InZoi Early Access Review – Pretty Vacant

Reviewing InZoi without mentioning The Sims, which is easily its most direct influence, comparison, and competitor is, quite simply, a fool’s errand. There was a part of me–a very naive part, mind you–that thought it might be a bit fun to see how long I could go without making mention of the game in this review as a sort of challenge for myself. Clearly, I have already failed.

However, the context in which InZoi exists matters. Whereas the world is filled with cozy games, life sims, and plenty of other titles that reside somewhere between the two, extremely few play quite like The Sims. It goes without saying that Maxis created something extremely special back in 2000–something so creative, charming, innovative, and intricately designed that seemingly no other game studio has even attempted to put an end to its quarter-century long reign over the life-sim genre. There is no denying that the franchise’s reputation has taken some hits over the years, primarily due to its perceived stagnation and parent company EA’s predatory monetization tactics. As this discontent has grown, so too has the number of people looking for a viable competitor. And now, thanks to InZoi, we have a fresh-faced and utterly gorgeous new challenger.

Considering its good looks were among the first of many things that made InZoi such a highly anticipated title, I’ll start by saying that it is just as mind-blowing to look at as it seems. From its UI to its city streets to its pouty-lipped, pop star-esque characters, everything about InZoi is visually remarkable. Vast amounts of customization options, an immersive and ever-changing open world, and an intense focus on making things feel true-to-life yet just slightly more grand further polish this gem. And I was relieved that, despite all its luster, the game ran perfectly fine on my less-than-great gaming PC (AMD Ryzen 5 3600/NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Super). And yet, I was ultimately forced to reckon with the fact that, in my 20 or so hours with InZoi, I missed out on something incredibly important: having fun. Though InZoi is impressive, immersive, and brimming with potential, in its current state there is a sterility and lifelessness that is hard to move past. This paired with stale gameplay ultimately made InZoi a game I desperately wanted to enjoy, but seldom did.

To reiterate though, there is a lot that InZoi gets right and to be excited about. First and foremost, InZoi’s character creator is stunning, and although you could easily spend hours designing your Zois and their outfits, even the premade Zois are extraordinarily designed and interesting-looking. Once I cycled through just about every option, I began to create my own Zoi and was delighted by how fun, intuitive, and robust customization was. I spent far too long playing with the game’s color wheels, changing the studio lighting, filters, and backdrop to see how different tones and textures would look in different situations. Though you can’t adjust features with as much detail or exaggeration as The Sims, the overall impact is significant and allows you to create vastly different-looking Zois. I love that you are able to turn on an asymmetrical mode, too, allowing you to give your digital counterparts some of the same little quirks we have.

A lot of the clothing options in InZoi are staple pieces and basics, which might sound dull on paper but is something I greatly appreciated, as it allowed me to play around with and truly customize looks. Additionally, you can wear layers! You can have shirts that tuck into your pants! These might seem like little things, but I remember the days of praying to the Simlish gods that they’d let me wear boots over my pants, and it took a long time for that to happen. And they still don’t have the ability to layer outerwear over there.

Dressing my Zoi was made even more fun thanks to the crafting menu, which let me adjust individual cuts, hems, and sleeve lengths to create the exact piece I wanted. But just because the game leans towards basics doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of trendier pieces, accessories, and custom-made outfits that add more flair. And whereas games like The Sims always seem to be chasing trends, InZoi clearly has its finger on the pulse, offering plenty of legitimately stylish and fun outfits. Additionally, InZone Studio has already promised that more items are on the way and will be free of charge.

Hair options are also on the scarce side right now, facial hair is scraggly, and I was really disappointed by the lack of and quality of black hairstyles despite the game’s perceived efforts to cultivate a more inclusive character creator. I do appreciate–and this is possibly in part due to it being a South Korean game–that the game caters far less to Eurocentric beauty standards in general. However, I found that InZoi doesn’t shy away from typical beauty standards as a whole, as your overall body shape feels extremely limited, tattoos and piercing options are nearly nonexistent, and you’d have to try really hard to make someone who doesn’t still look shockingly gorgeous at the end of the day.

Creating your Zoi’s personality is bit more limiting. Though I love the idea behind having these established personality types that feel a bit Myers-Briggs-eque, in execution this leaves you with 18 personality types that are fully established and leave no room for varying temperaments. Whereas picking from a pool of individual traits makes for a nearly infinite number of personality types, this method means every single Zoi you bump into has a 1-in-18 chance of being exactly like another Zoi. Similarly, your Zois’ ambitions feel quite fixed, with each personality having two goals they are best suited for but able to select whichever of the dozen or so life paths they want. However–and despite these limitations–I do remain interested in how InZoi is going about personality and see room for improvement.

Another one of the more fascinating parts of InZoi is how, rather than thrusting you straight into your own virtual dollhouse, it presents you with a bizarre yet inspired story in which a corporation (seemingly operated by cats) sends you off to control your own virtual world. Though a very small part of the game, it does offer InZoi some much-needed levity and quirkiness. Furthermore, these cat overlord-type figures also seem particularly concerned with the idea of your Zois generating good karma in order to pass on to the afterlife, as those with bad karma are doomed to roam about until they build up enough goodwill to move forward. All this forms a sort of loose structure for the game that centers around community, humanity, goodness, and, perhaps a bit morbidly, death. It’s an interesting concept, and this paired with a less-Eurocentric character creator makes for a game that feels slightly more global than something like The Sims, which I wholeheartedly welcome.

As you play, this focus on community grows even more apparent, be it through dialogue options or just the inherent sense of interconnectedness between you the player and all the other Zois inhabiting your city. For example, every Zoi contributes to how your community is perceived, and there are options to drastically change up what I can only describe as the overall vibe of whichever city you’re in, as you can adjust how likely Zois are to do “bad” actions or “good” actions, as well as how likely disasters, car accidents, and crimes are to occur. This emphasis was something that surprised me and seemed to worm its way into every part of gameplay. For example, it is simple and nearly seamless to switch to another family with the click of a button, making you feel as if you are truly controlling everyone–which was, admittedly, frustrating at times. There are also entire menus dedicated to analyzing your community, such as one that reports how many Zois had bad dreams last night. While I don’t quite understand the reasoning for this, I’ll admit I did love getting to observe these peculiar little stats.

One of the most-impressive community-minded menus, however, is the one that allows you to completely alter the physical appearance of your city. Without so much as a loading screen, I was able to reduce the gorgeous, Santa Monica-inspired city of Bliss Bay to something dreadful and post-apocalyptic looking. You can also switch up the flora and fauna, allowing you to convert towering oaks to cherry trees or unleash vast amounts of raccoons, cats, pandas, or alligators onto your Zois, as well as change what pictures and videos appear on billboards. With the turn of a dial, I could adjust the intensity of the weather or send my bikini-clad Zois running home with a sudden blizzard. In another menu, I could select if I wanted my night skies to be adorned with drones or fireworks. I was blown away by its depth and instantaneity, and also loved how these little changes highlighted my favorite part of the game: the ability to walk around and explore its open world.

Generally, I’m not too big on open-world games. More often than not, I find them unnecessary–large for the sake of being large, and filled with things for the sake of being filled with things. The games that win me over tend to be those select RPGs that show restraint and focus more on curating a certain kind of atmosphere rather than thrusting tasks at me. Fortunately, InZoi is one of the latter. Watching my Zoi stroll around Dowon, the game’s South Korean-inspired metropolis, brought me back to walking around Seoul a couple springs ago, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and vibrating with the kind of delight that being a small stranger in a big, beautiful city brings about. The world is beautiful, life-like, and bustling with Zois, all of whom you can have a pleasant chat with or scold for watching you do squats in the park.

If that sounds oddly specific, that’s because it happened to my Zoi mere minutes into playing my first of three families I created. And while such offense would have me fuming in real life, I’ll admit that the interaction actually sent my expectations for InZoi’s social aspects skyrocketing. Here I was at the start of my journey and I had already witnessed a level of reactiveness which felt impressive and real. And yet, catching some dude ogling my Zoi–a phrase with a gross mouthfeel that I hope I never have to write again–was one of the highlights of my time actually playing InZoi.

Turns out, the fears I had earlier regarding Zois feeling same-y due to limited personality development were not unfounded. Though you can establish your preferences once playing your Zois–simple things, like loving spicy food or hating ball sports–I didn’t feel as if this had a powerful impact on making people feel distinct. In fact, which Zois liked and didn’t like me all felt fairly random. And while everyone I met was incredibly beautiful, none of them felt deep, dynamic, or unique–my own Zois included.

Additionally, actually interacting with people is not great. Though the amount of socialization options were robust, they felt strange, oddly specific, and/or surface level. Their presentation was also overwhelming, as clicking on a Zoi causes a paragraph-sized cloud of social options to pop up on your screen. You can also opt to see all options, which converts them into a more legible but equally overwhelming interface.

Meeting up with other Zois is also stilted and frustrating, as despite the game utilizing what is essentially an iPhone for several parts of gameplay, you cannot simply call or text anyone. Though you can respond to texts, your options being “positive response,” “negative response,” or “…,” your socialization begins and ends with being able to deliver someone a gift if you are within range of their home. Similarly, you can only call over someone to hang out if they are within a certain distance. If not, you’ll have to go to the map and ask them to meet up with you somewhere. More than anything, the process was a bit annoying and added some unnecessary friction.

There were a few features I did love, though, such as the ability to hover over a Zoi to see what they currently think of you or view their larger relationship info panel that contains things you’ve learned about them, standout memories, and more. I also enjoyed the fact that you can essentially define your relationship with others, which happens when you build up one of the four relationship bars (friendship, business, family, or romantic) to a certain threshold. Once you reach this point, you’re given the option to either embrace or rebuke your newfound dynamic. If you choose to do nothing, you are unable to grow closer (or further apart), providing an interesting little twist to socialization. Though it’d be a lot more interesting if these branched out–right now, for example, leveling up friendship just leads to the pair becoming “close friends” then “BFFs”–it’s still a neat little innovation that sets InZoi apart.

However, as I set out actually building relationships, I was met with more frustration. My first family, which consisted of a husband, wife, and child based on my own family, treated each other like strangers at the start, as selecting their relationships in character creation does not actually give them any sort of base friendship or similar in-game. After spending a few days with this family, trying my hardest to make them like each other while also learning InZoi’s ropes, I decided a fresh start would be better and made my next Zoi–a young adult with a Collaborator mindset and a bright future ahead of her.

Once I had her settled into her new home–a shockingly luxurious two-bedroom apartment that left little for to work her way up to–I got to work on making the place her own. Though I couldn’t alter the structure of the apartment much, I quickly converted the flat from an expensive greige abode to something more colorful and expressive. I took time searching Pinterest for some cute art to display on her gallery wall, over the moon at not only being able to freely place frames all over my wall but being able to import my own images without having to turn to mods and custom content. And yet, I began to wonder what this functionality–and InZoi’s AI implementation to generate art for players on more high-end PCs–could have on developers.

InZoi Studio has already issued a statement regarding how its AI operates after some pushback. In the official InZoi Discord server, a developer stated, “All AI features within InZoi utilize proprietary models developed by Krafton and are trained using solely company-owned and copyright issue-free assets and data. In addition, InZoi’s AI capabilities are built into the client as on-device solutions and therefore do not make communications online with external servers.”

This sounds fine in theory, and I am not of the mind that all AI implementation is inherently and equally unethical. However, I still have my concerns over this model’s environmental impact, precisely how Krafton is obtaining assets and data, and how this could impact developers whose jobs include creating in-game art.

Regardless, right now much of InZoi’s furniture consists of basic, easy-to-coordinate items that you can spruce up thanks to uploading images, altering textures, and adjusting colors. I didn’t extensively test out the game’s build mode, but its streamlined interface–while a bit alien at first–was easy enough to learn and made constructing buildings and rooms relatively simple.

After spending a good chunk of her starting funds decking out her new bachelorette pad, I decided it was time for my Zoi to get a job. However, since I had already enrolled her in a university, I discovered she couldn’t join a career unless she dropped out–a small hiccup, but fine, I thought. I’d just have to be frugal or find a little side hustle. I spent a few days attending classes before coming to the conclusion that attending college in InZoi is mind-numbingly dull, as it mostly involves disappearing into a building for half the day while time goes by incredibly slowly. This is actually a recurring problem with the game, as even sleeping at night takes far longer than it should even at full-speed. Though I appreciate a good little queue break so I can grab a drink when playing Overwatch or the like, it was wild to know that I had a good three minutes to go do something else while playing a life sim.

Furthermore, I never felt a sense of progression in college. I had no clue how close I was to graduating, no sense that my character was actually learning or growing, and no idea what the end result of this endeavor would be. Eventually, I dropped out to see if working a job would be more enjoyable. It wasn’t. Though I appreciated what the game was trying to do by sending you off to your job and requiring you to do little tasks, such as sweep the floor or practice an idol dance routine, it did not make for fun gameplay or a good time. Between unsatisfying careers, shallow relationships and socialization mechanics, and my own Zoi being both boring while also harboring urges for entirely random things, I had very little fun actually living out my Zois’ lives.

It feels peculiar that a game that is so interested in the human, er, Zoi soul, feels more or less soulless. On top of the game’s day-to-day gameplay falling short of my expectations, there’s an overarching lack of personality to InZoi–a lack of wit, charm, humor, surprise, delight, or spice. In fact, the whole experience feels largely sterile. From the game’s minimalist menus and hyper-luxurious environments, to watching my Zoi shower in her swimsuit before chatting with some passerby about the future of crypto currency and K-Pop stocks, at times I felt as if I were living in some strange city constructed by Lumos or some other big-name corporation. A relatively chaste dystopia in which everyone is beautiful but unfeeling; a place where impressive technology and material belongings are viewed with greater importance than the human experience.

Speaking of technology, I know that for many a big part of deciding whether or not to pick up InZoi boils down to one question: Will it run on my PC? I was able to run the game perfectly on Medium settings using an AMD Ryzen 5 3600, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Super, and 16 GB of RAM–not an impressive rig, but it got the job done and makes me confident that most folks who own a gaming PC will be okay. Aside from clipping, which is to be expected with early access titles, and a few instances of text not being formatted properly, I had no bugs or major errors.

This review has been a trickier one. I’m not here to declare that The Sims team should be sweating, or InZoi has “lost” or “won” this imaginary battle. It’s been interesting having to constantly reframe things; I’ve had to intentionally take steps back to ensure I am judging InZoi entirely on its own merit and based on what is there currently while also noting its early access status, yet not allowing myself to be won over by potential. I’ve had to detach myself from The Sims’ 25 years of innovating while also asking myself if things I noticed in InZoi felt lacking or derivative. When a piece of work is so clearly a sort of spiritual successor to a living, breathing, regularly updating behemoth, figuring out what to make of it is slightly difficult, I’ve found.

As a whole, my time with InZoi was underwhelming. Though I know more items and cosmetics are headed to the game and that there’s plenty of time and potential for its developers to focus more on the game’s social aspects, as it stands right now gameplay isn’t enjoyable and I worry that InZoi won’t place as much importance on its social-simulation aspects as I’d prefer. Though I’m opting to remain hopeful, after spending a few dozen hours with InZoi–and despite my absolute delight at getting the opportunity to review a game I have been eagerly waiting to play since its announcement–I’ve come to the conclusion that I most likely won’t pick it up again until it’s spent far more time in development.