There I was happily playing away when all of a sudden all of my sims and all the animations going on around the place just stopped, like time had frozen. I could still move the camera around but I couldn't interact with them anymore. I exited the game, saving in the process. I knew it risked cementing this bug but I didn't want to lose hours of progress. I reopened the game and went back to the lot only to be faced with the blank faces of my staring sims.

At this point I realised I was in bother so i thought to do some troubleshooting. I tried to enter another lot but after it finished the loading animation the egg timer and loading screen remained and nothing happened. On one lot I even saw a small window open on the bottom right, like when the maid arrives, with Mr Humble or whatever his name is walking around. I went to a different neighbourhood, Disiderata Valley to be exact and things worked normally. I went back into my Downtown in Riverblossom Hills and moved the sims out then bulldozed the house. This didn't fix anything though as entering lots still caused the same effect. Curiously though, the lots that came with Downtown by default i could enter, despite it taking far longer to load. I tried deleting and re adding a custom house to downtown to see if that would fix things...but it didn't.

Is there any way to fix this? I really don't want to start again with my sims.

Thanks in advance.

P.S I've also been experiencing that blasted 'jump bug' where sims just 'pop out' of interactions.