power of the gloves due to the way it was used to generate a ton of coins in VF2 (now they want you to rely on buying coins or watching ads for more coins), but now it just feels straight up useless. I praise them for working every time I open the game (not to the point of nagging) and somehow they’re never autonomously working. Same with scolding, even when I scold over and over, they’ll still continue to do the action, and sometimes right after scolding. Again, WHAT IS THE POINT?? You’ve completely taken away one of the only ways to control their behavior and personalizing them. Lastly, the constant wishing is SO annoying and it’s as if it’s completely unrelated to the game. It seems like I’m constantly getting “Wishing for more bedroom/bathroom stuff” even MORE after I’ve completely filled up the whole house. Feels like such a waste. I wouldn’t recommend this game at all, you’re better off playing the sims😭
HORRIBLE WITH EACH UPDATE
I had OVER 8,000 coins!!!!! I log in the next day and they’re gone!!! I didn’t buy anything for my family! IM DONE WITH THIS GAME! That is ridiculous!!
Stole my coins.
I saved money to buy a cat, and when I purchased the cat, I never got it inside the game but it took my money. . This game is not the same.. Just buggy and hard to play.
Se pone aburrido 👎🏼
This game never have good discount for coins so hard to buy coins here too expensive for nothing. Get boring. You can’t decor nothing because is hard to get good coins packages.
Used to be better
They added a resort and all the furniture is crazy expensive, most items range from 20,000-90,000 coins. You’ll spend an entire generation saving up for one piece of furniture, unless you actually want to buy things for the main house then you’ll have to spend multiple generations saving up for the resort. And while you’re doing that the resort rating will just keep going down, even if you have all the rooms unlocked there for some reason. I wish they didn’t add the resort the game was better before.
What happened to Virtual Families?
They used to be a good franchise back with vf1 but after vf2 they became money hungry pay to play games. virtual families 1 is the only and last game that didn’t have pay to play you paid a one time fee and everything including content only cost in-game currency such a shame they took the EA route and became so greedy. they still could have made plenty of money if they kept it at one paid transaction instead of becoming a microtransactions greedy game franchise
Even on steam you pay for vf2 and still have microtransactions when that should be illegal after one payment that’s a different level of greed.
Even on steam you pay for vf2 and still have microtransactions when that should be illegal after one payment that’s a different level of greed.
Too Many Glitches
I really wanted to like this game it’s boring but soothing but I was ok with that. But the problem is it has way too many glitches like I deleted it today 11/14/25 because my couple had twins the game started over and they were gone also their have been times when I paid for repairs and because the game started over the coins were taken and not replaced. Also I’ve had two characters that had a glitch of walking way too fast. Also if you play on a newer phone it’s harder to hit the bar for store because of where it’s located. So the really need to do some major upgrade and make the game more fine I played this back in 2012 and it’s still almost exactly the same.
Horrible, boring waste of time
Incredibly basic and boring, characters level up insanely slow, anytime you finally build up some money you have to use it for repairs and medicine. Hate this game. I have more fun just staring at a wall
Not unplayable.
Just deeply disappointing.
I wanted to like VF3 because I love the series but honestly it just isn’t fun the way the first two were and everything takes forever and the money is so slow and the resort loses all your progress overnight and adoption is too expensive so my LGBTQIA+ families couldn’t even continue and the whole thing just feels like it was made by someone who didn’t understand why people liked the older games so yeah I’m deleting it.
ai slop
used to play this game a lot when i was younger but the use of ai slop is hella disappointing 💔
Game restarted out of nowhere
I came back to the game after not playing since 2023 or 2024 and was able to continue where I left off back then. I’ve been playing for the past two weeks and made so much progress with the game and I’ve been enjoying it and I’ve played all of the virtual families for about 10 years now. However, when I came back to the game today after a few hours it reset out of nowhere and I have to start over which I won’t be doing. Very unfortunate because I finally got back into the game and was really excited to spend my summer taking care of my peeps.
Stingy
They became more stingy with the coins in this game. Takes forever to get something and the events in this game takes a long time to actually do anything in the game. Should add more things and more ways to get more coins not fair at all if you enjoy playing this game.
Cute Game
It’s a cute and interactive game but it is so difficult to get money! The collectibles once sold range from $10-$60 but are typically $15. When the people work even though their job says they make a couple hundred they get paid $7…. There’s literally no way to make money.
Not working
Keep getting an error code and game won't open at all
Creepy and ugly people
Hello game makers, I hope this message makes it to you. Your game is so innovative and fun compared to virtual families 2 which I have played and loved for years now. I love that this game has more realistic features as far as the different houses (OG and vacation), furniture, pets ect. Super fun from that perspective. However there is a huge aspect that I cannot and will not get over, the people you made. They look so poorly done and are quite frankly ugly and creepy. This is keeping me from playing your game even as enticing as all the cool features are. I don’t want to “raise” a family of ugly and creepy people. They are unnerving and weird. Why do they look like rag dolls when you drag them. The way they move looks poorly done and overall their graphics look cheap and terrible. So please, fix this and I know me along with many other would love to enjoy your game. I also tend to spend real money on your game and I just won’t do that if it is not worth it. I love the path you took with the diversity of the different ethnic groups but please make the people easier to look at and less creepy as in V families 2. If you are willing to make these changes I know me along with many other people will feel WAY more inclined to play this game and I won’t get creeped out every time I try and give it a chance. Thank you.
Always broke
Gameplay is fun! But things constantly break, people always get sick, and they rarely make enough money. It goes to food and medicine because otherwise they can’t do anything
Help!
I think this game has a lot of potential, but right now it feels anticlimactic. I’ve spent four months playing, working toward finding the toy that’s supposed to get rid of the ghost. When I finally found it, the moment fell flat. I expected a deeper payoff, maybe giving the toy to the ghost, seeing a backstory, or uncovering something meaningful, but none of that happened. It honestly made the whole quest feel like a waste of time.
Another issue is how one-dimensional the game feels. There’s no real interaction with other players, and everything takes place inside the same house, which can get boring. The storylines could be so much richer, and it feels like a missed opportunity not to take them further. I understand not wanting to overcomplicate things, but the game really needs more layers to stay engaging.
I do enjoy playing, but the constant charges for everything are frustrating. Many players, including myself, don’t have a lot of disposable income. We play because the game brings us joy, but that joy fades when every feature or item comes with a high price tag. If the game is going to stay this simple, things need to be more affordable. And if the developers plan to expand the game, that depth needs to come without nickel-and-diming players.
Overall, the game could be great, but it needs more substance, more interaction with other players and more fairness to truly get there.
Another issue is how one-dimensional the game feels. There’s no real interaction with other players, and everything takes place inside the same house, which can get boring. The storylines could be so much richer, and it feels like a missed opportunity not to take them further. I understand not wanting to overcomplicate things, but the game really needs more layers to stay engaging.
I do enjoy playing, but the constant charges for everything are frustrating. Many players, including myself, don’t have a lot of disposable income. We play because the game brings us joy, but that joy fades when every feature or item comes with a high price tag. If the game is going to stay this simple, things need to be more affordable. And if the developers plan to expand the game, that depth needs to come without nickel-and-diming players.
Overall, the game could be great, but it needs more substance, more interaction with other players and more fairness to truly get there.
It’s okay
The game is really slow I log in maybe once or twice a week to check the progress of my sims. It’s not really easy to make money so it kinda makes the game a little less enjoyable than others. But I do enjoy at least 15-20 mins a day before I’m bored and move on.
Update
I like the game but it needs to be updated. I can’t use some of the functions because the game isn’t formatted to fit my screen. I have a iPhone 16pro. The tab bars are in the way.
Sentiment summary
95%
Positive (4-5★)
3%
Neutral (3★)
2%
Negative (1-2★)