Just before gamescom last year, I got access to hands-on time with inZOI: the ambitious life sim coming soon from South Korean-based KRAFTON, who you may know as the studio behind battle royale giant PUBG. Ahead of its Steam Early Access launch on March 28th, I was invited to a playtest of the current inZOI build, one that should be representative of what fans should expect come the end of the month.
For those of you unfamiliar, inZOI is very much like The Sims in that it lets players create artificial people, called Zoi, of course, and have said artificial people lead diverse lives and form profound relationships with one another. All of this happens in virtual cities that can be shaped and moulded to the player’s liking, from granular decisions like the type of foliage present in a specific park to the overall security level of an entire neighbourhood.
Interestingly, there seems to be a narrative unfolding outside of the digital world of the Zoi, too, as players, referred to in-universe as “Creators,” are under the employment of the so-called “AR Company” – a company seemingly tasked by its mysterious founder, Zeno, with the creation of numerous simulated communities. To what end? Your guess is as good as mine.
In any case, since gamescom, inZOI seems to have progressed nicely, with the official YouTube channel posting content and information galore. Nevertheless, some key details, such as price and roadmap, have remained a mystery until very recently. During an online showcase live-streamed on March 18th, inZOI director Hyungjun Kim, a.k.a. Kjun, revealed that the game would cost 40 USD / (approximately) 60 CAD for at least as long as the game is in Early Access.
What’s more, all of the updates and DLCs will be free to owners of inZOI until an eventual 1.0 release. There is no indication of when inZOI will be feature complete, however, as the roadmap that the developers have shown reveals that they plan to release four major updates throughout the rest of 2025. As such, the assumption is that inZOI will probably not release out of Early Access until 2026, at the earliest.
Like I mentioned earlier, the build of inZOI that I got to play at home is a playtest, which is, presumably, representative of what the game looked like at the beginning of March. In addition to a game mode called “Creator Mode,” which has players design either Zoi or their houses and which should be available as a free demo right now, the playtest also allowed me to try out the standard life sim experience of overseeing the day-to-day of a Zoi I just designed. My overall opinion, some more time with inZOI, in addition to the five hours I played last summer, is that this is a title brimming with ambition but unfortunately plagued by a variety of maladies.
“…all of the updates and DLCs will be free to owners of inZOI until an eventual 1.0 release.”
Let me begin my impressions by addressing some concerns that I have about inZOI’s on-device generative AI technology and how it is used to create in-game images and 3D objects and even mimic the motion in a video or pose in a photo. To their credit, KRAFTON has been open about its AI policies, going so far as to have an entire section on their website dedicated to what they call “ethical AI” principles.
Furthermore, the proposed implementation sounds quite cool: I’d love for my Zoi to wear a t-shirt with a design that I took a photo of in real life, for example. And yet, is all this worth the many fundamental drawbacks that come from using genAI in general, drawbacks such as potentially making some jobs redundant and increasing electricity demand and water consumption? Absolutely not, in my personal opinion, but I would like for you to make up your own mind and vote with your wallet.
Something else worth mentioning here is that inZOI requires quite a strong PC, as indicated by the system requirements found here. Like with genAI, the requirements have sparked quite a debate in the fan community, especially considering that The Sims 4 runs at least decently well on most of the rigs and laptops that the target demographic for a life sim game is likely to own.
From my own experience, inZOI doesn’t even boot on the Steam Deck, runs well half of the time on my moderately strong PC and doesn’t even perform particularly well on the beefy computers that they had demoing the game at gamescom. In short, expect performance woes and glitches, especially as inZOI sees out its Early Access period.
“inZOI provides an intriguing experience.”
Moving on, the final big deterrent is that inZOI is not fully translated yet. Out of the 12 languages supported, Korean notwithstanding, the translation has been completed at more than 58% for only two languages: Japanese (80%) and English (78%). Personally, I found that this was not a huge issue when playing in English, as only in a few insignificant instances did I encounter any text still in Korean, but if you were planning on playing inZOI in, say, Spanish, you might encounter more difficulties.
This all being said, for those able to stomach all of the above, inZOI provides an intriguing experience. First of all, the “Creative Studio” is genuinely impressive, thanks in part to the highly realistic Unreal Engine 5 graphics and the plentiful (physical and mental) Zoi customization options. Similarly, the “Build Mode” features an incredible level of detail. As specified before, inZOI allows players to manage more than a given Zoi’s property, bringing some more city-sim-ish features into play, which is something I really appreciate.
There are also plenty of interesting permutations happening and choices to make at Zoi level, too. KRAFTON has stated that the relationships between Zois are at the heart of everything that happens, and this is very much true in practice. To give just one example, the Zoi I made was able to have different interactions with the people in his life.
Although, disappointingly, like I wrote the first time I got to play inZOI, I found that the NPCs are simply too easy to manipulate and to increase/decrease my Zoi’s relationship with them. Even so, I must admit that I chuckled really hard when my Zoi “discussed the future of cryptocurrency” with a random Zoi, and that became the beginning of a friendship. Life truly imitates art…I suppose…
Above all, though, what I like most about inZOI is the fact that players are able to control their Zois as if they were characters in an action-adventure title, not a life simulation game. I also really enjoy being able to manually drive cars, although this is considered to be an experimental feature at this stage. As far as I’m concerned, then, what makes inZOI stand out from The Sims is the added Grand Theft Auto-ness of it all. In the future, if KRAFTON were to lean more towards a blend of these two games, that might be more of an interesting proposition than what is available now.
As it stands, big caveats aside, inZOI is an interesting experiment but not one that I would readily recommend, at least not at the launch of Early Access. What is here is, again, intriguing, yes, but far from feature-complete and optimized for performance.
inZOI launches in Steam Early Access on 28 March, 2025.
