A ninth designer diary has been published at GameSpot. This time Lucy Bradshaw tells about the final stage the Sims 2 development is in. It's "Crunch Time" and the team is working hard (day and night) to get things finished on time. A huge wall filled with post-it notes of tasks that have to be done. The finished tasks get a big red "DONE" stamp on them. Currently many things have been done, but they're still fixing bugs and tuning the game. The developers are having a good time though, and laugh at their favourite bugs (which you'll be able to see when you get the DVD version, but also in next month's diary). She also says new players, who haven't played the Sims 2 yet, are involved to play the game, so Maxis gets their first impressions.

Page 2 is all about Strangetown (one of three neighborhoods the game will ship with) and the families living there: the Curious, the Smiths and the Grunts. Each of these families is described a bit, plus Lucy says a little bit about Strangetown in general:

"The sparks fly in this neighborhood with all of the alien abductions, the other neighbors butting in, and lots of interesting family connections. Like I said, you can move your own family in and make Strangetown your own, or play one of ours for a bit. You'll have fun with the extreme situations your sims can get into."

Included are a bunch of screenshots of StrangeLand as well, including a neighborhood overview but also some shots of the different families. First read the designer's diary, and then check out the 9 screenshots.