I've been following the discussion on this challenge, and it motivated me enough to try it. I succeded within about 4 hours playing time.
Create a house for the family on any size lot, but the family only starts with the standard $20,000.
I moved the family to a 2x2 lot, leaving them with $18,400 to play with. This was used on building a tiny house, with two seperate bedrooms for the twins of 2x3 squares to keep them from waking each other up, a 2x3 bathroom with expensive toilet and cheap shower, and a 2x3 bedroom for the mother. The central room was a square of about 7-8 squares on one side, which served as kitchen, living room and training room. I carpeted the place in cheap carpet, but left walls bare. This left plenty of money for the few pieces of furniture and for the mother to not need to get a job until the twins were half way through child stage. Food was also grown, which meant paying for a delivery once.
no money except through a career, no leaving lot under your control except via school bus/carpool, no inviting sims over with another playable family, no off-lot skilling except through chance cards/school.
Ran into a couple of problems with these restrictions, but they were due to my stupidity. Eg, twins became friends with Sharla Ottomas but couldn't phone her because she hadn't moved into a house yet. The "no money except through a career" ensured that the mother got a job in the end, and meant that the evil twin had plenty of chances to ruin the good twin's artwork before selling it off for $0.
No turning into supernaturals (vampires, zombies, plant sims, werewolves.)
I actually had my first in-game born plantsim during this challenge, due to the mother using too much bug spray. Was very surprised, but called up the garden club and got her fixed. Now the challenge is over she's happily a plantsim again!
Twins must grow up together (age transition on the same day between 6pm and midnight.) When they age to teens, they must choose the same aspiration.
I let the first and second age transitions happen naturally, but the third (teen to adult) I chose to do ASAP due to the way the aspiration levels were looking. I chose knowledge for the aspiration, which was a mistake due to the skill matching between the twins. This meant very early on in the teen stage I clicked that I could skill the evil twin beyond the good twin without consequence - however if I skilled the good twin beyond the evil twin, the evil twin was usually satisfying skill wants when I skilled her up to her sister's level. In this challenge, most skilling was done through normal gameplay, not by my direction to read books. The exception to this was skilling the evil twin in charisma for the headmaster mini-game.
-10 parent or twin suffers aspiration failure (per instance)
No aspiration failure through-out the challenge, but was interested to see the good twin fall into aspiration failure straight after aging to adult due to the 10,000 asp hit for growing up uneducated. However, that was outside the challenge time-frame and she grew up well.
-1 Anyone pees or passes out on lot (family or visitor)
I had one passing out, by the mother near the end of the toddler stage. My own stupidity. I was wondering, though, about whether toddlers "pass out"? Or is it just sleep when they do it? Otherwise how would the "keep in a room with a radio on" strategy work?
-1 For each use of an Aspiration or Career Reward object.
Not needed. I rarely use these in normal game play anyway.
-5 parent is fired or demoted (per event)
She was demoted once, due to my taking a chance card. I guess pressing "ignore" would solve that, but I prefer not to. I didn't see anything about ignoring chance cards in the rules?
-5 parent ages to elder and grows up badly, or dies before twins are teens
I was wondering if you knew that if played without aspiration rewards, the parent still has three days left before turning to elder when the challenge finishes? I guess this is just an extra penulty for anyone who (mis)uses aspiration rewards?
-5 parent isn't friends with both children
It was very trivial for the parent to reach BBF status with her two children.
-5 parent doesn't get kids into private school
There was no penalty for days of not being in private school, so I didn't do this until half way through the teen stage. By this time, there was more than $20,000 saved, which allowed me to buy expensive wallpaper and an expensive statue. I trained the evil twin in charisma to schmooze, while the mother was around a level 8 in cooking skill. Evil twin did the house tour (moving the statue from room to room - nothing against that exploit in the rules), while mother made the dinner. Easily passed first time. Managed to time it so that the want triggered for the good twin, while the evil twin did not receive any benefit.
-5 per twin that doesn't learn all three toddler skills, learn to study, have a best friend outside the family, have a first kiss (cumulative)
This was indeed the hardest part of the challenge. The evil twin rolled wants to learn to walk and talk on the first day, and so I trained her in the potty first. Trained her in the other two skills most of the way, but didn't complete them until 4pm of the last day of being toddler, when the wants finally went away. Training both toddlers in all three skills took some doing, but three of the four days were Autumn and so the seasonal boost was very helpful (Nothing in the rules about setting all four seasons to the same. In this case, autumn autumn spring spring is probably optimal - first two for skilling when younger, then romancing when teens)
Learn to study was done in no time, with little want benefit for the evil twin - the aspiration drainage of children is surprisingly high, as JMP suggested above. It really took me by surprise. Have first kiss was a funny one, and I managed to hit the evil twin with two rejected first kisses before giving it to her when she didn't have a want for it any more.
- -5 per twin that doesn't get an A+ in grade school
- -5 per twin that doesn't get an A+ in high school
- -5 per failing grade (D or F)
- -5 per twin that doesn't earn a scholarship
The wording of the first two of these confused me, until I realised you meant get an A+ both as a child and as a teen. This was achieved, however I was cheated by this as the game threw three (!!) snow days my way - stopping the evil twin from getting this requirement until the day of age transition to teen. This also trigged the want she had for an A+, throwing her into marginal green aspiration. The aspirational decay just wasn't fast enough to counteract this and she aged to teen automatically in green aspiration. No failing grades - in fact the one scholarship both twins got was the "A- or better grade" scholarship.
-5 if evil twin has fewer friends, skill points, talent badges, or scholarships than good twin (cumulative, per category)
This was no problem. In fact my stragtegy to this was to make sure it was the evil twin who got the skill points, badges and scholarships. She ended the challenge with almost twice as many skill points than the good twin. Does this rule mean the same total number of skill points or the same pattern of skill points? (Ie would the penulty be given if the good twin had 10 cooking points, but the evil twin had 5 logic and 5 cleaning points?) With regards to friends, because the good twin has to befriend everyone she meets and the evil twin has to have the same friends I made sure the good twin met as least Sims as possible. In fact, the only people she met were the nanny and people she brought home from school. It was simple to keep her from meeting the mother's boyfriend, for example. She didn't have the "met X" memory or his picture in her friend panel, yet the evil twin knew him quite well in the end. The evil twin knew more people, and I think had one more friend than the good twin.
-5 good twin grows up badly from toddler to child, from child to teen, or from teen to (young) adult (cumulative)
5 evil twin grows up well from toddler to child, from child to teen, or from teen to (young) adult (cumulative)
Only one problem with this, the evil twin grew up good once due to the snow day thing referred to above.
-5 good twin has no best friends outside family
-1 good twin does not make friends with each person met (cumulative, per person)
-1 evil twin does not pull a prank, irritate, or fight each person met (cumulative, only needs to be done once per person)
Not too much of a problem, given the long time-frame for this challenge. It was hard to remember which people the evil twin had irritated, but by the time her relationship was up with them she could do it and "get away with it".
+1 For each LTW fulfilled.
Sadly not gotten, due to the mother's LTW being "graduate 3 children". Silly mother.
So my overall score was -11, mostly due to my own stupidity. I don't think that's too bad, however far below what I was expecting.
I hope this is helpful to you. This was my first play through, and I may do it again. I found it quite fun and refreshing from my normal game play. Is there any point I've missed that you want feed back on?