Us humans are made up of so many complex and often contradictory parts, which makes the idea of artificially recreating that kind of consciousness a hefty task that books, movies, video games, and more have probed and pondered for decades. Yet, despite all the challenges, it’s a plight developer Krafton is taking a stab at with its realistically rendered life simulator, inZOI. Boasting an in-depth character creator, approachable building tools, and a slew of interesting social systems, inZOI is already an impressive experiment – but as of its Early Access launch, it’s one that still struggles to feel coherent.
In inZOI, you aren’t a God, but rather an intern at a mysterious business known as AR Company. Here you have kitty co-workers and a series of parallel universes to manage from the comfort of your tablet screen, controlling the citizens (called Zois) of different households as they navigate their daily lives. To do this, you’ll model your Zois from digital clay, imprinting them with personality traits and life goals before shipping them off to go to school, get jobs, fall in love, and create more generations of little Zois. It’s hard not to draw immediate comparisons to The Sims, a series that inZOI is so clearly inspired by – still, as I spent more time with Krafton’s take on the genre, it’s apparent the studio has its own ideas about what makes people tick.
Before you can dive into running or ruining the lives of your digital avatars, you first need to create a household using inZOI’s sizable suite of customization tools. Alongside choosing your Zoi’s name, gender, and age range (which includes Child, Teenager, Young Adult, Adult, Middle Ages, and Senior), you’ll also pick their Trait, which acts as the backbone for their personality. From Scholar to Socialite, there are 18 to choose from, and each archetype packs a series of positive and negative behavioural quirks into one simple package. For example, a Charmer will have an easier time growing romantic relationships, but with the trade-off of that the “sad” mood sticks around for longer than other Zois, whereas an Adventurer will be more excitable, but similarly feel bored for longer.
It’s a convenient and speedy process, but also one that isn’t as customizable as I would have liked. Once in the world, you can also select up to 10 preferences that will further impact how your Zoi interacts with their surroundings, such as a love of coffee or hatred of showering. But while the combination of likes, dislikes, and personality traits can seem quite substantial on paper, unfortunately, my Zois ended up feeling fairly similar to one another despite all the warring traits and preferences.
Psychology selected, the next phase of creating life is all about mushing the features of your Zoi into a shape of your liking. There are preset looks to choose between, as well as the option to tug on anchor points and twist their face into a snatched or terrifying visage. Detailed Editing adds even more anchor points to paw at, a boon for those with specific ideas and time to burn. Perhaps my favourite aspect of this process is the symmetry toggle, which usually keeps your Zoi looking uniform and magazine-ready, but leads to unique (if not haunting) creations when turned off – nothing says business professional like a permanent ‘People’s Eyebrow.’
On top of facial structure, there’s also multiple layers of makeup like blush and highlighter to consider, as well as scars and freckles. That’s before you even get to the slew of sliders that tweak skin texture and genetic features like how prominent your chin cleft is or how deep your smile lines can go. There’s also plenty of hairstyles too, with multiple colour sliders that allow you to not only choose highlights and lowlights but alter the length in real time. It’s a mouthful of polished features that I could easily spend hours with – and I certainly did. Designing an avatar that feels custom is such a key component of life simulators, and it’s obvious Krafton took that very seriously with its character creator toolbox, as it is by far inZOI’s best feature.
But it’s not over just yet, as a second Zoi-making time-sink follows up this facial putty playtime — outfit selection. You have nine different looks to style for each Zoi, including winter wear, swimsuits, and pyjamas, plus accessories to tag on top of those. inZOI’s style pulls from current trends with low rise cargo pants and Nuptse-like puffer jackets, as well as classic picks like tailored army jackets and simple pencil skirts. The pool of options is reasonable on its own, however inZOI has another trick up its sleeve: the Craft menu. From here, you can select a basic layer such as a top and tweak more specific aspects like the sleeves or neckline. Admittedly, it’s a fairly basic system, though it does well to fill in the gaps throughout inZOI’s moderately sized pre-designed wardrobe.
So you made a family, what now? More choices, of course. There are two locations available to live in at the moment: Bliss Bay, which is a beachy area that boasts burgers, buses, and a replica Santa Monica Pier, and the Seoul-inspired metropolis Dowon, which consists of towering skyscrapers and grassy public parks. Both locations offer premade housing options as well as empty lots to start fresh on, all tucked alongside a small pool of public buildings to visit. Unfortunately, this is where inZOI’s slick first impression starts to wane.
It’s clear Krafton wants these cities to seem bustling, but the more time I spent wandering around, the more the environments started to blend into one fairly empty and repetitive scene. I appreciated the tongue-in-cheek references to real world locations, like the mock CU convenience store or faux-McDonalds, and I was pleased to see random Zois milling about minding their own business. However, these small wins faded into the background as the Zois began acting like sentinels running between locations in packs. I can’t deny that watching a gaggle of random Zois all sprint to a public park or all vacuum the same 3×3 room isn’t funny, but it also left me longing for a world that felt more human. As is, the strange choreography and inaccessible architecture gives the world an uncanny atmosphere that makes you feel more like an onlooker than an active participant.
You can alleviate some of the alienation by curating a corner of the world to call your own. InZOI’s build mode follows a similar set of principles to the Character Creator Studio – more is more. You can drop in preset buildings or rooms and customize them from there, or start from the studs up. There are multiple wall sizes, windows, and doors which you can adorn with custom textures and colours. Furniture can also be customised, and you can tweak pretty much everything from the metallic accents of your fridge to the fabric on your sofa. As with the clothing crafting, there is also furniture crafting to mess around with, and you can create basic objects like desks by combining a distinct tabletop with a unique set of legs. This system is fairly rudimentary, but I thoroughly enjoyed blending oppositional aesthetics like a cottagecore mushroom lamp shade and a copper piping base to create what I'm calling a ‘funguspunk’ light. Yet despite all the tools at my disposal, the frequently clunky UI meant I struggled placing objects or extending rooms, often scrapping a complex building concept for a more angular one as I opted for function over style.
Family? Check. Home? Double check. Now it’s time to keep your humble abode running and your wacky avatars alive. Thankfully, Zoi’s are fairly simple creatures and you only need to juggle a few systems to stave off an early grave or a messy house. Alongside managing needs like hygiene, hunger, and sleep, Zoi’s also have short term Urges to fulfill and larger Ambitions to track, both of which reward you with positive mood modifiers upon completion. These tasks can be as simple as having a conversation or purchasing a specific item for their house, and they do well to guide you towards features you may not be aware of.
While much of the information is available on screen, you keep track of your family through a helpful pop-up window on your bottom bar called a Zoi Card. Here is where you can also check your Zoi’s individual skills, nurtured through activities like cleaning or playing music. Zois also have Values, which form based on the trait you selected to begin with and the types of experiences that have molded their perspective in the time since. For example, one of my Zoi’s gave birth to their first child and their core value endearingly shifted to Love. Keeping an eye on all of these levers creates an ample workload — it’s just a shame that I never felt like I was working toward anything meaningful, with many of these metrics amounting to very little in terms of gameplay payoff.
This lack of depth extends to job and school progression, which is tied to whether your Zoi completes a small list of tasks during their shift or after class. For the most part my Zois managed this on their own, leaving me to potter about until they were done, my influence having little to no bearing on their acumen. Big milestones like marriage and kids also lack adequate significance, and despite working to help them achieve key goals, my Zois felt unbothered about the fruits of their labour. So much so that on multiple occasions one of my families left their baby home alone, despite it being only a few minutes old.
Ultimately, my Zois didn't seem to have much of a soul, despite having the building blocks in place to imagine one. Occasionally their moods would shift, and they could emote in a realistic and charming way, but this rarely stopped them from acting the exact same as they would regardless of being happy or sad. It’s intriguing to see what Krafton is driving at with all these moving parts. As of right now, though, there’s a lack of cohesion that makes the overall sense of progression feel somewhat meaningless.
There is a bit of a saving grace though, and that’s inZOI’s Karma system, which acts as the nefarious antagonist that oversees your Zoi’s happy little lives. A kind and gregarious Zoi is more likely to win the lottery or earn a prize from the claw machine than one that’s been farting secretly, in a malicious way. Hilariously, despite this inbuilt limitation, the Zois all seem to want to be bad people when left to their own devices, or at least that was the case across my many households. Managing a house of five was like running a daycare, but instead of having a tantrum over sharing toys, my ‘children’ would steal from my purse and start screaming at strangers on the street. inZOI gets close to replicating some of the silly magic The Sims is known for in these moments, providing me with plenty of clippable encounters I’d be keen to share with friends, which does at least infuse the world with some much needed personality.
Addressing the elephant in the room, it’s no secret that Krafton has partnered with Nvidia to add AI to all of its games, and inZOI has not been spared from this decision. Across the Build Mode and the Creator Studio, there are options to create custom textures using generative AI by writing a prompt in the submenu. Beyond those generative textures, the in-game signage, writing, and dialogue trees also have a stiff, artificial whiff about them. I couldn’t be sure as to whether they were produced with generative AI too, but the fact that it felt that way isn’t a compliment, and says something about the quality of inZOI’s conversational prompts as a whole. Many friendly chats veer off the rails into awkward conversations about crypto or the development of artificial intelligence. While it’s easy enough to ignore when crafting, it’s impossible not to notice that strangeness when trying to make friends or form a romantic connection.