I can’t remember the last time a game has disappointed me quite as much as inZOI, which officially launches for PC in early access next week.
Having poured hundreds of hours into The Sims 4, I was really looking forward to the arrival of a true competitor – something that would push the life simulator genre forward and potentially usurp The Sims developer Maxis (a division of Electronic Arts) as the absolutely unrivaled king of the genre.
Unfortunately, inZOI Studio’s debut effort is not that. If anything, my week or so hands-on with an early build has only given me a newfound appreciation for just how well-polished parts of The Sims 4 are. This is a $40 release that offers a tiny fraction of the content found in even the free-to-play version of its main competitor and has an inescapable, cobbled-together feel.
Could the developer turn it around throughout early access? Of course, and it’s true that The Sims 4 also launched in a pretty dire state and needed years of content updates before becoming truly worth playing, but it’s clear that inZOI Studio will need to put in a lot of work in the months ahead if it wants a real shot at being top dog.
True to life
Let’s start with the thing that I like most about inZOI: its graphics. This is a very pretty game that, despite my initial fears regarding its relatively high system requirements, runs smoothly on the whole. There are two beautiful maps to explore at launch, each with nicely varied aesthetics. There’s Bliss Bay, a sprawling American coastal city complete with a beautiful pier and loads of beachfront properties, and the Korean urban area of Dowon that offers shiny skyscrapers and a distinct bustling city vibe.
Even the Zois (yes, that’s what the sim equivalents are called) look incredible, with realistic skin, hair, and animations. Pair this with a brilliant character creator that offers plenty of aesthetically pleasing pre-sets plus all the sliders needed to accurately capture whatever kind of person you have in mind.
I also have no complaints when it comes to the clothing customization, which has a huge degree of flexibility and allows you to individually tweak all the little parts of each item with expansive color wheels.
You can even import your own textures at the click of a button (ideal if you want to copy some real-life brands) or, thanks to the nifty implementation of some on-device AI tech, describe your dream texture in text form to generate it in a matter of seconds. Are the results perfect? Absolutely not, but seeing how this system responds to prompts like ‘pink ice cream pattern’ or ‘evil giant snail’ is quite entertaining nevertheless.
Everyday monotony
The biggest issue with inZOI becomes apparent when you’re roughly thirty minutes into your first game. This is the point at which you begin to notice that there is very little to actually do. You’re given a giant open-world city to explore (with an impressive number of simulated citizens dotted throughout its street) but there’s no real reason to ever step foot outside your house.
Sure, you can visit the odd café or mostly empty park – but outside of that the rows of fake storefronts and closed restaurants are going to get old after five minutes. Even if you manage to save up enough cash for one of the handful of pricey cars, driving around such barren surroundings isn’t much better.
To make matters even worse, the path-finding is horrendous and actively impedes your play. I lost count of the number of times my Zoi would sprint across the entire map in order to sit on a bench to eat a snack despite already being stood right next to a vacant seat. Even just trying to chat with other Zois can send your character running out of the building for seemingly no reason. It’s bizarre and would be quite funny if it wasn’t so annoying.
Instead of exploration, the real focus seems to be on sending your Zoi to work. Contrary to what some Reddit commenters would have you believe, a handful of the careers in inZOI are what The Sims community would call ‘rabbit holes’ – off-screen black holes that your simulated people simply disappear into for large chunks of the day. This in itself isn’t a huge problem, but the fast-forward functionality seems painfully slow.
At times I wasn’t certain that it was working at all, as even at 10x speed was agonizing. This, alongside the frequent need for your Zois to sleep, means you’re realistically going to spend a lot of your playtime staring at an effectively blank screen, unable to interact.
To some extent, this is also true in The Sims 4, but a functional fast forward and frequent pop-ups with career choices never meant that I found myself booting up Amazon Prime Video on a second screen to stave off boredom – as I frequently did with inZOI.
The handful of active careers, like firefighter or fast food employee, are thankfully significantly better and give you a constant stream of tasks to complete. These are absolutely the ones to choose, but I wish there were a few more to try. I’m sure that this is something that’s sure to be added in future updates, though.
Retail therapy
No matter your choice of job, at least spending the money you earn is always a lot of fun. The building tools are impressively powerful and you can easily occupy hours tweaking every single room to perfection.
There’s a great range of items on offer too, almost all of which can have their colors and materials edited for almost limitless combinations. It’s really good and if you’re one of those people who plays The Sims as more of a building game than a life simulator, you’re going to be pleased with these mechanics. There’s even a dedicated building mode accessible directly from the main menu, which lets you create to your heart’s content without any monetary constraints.
Playing around with this mode I did begin to notice the sheer prevalence of product placement, however. On top of some generic options, the roster of TVs is dominated by real-world LG models, complete with their full product names and cringeworthy advertisement-like descriptions.
“The world’s No.1 OLED TV, recognized globally” reads one. “An artistic TV designed to complement any space with its evolved a9 AI processor, offering exceptional detail” boasts another. The laptops and speakers that you can buy are largely Samsung models and the cars are mostly from Hyundai with similar blurbs. Some might appreciate the added realism that this brings, but to me, it all just felt a bit tacky.
Another major complaint pertains to the user interface, which is an absolute maze. Important information, like your Zoi’s current needs, is hidden in expandable menus that are often automatically closed. It’s frustrating and seems very poorly thought out. If that wasn’t bad enough, some of the text in menus has not been untranslated or is displayed as lines of unformatted code. This becomes particularly problematic if you’re trying to read ‘Pscicat Guide’, the game’s already often confusingly worded in-built help menu.
All of this means that I wouldn’t recommend inZOI to most players in its current state. If you truly love building or creating characters and are happy to pay $40 for a game that’s good for that and not much else, then you’re not going to have a terrible time with it. Just don’t go in expecting a true replacement for The Sims, or you’ll be just as disappointed as me. I have my fingers crossed that updates are on the way to address most of these issues and, with further input from the community, I really hope inZOI can grow into something better throughout early access.
inZOI launches in early access for PC on March 28, 2025. A PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S version is set to follow at a later date.
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dash.wood@futurenet.com (Dashiell Wood)
