Did you mean The Sims? May have been โLife by Youโ, published by the same people who made Cities Skylines. They even had the lead designer for The Sims 2 on the team too, so it would have had a pretty good chance of being a faithful interpretation without all the excessive DLC.
No idea why it got cancelled though
The stated reason was that the games development was not proceeding at a pace that gave the publisher confidence in it. Itโs not too surprising after several delays and rather rough looking gameplay material shown in the ramp up to early access.
Itโs pretty sad as I was especially excited for the moddability and also as it was the only project the now presumably defunct developer worked on.
But I think itโs still better to cut it off early than to release something that is just not fulfilling a certain standard. It looked like it was much earlier in development than it was from the screenshots.
Really hope the other entries in the genre step in and manage to get the Cities Skylines effect going again.