ranzware
For a game so insistent on letting me forge my own narrative, Inzoi makes it weirdly difficult to do so. I’m a real sucker for a meet-cute storyline, so I’ve been making my Zoi chat up a guy she met in the park, Will Stewart—he’s all artsy with pretentiously curly hair and spends his entire day painting at an easel, the exact sort of soft creative that fits the plot I’m conjuring in my head real-time.
I send my Zoi home after hours of bouncing around conversation topics with wildly varying vibes—the rise of AI, the stock prospects of the K-pop industry, my go-to pizza recipe, all perfectly normal stuff to talk to a relative stranger about—ready to continue the conversation with Will over the phone.
Except, er, I can’t seem to call him. Or invite him round. Or even email him. He’s a total ghost, only existing within the confines of his park easel. Which he insisted on returning to between each interaction, by the way.
Turns out that was only the first of many bizarre roadblocks I’d encounter in my 30 hours of seemingly being in a constant push-pull against Inzoi’s simulation. Sure, the game has all the necessary parts to stand side-by-side with The Sims, but it has a lot more to do before it can actually get there.
All style, no substance
I mean, that’s understandable to an extent. Not only is Inzoi launching into early access, it’s also got approximately, you know, 25 years of Maxis legacy knowledge to contend with. Especially since this is basically the only other game we’ve had vaguely resembling The Sims in over two decades. It feels wild that I’m even getting the chance to play an alternative that comes close to its size and scale.
And like, Inzoi certainly has a lot going on. Sort of. I can do all the usual life sim stuff: Get a job, take care of my various needs, throw parties, fall in love, level up skills, give birth, grow old, die. But so much of it never dares to delve beyond its surface level concept. There are no finer details.
I can take care of my needs, like hunger, but I can’t cook a meal for my whole family. I can schedule a beach volleyball session, but I can’t actually interact with the net. I can fall in love… as long as we’re both in the same little patch of the map.
Small details, ones that barely push into anything particularly in-depth that I fully expected to be present, simply weren’t. I lost count of how many times I tried to do something in Inzoi, only to sit there dumbfounded that it wasn’t possible.
Let’s go back to our pal Will, for example. I’m basically stalking him in the park at this point, as it’s the only way we can actually communicate, and I realise it would be so much easier if I asked him to move in. Except, it seems like I can’t actually do that unless we’re married.
So I propose. A beautiful cutscene plays—because to its credit, Inzoi is largely a gorgeous game–and the wedding happens the next day. The game asks me how long I want the wedding to last, and because I have no grasp on how quickly time flows in the game right now (turns out, incredibly slowly) I set it to the maximum, 12 hours.
I’ve been conditioned by my Sims brain to know how many hours one small activity takes, and I can always end it early if the festivities are winding down, right? Wrong. I’m locked into the entire half-day event, with no amount of clicking around menus leading me to any tangible option to call it quits.
My Zoi is starving, but thankfully there’s a kitchen set up in this wedding venue. But clicking on the appliances does nothing. I send my Zoi home for a quick bite and bring her back, and proceed to sit through several in-game hours at high speed as all my guests clutch at their stomachs, desperate for a morsel of grub. Even at 10x speed, the game seems to crawl through the minutes.
Not to take away from the handful of sweet moments I had at my wedding, though. There are several actions that are coupled with animations that are the perfect photo opp, and Inzoi’s photo mode is always a single click away to take advantage of that. But often I felt like the only reason half of the interactions were even there was to take a pretty screenshot and move on. Style without substance.
Even once I have married Zois together and interacting with each other, it feels incredibly stilted. Conversation topics continue to be tonally jarring—I can discuss “how to eat more and still not gain weight,” which doesn’t feel entirely appropriate, with some occasional dabbling in the whimsy of talking about how there’s a cat only I can see.
But then, my spousal Zois start texting each other about how they’re in therapy, and going through a tough time. I’m sorry, what? It felt like a totally left-field interaction, one which didn’t even seem to be steeped in any emotions my Zois were going through. They’d felt tranquil and sentimental, but not sad. It’s a constant tonal whiplash and I can’t quite pinpoint what vibe Inzoi is exactly trying to go for.
I’m going to put some of this down to localisation, which makes the whole thing feel weirdly sanitised at the moment. There’s a stark lack of personality which makes the above interactions feel even stranger, and I feel Krafton could really benefit by bringing in some native English speakers to sprinkle Inzoi’s dialogue with some actual human-sounding language.
Uncanny valley
While Inzoi is lacking in the “sounding human” department, it doesn’t have that problem when it comes to looking human. The game is stunning, boasting ultra-realistic looking Zois and a detailed world. Admittedly, that realism meant I was struggling to pull and tug at the Create-a-Zoi sliders to make something normal-looking, somehow always veering into horrifyingly gaunt or butt-chinned instead. Inzoi also seems to have a strange aversion to the thin-lipped, actively resisting my attempts to make anyone who wasn’t sporting at least half a millilitre of filler.
While customisation options are fairly limited right now, there’s still a lot to do with them. Most hairstyles have different colour blocking options, to the point I was actually able to recreate my own slightly bizarre colour-blocked hair to a T, which was an unexpected yet pleasant surprise. Inzoi’s also established the foundations to create bespoke clothing items, like tops with different collars, sleeves, and torso types.
It’s very basic right now, but the stuff that’s there I really do like. It’s a great way to refine an item of clothing you want to tweak just a tiny bit, and everything can be coloured whichever way you like. I will say that clothes seem to be lacking in texture right now, but I assume that’s because it wants you to make use of its AI technology. I do not like it. We’ll get to that.
Inzois can be instilled with different values and life goals, sort of similar to The Sims 4’s aspirations and traits. It does seem a little more streamlined though, as Inzoi groups traits up into certain personality types rather than letting me select them individually. I’ll need more time to determine just how much it shapes behaviours, but the most I seemed to notice at a glance were certain dialogue options or interactions, like those who value co-existence being able to rummage through dressers to donate clothes.
It is hard to deny just how pretty and model-like everyone looks though, which again feeds into Inzoi seemingly being one big photo opportunity. As an iPhone user, I can even hook my phone up to the game to enable facial capture—a terrifying thing that allows me to move my Zoi’s face with my own. It doesn’t feel like a feature that has much legs outside its initial gimmick, and I do wish Krafton had focused its efforts elsewhere.
Build a life
But hey, I’m not really much of a character creator in life sims, I’m a build-buy girlie. I’m still sort of on the fence about how Inzoi handles its build mode, which feels like the thing Krafton has prioritised the least right now.
Something I do love is that every plot comes with preset layouts and designs that I can switch out at the click of a button. Empty lots have a handful of different buildings I can place down if I don’t feel like making my own, and pre-made lots come with different interior layouts for me to switch out if I don’t like the base offering.
Something I do love is that every plot comes with preset layouts and designs that I can switch out at the click of a button. Empty lots have a handful of different buildings I can place down if I don’t feel like making my own, and pre-made lots come with different interior layouts for me to switch out if I don’t like the base offering.
This was the thing I actually loved the most about Inzoi, a feature I desperately wish was more present in The Sims. A good chunk of the prebuilds are wonderfully designed too, with clutter galore and a lived-in vibe.
When it came to decorating myself, though, I frequently ran into issues like being unable to put rugs underneath certain types of furniture or unclear pathing issues. Thankfully the furniture has more texture options than the clothing—different types of wood and cloth patterns, even if most of them amount to stripes or grids.
But hey, why not take advantage of the MYtexture system? It’s just one of the many AI features Krafton insists on shoving down my throat, and I hate it. For starters, the technology behind it is terrible, reminiscent of the early 2021 eldritch horrors that AI would spit out. I started out by asking for a simple zebra print, which somehow still managed to look slightly off. While it seems to have some sort of copyright barrier—inputting words like “Goku” and “Sonic” conjured up designs that were not at all Goku or Sonic—there’s seemingly no moderation on anything more unsavoury.
There’s also the 3D printer feature, which allows me to take a real-life image and plug it into Inzoi, which’ll then spit it back out in the form of a slightly disfigured 3D model. I first tried it with a couch cushion I own, which fed back to me a vague recreation from the front, while the back was horribly deformed. I managed to get a fairly decent-looking virtual version of my Shadow the Hedgehog plushie, only to try and place it to discover it was freaking huge.
For how much Krafton has harped on about all these AI gadgets and gizmos, I didn’t find they enriched my experience at all. Another fun gimmick to muck around with before realising I was probably never going to use it in a meaningful way.
A long way to go
It’s not just houses I can decorate, though. Inzoi lets me tweak the whole city—what appears on billboards, the types of trees that line the streets, how much litter there is—it’s a nice addition for further tweaking things and creating a unique experience each time, and I hope it’s something that’s expanded upon in the future.
Both Dowon, its Korean-inspired map, and American-based Bliss Bay are awfully pretty to look at, offering some unique features like Dowon’s K-pop entertainment conglomerate and Bliss Bay’s huge stretch of beach. It even leads to a couple of unique career opportunities depending on where you’re playing, with Dowon having an exclusive K-pop idol job.
Commercial lots even have specific opening times, which is a layer of realism I actually don’t love. It meant any time I wanted to venture off my home lot I was essentially having to make sure it was before 9pm, otherwise I’d be met with locked doors or shuttered food vans. It took away an element of freedom, leaving me with little option other than to sit in my home lot, wishing the time away.
Ultimately, Inzoi’s biggest issue right now is that it’s simply not very fun. Even when I went ahead and brought my day length down to half the default time—96 minutes to 48—time seemed to drag on. Right now it feels like I’m trying too hard to have a good time in Inzoi’s clinical world, because I desperately wanted it to be good. Sadly, for me, it wasn’t
Honestly, I would have preferred Krafton give this game even more time to cook. It almost feels like I’m playing pretend at playing pretend right now—engaging with a variety of set pieces I can do a cute peace sign in front of before moving onto the next thing. In an attempt to offer something different to The Sims, Inzoi has failed to establish any sort of identity of its own. I’m not even sure Krafton knows what direction it wants to take right now, but it needs to figure that out quickly, otherwise I fear it’ll be another casualty of the genre.
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Kurt Indovina
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