The short version
Three tabs on the left, your Para's paperwork on the right
The Paramaker (commonly shortened to PAM) splits into three tabs in the top-left: Appearance, Clothing and Personality. The bottom-right corner holds a panel styled like a train ticket, and that is where the things you cannot change later live — lifestage, gender, pronouns and names. Everything visual can be redone from a mirror once the Para has moved in; personality and lifestage cannot.
Paramaker or Paras — which page do you want?
This page is about making your own Para. If you are looking up the townsfolk who already live in Melino — who they are, which household they belong to, how the eight lifestages work — that is our Paras page instead.
Paras and lifestagesThe screen
Four corners, four jobs
The Paramaker does not scroll. Everything is on one screen at once, which is efficient once you know it and disorienting for the first ten minutes.
Top left — the three tabs
Appearance (a figure raising an arm), Clothing (a shirt) and Personality (a brain). These swap the whole right-hand rail.
Bottom left — your household
Every Para you have made so far, plus a blank portrait that adds another. You can also generate a child, sibling, twin or parent from the genetics of a Para already in the household.
Top right — outfits and tools
The four outfit slots, the randomise dice, and the confirm checkmark that finishes the household.
Bottom right — the train ticket
Name, lifestage, gender, pronouns and voice. Styled like a ticket because the whole Paramaker is set on a train pulling into town.
The three tabs
What each tab actually controls
The split is cleaner than it looks: one tab is the body, one is what goes on the body, and one is everything that is not physical at all.
Appearance
Body, Face, Hair, Makeup and Tattoos. Presets get you close, sliders do the rest, and the colour wheel takes hex codes if you are matching a reference.
Clothing
Six categories, configured separately for each of the four outfit slots. Every item is available to every Para regardless of gender.
Read the clothing section belowPersonality
Four Stats to spend points on, one Vibe, one Social perk, one Talent and a set of Lifestyles. This is the tab you cannot redo later.
Clothing
Four outfits, six categories each
Paralives tracks four outfit slots per Para, and the game swaps between them on its own: pajamas at bedtime, workout gear at the gym, formal wear when the job calls for it. You dress each slot separately.
- Casual
- Formal
- Workout
- Pajamas
You are not limited to one look per slot. Click the three dots under an outfit icon and the plus button copies the current outfit, so a Para can carry several casual looks and pick between them in Live Mode.
| Category | What is inside | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Head & Face Accessories | Headwear · Glasses · Jewelry · Medical Items | Medical items sit alongside jewelry here — hearing aids and face masks are catalogue items, not mods. |
| Tops | Casual Shirts · Dress Shirts · Sweatshirts · Swimwear · Pajamas · Outer Layers · Costume Tops | Watch for the tuck icon and the layering icon on a tile. Both are easy to miss and both change the silhouette. |
| Bottoms | Tight Pants · Baggy Pants · Shorts · Skirts · Swimwear · Pajamas · Costume Bottoms | Same hidden-pattern logic as Tops: the colour swatch panel often holds fabric patterns as well as colours. |
| Full Body Outfits | Dresses · Jumpsuits · Overalls · Swimwear · Pajamas · Costumes | Overrides whatever is in Tops and Bottoms. Many pieces carry their own undershirt toggle. |
| Shoes | Casual Shoes · Boots · Loafers · Heels · Sandals · Slippers · Costume Shoes | Colour is currently the only thing you can change on a shoe. |
| Accessories | Socks · Tights & Leggings · Gloves · Jewelry · Nails · Underwear · Medical Items | Side-specific items such as piercings and medical gear have a left / right / both checkbox. |
- Nothing in the catalogue is gender-locked. The body frame is the same for everyone and the game deforms clothing to fit, so any item works on any Para.
- Hair, makeup and jewelry are saved per outfit, not per character — a Para can have a different hairstyle in their formal look than in their casual one.
- Patterns hide inside the colour picker. If you see a coloured square next to Main Color rather than a circle, that item has fabric patterns.
- Full Body Outfits override whatever you set in Tops and Bottoms, so build those last if you are mixing.
The train ticket in the bottom right
The whole Paramaker is framed as a train ride into Melino, and the identity panel is drawn as a ticket to match. It is easy to treat as decoration, which is a mistake — most of the settings that are permanent are on it.
- Lifestage. Eight of them, from Baby to Elder, and this is the one setting you cannot revisit at all. It only moves forward as the Para ages.
- Gender, plus an Advanced Personality button that opens pronouns, pregnancy, breastfeeding and jealousy settings.
- Voice. Four presets, filtered by lifestage, with pitch sliders promised later in Early Access.
- Names, including an optional middle name, a nickname, and a toggle to show the last name first.
Handling the interface
A few controls are not signposted anywhere in the game, and one of them will save you a lot of frustration.
Undo and redo work
Ctrl+Z steps back, Ctrl+Y steps forward. Nothing on screen tells you this, and it is the single most useful thing to know before you start dragging sliders.
Click the Para, not the menu
In the Appearance tab, clicking a Para's face jumps straight to facial morphing and clicking their body jumps to body morphing. It is much faster than hunting through the list.
Type the number
Every slider accepts a numeric value in the field above the Para's name. If you are recreating a specific character across saves, write the numbers down rather than eyeballing the arrows.
The dice randomise everything
The dice above the outfit slots rerolls the whole Para. A second dice beside Last Name rerolls just the name, which is the one you usually want.
- Metric
- Imperial
- Bananas
- Texas
Height is shown in whichever unit you picked in Settings → General. Two of those four are jokes and both of them work, which tells you something about the studio.
Go deeper
The rest of the Paramaker cluster
Body, face and height
Presets, sliders, the height range, the colour wheel and which of it your Para's children will inherit.
Stats, Talents and Vibes
All four Stats with their documented effects, the seven Talents, the five selectable Social perks, and what leaving a Stat at zero actually costs.
Gender, pronouns and romance settings
The Advanced Personality panel: who can get pregnant, who can breastfeed, and the jealousy setting that makes polyamorous households possible.
Editing a Para after creation
Since 0.1.5 a mirror reopens almost the whole editor. What that covers, what stays locked, and the console command for the rest.
Paramaker questions
- What is the Paramaker in Paralives?
- It is the character creator, commonly shortened to PAM. It opens when you start a new household and covers appearance, clothing, personality and identity for every Para in that household.
- Can I reopen the Paramaker after creating a Para?
- Partly. Since patch 0.1.5, looking in a mirror or visiting the hospital or pharmacy reopens everything except relationship labels, personality and lifestage. Personality can only be reset with a console command, and lifestage cannot be changed at all.
- Are clothes in Paralives locked to a gender?
- No. Parafolks share one gender-neutral body frame and the game deforms garments to fit it, so the entire catalogue is open to every Para whatever their gender setting.
- How many outfits can each Para have?
- Four slots — Casual, Formal, Workout and Pajamas — and multiple saved looks inside each slot. Use the three-dot button under an outfit icon, then the plus, to duplicate the current look.
- Is there an undo button in the Paramaker?
- Ctrl+Z undoes and Ctrl+Y redoes. Neither is labelled anywhere on screen.
- Can I add mods and custom content to the Paramaker?
- Yes. Steam Workshop items show a cloud-with-arrow icon on their thumbnail so you can tell them apart from base-game content. Modded clothing has to declare its layering compatibility, which is why some CC will not sit under a jacket.
Keep reading
Where the Paramaker leads
Paras and lifestages
The eight lifestages and the townsfolk who already live in Melino — the counterpart to making your own.
Vibes explained
All eight Vibes, what each one does in play, and which three are not in the current build.
Skills
What your Talent and Stat choices speed up once the household moves in.
Promotions and job rank
Stats feed job performance directly — this is where those percentages land.
Console command index
Searchable list of every command, including the ones that reopen the Paramaker.
Custom content
How CC reaches the Paramaker catalogue and why some modded clothes cannot be layered.
Interface layout and catalogue structure checked against 0.1.7c on 27 July 2026.