| inZOI | |||
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| Release Date | Gameplay & Story | Pre-Order & DLC | Review |
inZOI is the newest life sim game developed by South Korean studio KRAFTON that lets players customize their world, their way. Read our review of its early-access build to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
Everything We Know About inZOI
inZOI Story Plot
In inZOI, players can weave various life stories through created Zois that are placed unto their virtual worlds. They can be guided through childhood, the teenage years, university life, and during their job hunts in becoming adults. Players are not limited to the traditional route, as they can lead their Zois in whichever life path they desire. Every character has their own free will and intersecting relationships with other Zois players will create, and therefore their personalities, dreams, and aspirations could meld or clash, allowing for emergent situations and stories between Zois. Players craft their own stories and navigate the lives of Zois as they lead them to whatever grand adventure they have in plan. The sky’s the limit here!
In inZOI, players are employed in a company led by Psycat the cat where their jobs are to create virtual worlds inhabited by Zois. Players must create their own Zois in the character creator studios and plop them down into the virtual city of Dowon. They can control every aspect of the city, from the weather and disaster rates, down to the minutiae of assembling chairs for a home. Zois can form relationships, form families, fall out of love, and experience heartbreak.
inZOI Gameplay
inZOI is a life sim game where players create Zois (or characters) and put them into the simulated world to let them grow and navigate their lives. Zois will be fully simulated and appear as real humans, with their own dreams, aspirations, hobbies, emotions, and relationships with other Zois in the world. Players can create their own custom Zoi household and play as any of them, from the young adult full of spunk and ambition, the toddler that has much to learn about the world around them, or even an elderly person just cruising along life.
The world of inZOI centers around creating meaningful relationships with other Zois, which in turn will influence how a player’s own Zoi would feel and act. Zois can be controlled directly by the player to do tasks and whatnot, or let the game’s in-house AI to autonomously direct the Zoi by their own thoughts and feelings created by their experiences.
inZOI’s advanced character creator allows players to create their own set of unique Zois, full of extremely flexible and expansive customization features. Aside from the characters, houses and furniture can also be edited in the Build Mode, allowing players to be decorators and architects where they are provided a wide array of props and freedom to create said buildings and houses.Build Mode isn’t limited to small structures, as players will also be able to change and customize the entirety of the Dowon or Bliss Ray cityscape to their liking.
inZOI Release Date
Released on March 28, 2025 in Early Access, inZOI is now available to be purchased on Steam for $39.99. This Early Access build is only accessible on the PC version. The PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X|S will receive the full version of the game on a currently unspecified date.
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| $39.99 | Coming Soon | ||||
inZOI Review [Early Access] - Sims 4 Better Look Out
A Promising New Life Sim
Probably like a lot of gamers out there, I grew up on The Sims. Starting off with the blocky and Comic Sans-ridden The Sims 1 all the way to the wholly improved The Sims 4 which I have filled to the brim with custom content to create my dream life scenarios, I’ve spent countless hours on this particular life simulator. Needless to say, I was hyped for inZOI the moment it was announced. Immersive life simulator games as expansive as The Sims are few and far between—not many studios out there are ambitious or equipped enough to delve into the intricacies of developing a massive game. While I’m no developer myself, the countless systems just from The Sims look and feel like a headache to work with and to try to get it to work as seamlessly as possible.
And then in comes inZOI, developed by the aptly named inZOI Studio, aiming to deliver a fresh face in the genre, with high ambitions and promises to deliver a worthwhile gaming experience. Since its announcement, I’ve been following the game closely, watching trailers and news about its development—and it’s finally here!
In-Depth Customization To The Max
One of the features that the developers emphasized is the game’s customization features—and boy, did they deliver. The level of the in-depth customization is amazing, letting you do almost anything you set your mind to. From clothes and hair to all the exact nitty-gritty detail of how long you want your character’s (or as the game calls it, Zoi) eyelashes to be, there’s a wide variety of options to choose from, and everything can be color changed to the hex code you want. It’s nice that I could customize my character’s makeup exactly the way I do it in real life—also kind of surreal, but I digress.
For clothing, inZOI takes customization up a notch too. You can craft your own type of clothing right from the character creation screen, letting you choose the color or pattern, as well as the length and type of sleeves, hem, and collar. You can even add your own textures to put on your shirt, bottoms, or shoes! It adds a more personal touch to your Zoi, letting you put any type of image on your clothing as a repeating pattern.
It can be anything from normal shapes like stars and circles to full-blown pictures of your favorite idol, plastered right there across your t-shirt or shoes. There’s also a Generate AI texture option should you ever need a certain idea made into a texture on the fly—I tested it out with a pancake prompt, and it came out pretty cute, turning my plain white shirt into a cute graphic tee with delicious pancakes on it.
But perhaps you’re not too fond of spending hours and hours getting the perfect Zoi to look right, or you’re already at your wits end after failing to get the result you were aiming for. No fear, inZOI is ready with its facial recognition features to save the day! Let the game take a picture of you from your webcam and it will build it for you, more or less. Unfortunately, I do not own a webcam to fully try out this function but for those who want an instant character that looks like them, then it’s a very welcome feature to have.
That Goes For Build Mode Too
Customization does not end with the character creator, and extends to the house and community builder as well. While I admittedly mess around with character creators for literal hours to get the perfect look I want, creating actual houses and buildings from scratch is another story. I have no penchant for creativity there and would rather just move into a ready made house, but inZOI makes even the most wretched of rooms look nice. Putting together the randomest of stuff strangely still works—the beauty of organized chaos, I guess?
But don’t worry for those who are the same as me—inZOI not only has ready-made houses and apartments, but they also have ready-made rooms that you can put together to create your own house layout, complete with furniture and everything. You can then customize the furniture to your liking, changing the sheets or the wood finish or what not, letting you style it just exactly the way you want.
In that same vein, you can also fix up the appearance of certain public areas, denoted by a simple "(Editable)" note on the end of the location’s name.
Open World To Stroll In
inZOI lets you freely control your Zois using the WASD keys—which did take a bit of getting used to as the same keys move the camera instead in The Sims—and let them go out and explore the world in all its beauty. It was strangely enjoyable to see my Zoi walk out of their apartment, take the elevator down, and just stroll into the park right in front of the apartment complex. There’s a simple joy in it that lets you feel as if you’re really living your Zoi’s life. Other places require you to take the subway to access, but even if the map is broken up into smaller, more manageable areas like that, each location is still large enough that you can run around quite a bit and probably still find somewhere new to explore.
The Sims 3 used to have somewhat of the same open-world mechanic, letting you go to a place on the map in real-time. but that function was ultimately taken away in the next entry. It’s a mechanic that I liked a lot (especially when the Sims could get into their car and they can drive towards their destination like what a real person would do), and it’s nice to see it once again in inZOI.
Speaking of vehicles, you can even get your Zoi to buy one, and you can manually drive it along the streets if you wanted to. I wasn’t able to test it out by the time of this review as I (well, my Zoi) was a young student in university with little money, but it’s a feature I’m immensely looking forward to playing—once I get the cash for it in-game.
Large and Beautiful, but Empty
Despite all that, inZOI is not perfect. While I was not expecting crowds in the city of Dowon to be like those in Seoul with tons of people out and about on the streets (that would be too much for most average PC builds too—my PC sounded like a jet plane taking off already), it still feels sort of empty. The fast food burger place at the lobby of my Zoi’s apartment building cannot be entered, as well as many establishments along my immediate vicinity. Even the buildings you can travel to and enter are usually also empty and void of people, save for some places with other NPC Zois flitting about. For a huge city that’s supposedly full of life…there’s not much of that.
Some jobs are also what the community calls "rabbit holes" where the character disappears into a dark building for a period of time to fulfill a certain task or job. You let them go to work, and then that Zoi will effectively be unable to be controlled until their shift is done. And with how slow the time passes in inZOI (a full-length day is normally 96 minutes in real time, but this can be changed in the settings to a mere 48 minutes, or up to 24 hours), this may leave you just staring at your screen with nothing to do if you prefer to play a single character like I do. However, these jobs may be more developed and more interactive as updates come, with the game still at its infancy.
Besides feeling empty physically with the lack of people, the other NPC Zois themselves felt distant, always being so far away from my Zoi for some reason. Also, after a conversation ends, the respective other Zoi just simply walks away with no hesitation after the interaction is finished—no goodbyes, no nothing. It feels a little empty in that regard, for a game that emphasizes making and building relationships through experiences.
Interactions Could Use Some Work
Along with that train of thought that inZOI puts a great highlight on shaping your Zoi’s personality and experiences through Zoi interactions, socializing can be a little strange. In an attempt to be unique in choices, the interaction menu in the game is rather clunky and all over the place. You’re presented with a couple of choices to choose from to interact with the NPC, from normal questions like Get to Know their Preferences to more specific choices such as Enthuse about The Greatness of Coffee (my Zoi is a coffee lover) or something to that extent, but you can also click on a separate menu if you’re looking for a particular interaction.
However, the sheer amount of information and choices presented to you instantaneously is rather overwhelming and scattered all around, and even at normal speed, the interactions finish up so fast that you’re scrambling to queue up another topic to talk about because its autonomy isn’t as quick to give your Zoi something to do—then suddenly the Zoi you’re talking to is already walking away. Bummer.
A Lot of…Waiting
I get that the game is trying to be as immersive as possible, and other life sim-esque games have incredibly fast day-to-night cycles (I’m looking at you, Stardew Valley), but time passes by really…really slowly, even during times it doesn’t have to. As previously mentioned, a full day in inZOI by default is 96 minutes, which can then be changed to 46 minutes for a shorter day, 4 hours for a slightly longer day, and a whopping 24 hours for that full immersion experience. I stayed on the default 96 minutes during my initial playthrough, which was pretty nice at first—no more rushing out the door to get things done before the afternoon comes!
Usually, a simulation game’s morning is done before you even know it, and then you blink twice and it’s already the evening. I got my Zoi to go to the park, check out the nearby cafe, interact with several other Zois and make them my friend, read some art books, and even cooked a pretty good Egg Toast for myself—all within 9am to 2pm in-game. I did a few more stuff and explored other places, and got back to my apartment at around 5pm. My Zoi was dead tired though, and I instructed her to go to sleep, as early as it was.
Now when a character sleeps, usually it would cut to a black screen in other games, or in The Sims fashion, immensely speed up the time so that you can get back right on track with that Sim in the morning. However, it was a little strange that even at 8x speed, it felt really slow and I was stuck watching my Zoi sleep for what felt like an eternity—accompanied by the cute but weird snoring sound. It only went at 30x speed once it was around 10pm which I suppose is the normal sleeping hour.
Weird Pathing Or Movements
Additionally, something funny I noticed was that the Zoi’s pathing, whether yours or the NPCs, would be kind of wonky in a way that they do their actions unconventionally. For instance, my Zoi cooked up a delicious curry rice for herself at her apartment, then proceeded to…place it on the counter, stare into space for a few seconds, then pick it up and place it on the table…only to stand in place. After some coaching (aka. clicking on the plate to make her eat it), she finally fed herself with the curry she worked hard to make. At this point, her hunger meter was already in the red.
While I find it amusing, it may be a little annoying to some people who may find that this takes them out of their immersion, or find it frustrating that their Zoi can’t seem to do simple movements.
Imperfect, But Glowing
Given its Early Access status, it’s no surprise that inZOI is still quite barebones, feeling wholly empty at times and having its own share of glitches and whatnot. However, even at a state of current development, there’s more than enough content to clear for a good 4 to 5 hour gaming session, such as a lot of activities and locations to explore. Additionally, those with a penchant for creativity will find even more value in the game in its current state as one of the most refined things present, the customization options, is quite at a high level of quality already. inZOI can only keep moving forward from here, and I’m more than excited to see what’s coming next on their roadmap.
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inZOI Product Information
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| Title | inZOI |
|---|---|
| Release Date | March 28, 2024 (Early Access) |
| Developer | inZOI Studio |
| Publisher | KRAFTON |
| Supported Platforms | PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S |
| Genre | Simulation, Adventure |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | T |
| Official Website | inZOI Official Website |
