The short answer
There is no world editor. There is a debug mode.
Paralives ships a simple empty terrain option on the new game screen — one large blank lot in a void. On its own that is a sandbox for a single build. Type TOGGLEEDITTOWN into the console and the developer town-edit mode switches on, which adds a lot perimeter tool to the terrain tools; with it you can bulldoze the default lot, draw several smaller ones and sculpt the ground around them. That is the whole trick. It is an unfinished developer feature, not a player-facing one, so expect it to misbehave.
Set expectations
What the studio has and has not shipped
World and town editing sits on the Early Access list with no date attached, and the official wiki's build mode article puts it plainly: world editing tools are a planned feature, not something the game has. When they arrive they are expected to cover roads, lot placement and water — the pieces the debug route handles worst today.
Melino itself is fixed in the meantime. You can renovate lots you own, and patch 0.1.5 added a way to revert one to its original look, but you cannot redraw districts, move roads or reshape the map's geography, and editing commercial and public lots is limited during Early Access.
Everything below this point is players driving an unfinished developer tool. It is not a feature, it is not supported, and it can eat a build. Duplicate the save in the Load Game menu before you start, and again whenever you have made progress worth keeping.
Where the space comes from
Two blank canvases, and they are not the same
The simple empty terrain
Main menu → New Game → simple empty terrain. You pick a Storyteller and land in a flat build box with no Para and no household. It is one large lot by default, sitting in an empty void with nothing around it, which is why builders treat it as a photo studio rather than a place to live. Steam Workshop mods that enlarge the default terrain exist, and they only apply to saves created after you enable them.
Empty lots in Melino
Melino has between 50 and 70 lots, and several residential ones start empty — the Countryside district in particular is described by the studio as having big lots with a lot of building space. This is the route that keeps town life working: your builds sit in a populated world with jobs, shops and neighbours. What you cannot do is add a lot that was not already there.
The workflow
Splitting one terrain into a town
Eight steps, most of them player-verified rather than documented. The console opens with Ctrl + F1 or Ctrl + Shift + C, and the command is the same one our cheat index files under build tools.
TOGGLEEDITTOWN- 1
Start on the simple empty terrain
DemonstratedNew Game from the main menu, then the empty terrain option rather than the town. Pick any Storyteller — it does not affect building. You arrive in live mode with no Paras, so click the house icon to drop into build mode.
- 2
Open the console and switch town edit on
StudioPress Ctrl + F1 (or Ctrl + Shift + C) and enter TOGGLEEDITTOWN. The console confirms that edit town mode has been activated. Running the command again turns it back off and reports that too — worth checking, because several things behave differently while it is on.
Keys
Ctrl + F1Ctrl + Shift + C - 3
Find the lot perimeter tool
PlayersBack in build mode, open the terrain tools. With town edit active there is an extra entry that is not normally there: the lot perimeter tool. If you cannot see it, zoom in — it does not appear while the camera is pulled back to map distance.
Keys
Tab - 4
Bulldoze the single default lot
PlayersThe empty terrain arrives as one big lot covering the whole space, and you cannot draw new outlines inside it. Select it with the sledgehammer and delete it first. Clicking the lot rather than the ground under it takes a couple of attempts.
Keys
K - 5
Draw the lots you want
PlayersWith the perimeter tool, trace each lot. G toggles the grid the same way it does for walls: on, the outlines snap and stay square; off, you can draw any shape you like, including outlines that run out over water. Leave gaps between lots for the paths and greenery that will make it read as a town rather than a row of plots.
Keys
G - 6
Save, quit to the menu, load again
PlayersNew lots render as blank cubes marked for sale and look broken. That is normal. Save, quit to the main menu, hit continue, and they come back as proper separate lots. Skipping this step is why people conclude the tool does not work.
Keys
F5 - 7
Shape the world around the lots
PlayersWhile town edit is on you can place scenery that is not normally in the catalogue — searching for water or terrain turns up the pieces Melino itself is built from. Hold Shift to move a placed piece vertically, then use terrain sculpting and terrain paint to blend the edges, add a beach or fake a road surface.
Keys
Shift (hold) - 8
Switch town edit off before you build houses
PlayersBuilding with town edit still on only half works: walls go up, but Page Up will not take you to a second floor. Turn the command off, create a household, buy one of your lots and build on it the ordinary way. Each extra household buys another lot, which is how the town gets residents.
Keys
Page Up
Making several lots look like one town
A town reads as a town because of what repeats across lots, not because of any single build. Four things that carry:
- Copy exact colours instead of eyeballing them. The pipette lifts a swatch off anything already painted, and Alt + left-click with it selected clones a wall or floor swatch onto any recolourable item. A shared palette across five buildings does more for cohesion than any amount of detail on one.
- Save each finished building to the lot library before you move on. You can place it again elsewhere, and since patch 0.1.6 the game refuses to drop a library lot onto a plot too small for it — so size your perimeters with that in mind.
- Keep one district rule and break it once. A single roof material, one window family and one fence across the whole town, plus one deliberately different building — a pub, a chapel, a factory — gives the eye somewhere to land.
- Terrain paint is your road network. The debug road pieces work but sit slightly below the surface and have no intersection parts, so most finished custom towns use painted terrain for surfaces and keep the pieces for short straight runs.
The honest part
What this cannot do
The debug route gets you lots and terrain. Everything that makes a lot function — its type, its shops, its jobs — is either out of reach or out of the game. Where we could not establish an answer, the card says so instead of estimating.
Changing what a lot is
There is no in-game way to turn a residential lot into a park, shop or school. Players do it by editing the .lot text files inside the save folder and swapping the lot type identifier for one listed in the in-game control panel. It works, and it is exactly as fragile as it sounds — back the save up first, and expect to redo it after a patch.
Buying public and commercial lots
Only residential lots can be bought normally, so a park or shop you draw cannot be owned and edited through the usual route. The wiki notes the same restriction for Melino: editing commercial and public lots is limited during Early Access.
Real roads
There is a road tool in the debug set and separate road pieces in the catalogue. The tool struggles on anything but flat ground, and the pieces sit slightly below the surface with no intersection parts, so they need lifting into place and cannot be junctioned cleanly. Paras do walk on them.
A bigger canvas
The default empty terrain is small — enough for a hamlet, not a city. Steam Workshop mods that multiply its size exist and are how the larger custom towns get built; they only affect new saves. Our install guide covers subscribing and load order.
Related guideSharing a finished world
Individual lots upload to the Steam Workshop from the lot library, and that path is well supported. A whole custom terrain with its lot layout is a different thing, and we found no in-game export for it. Whether copying the save folder works for someone else is untested — we are not asserting either way.
Related guideHow much a terrain can hold
No published limit, and we found no reliable player testing. The studio has never given an object or lot budget for the empty terrain, so we will not invent one. Assume the same optimisation problems the base game has, and treat your own frame rate as the boundary.
Losing the whole thing
This is the real risk. Builders report houses vanishing and lots misbehaving, because none of it is an intended feature. Patch 0.1.5 made saves smaller and started keeping the last three autosaves, but the safest habit is still duplicating the save in the Load Game menu whenever you finish something.
Related guideCustom world FAQ
- Does Paralives have a create-a-world tool?
- Not yet. Town and world editing is on the Early Access roadmap without a date, and the official wiki lists it as a planned feature. What exists today is a developer debug mode, TOGGLEEDITTOWN, which players use to draw lots on the empty terrain.
- How do I get the empty map in Paralives?
- From the main menu choose New Game and then the simple empty terrain option instead of the town. You still pick a Storyteller, but no Para is created and you land straight in a flat, empty build space.
- Can I split one big lot into several smaller ones?
- On the empty terrain, yes. Switch on TOGGLEEDITTOWN, open the terrain tools, sledgehammer the single default lot, then draw new outlines with the lot perimeter tool. Save and reload before judging the result — the new lots only render properly after a reload.
- Can I add lots to Melino?
- No. You can renovate lots you own and, since patch 0.1.5, revert one to its original look, but the map's districts, roads and lot layout are fixed until the official tools ship.
- Can I make a working shop or school?
- Not through the interface. A lot's type and its associated workplace live in the save file, and changing them means hand-editing text files — possible, unsupported and easy to break. A Workshop mod is the safer route if you only need objects to be purchasable.
- How big can a custom world be?
- Bigger than the default terrain if you use a Workshop mod that enlarges it. Beyond that we have no verified ceiling: nobody has published performance testing and the studio has not given a limit, so treat your own frame rate as the boundary.
Keep going
Related guides
Build mode, explained
Why there is no foundation button, and how the game decides what counts as a room.
Melino district guide
The four districts, what is in each, and which lots start empty.
What is actually coming
Every promised feature sorted into confirmed, promised-without-a-date, and ruled out.
Installing mods
Workshop subscriptions, local mods, and what to do when they stop loading.
Every console command
Searchable index of the documented commands, including the build-mode ones.
15 build mode tips
Screenshot-by-screenshot tricks that save you a rebuild.
Workflow re-tested against build 0.1.7c on 2026-07-27. The official town editor was still unreleased on that date.