InZoi Early Reviews- What You Need to Know

More info below, links, and my future coverage plans. Thanks! (links also in my video description) 

According to cotton sock, there are additional life stages planned:
-newborn
-toddler
-child
-adolescent
-teenager
-young adult
-adult
-,middle age
-senior

From Inzoi Update Socials:
Capture facial movements using your smartphone directly for your in-game characters.

New Cons/ Pros Video from @Datura Plays:
You Can select who zoi is attracted to
can control character with WASD
too easy to improve relationships
unsure how dreams impact the town
several things are not interactive, such as playgrounds etc, but may be just early version of gam
https://youtu.be/VY95J_aZxMQ?si=K-VBs2CNC9icEvzq

My Plans (this is a little long)
I will probably continue to cover InZoi up to its release or at least early access. This is because I do think it has promise to add some innovation and impact in the genre, and I find that very interesting. However, I myself am very unlikely to play long term- I am a Mac player first and foremost, and with my finances, I don't see myself buying a new Windows based computer solely for one game (that I likely would not use on a daily basis). As such, I'll be deciding how to navigate what i will or won't cover. Thanks as always

Creators Shown/ Video Links- in order
1. Emma Nicole: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59DnERIo9-8
2. Datura Plays: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eZRsuPSwKE&list=WL&index=2
3. Oshin Sims: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-elqkxVHn_0&list=WL&index=4
4. Mad Morph: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXzM0zVRiKU&list=WL&index=1
5. It's Me Troi : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZBBCpC5ntw

Thanks as always for the info. Inzoi just isn't my cup of tea for a number of reasons, including the super realism and the fact it seems very task oriented, but i think any life sims competition is good so i really want it to do well. I did notice in Itsmetroi when the husband flirted with a zoi that wasn't his wife, his wife messaged him right away asking where he was and who he was with. That was funny but now i wonder how cheating works and if it's tied to the rumor system

Sad that it's all AI generated… what's art nowadays?

It bothers me to call those videos "reviews". They are previews, there is nothing Review about them. They are selected influencers chosen to promote a pre-early access game. Im not saying they're paying these people to shill for them, but they are definitely curated. I like to believe that their reactions are genuine.
Ultimately, you can't review something without knowing the final product, all you can do is speculate. Calling them reviews is disingenuous and implies more substance than exists at this point.

I’m calling it now: Once InZoi enters Early Access, many simmers will get it, regardless of their system specs.
Then we‘ll have another Cities Skylines II or Starfield situation, where people blame the bad optimization instead of their own PCs. Even worse, they proceed to write an undeservedly bad review on Steam after 0.1 hours playtime.

It’s easy: If your computer meets the Minimum requirements, you’ll be able to run the game on the lowest settings.
(If your PCs is not good enough, it will either not run at all, or very, very badly. Don’t waste your money in that case.)

Personally, I haven’t watched the InZoi previews.
I never do, for new games. It spoils it for me. Going in blind and exploring everything myself is part of the fun.

I’ve read the comments, though. Somehow people seem to forget, the game isn’t even in Early Access yet. InZoi is already much more detailed than TS4 base game, still people judge it by higher standards.
(Especially compared to Paralives, which hasn’t shown any notable gameplay as of yet.)

I’m hopeful InZoi will be a great Life Sim, but I’ll wait for full release, as per usual.
Monetization is definitely the deciding factor.
Apart from that, I’m not a fan of this whole K-Pop style and social media focus.
I’ll have to see how tweakable the game is to match my personal play style.

As always, thank you, Erin! Comprehensive and to the point! Much appreciated. 🤘

I'm glad that theres another life simulation for people that dont enjoy the sims anymore. Personally I'm going to stick with the sims, i dont really care for the realistic cosy approach inzoi and paralives are taking.

Will it be for the phone?

I love the ai generation element to building! I’m already thinking about asking it to make abstract pieces, alcohol ink pieces, and see what it comes up with for paper quilling (as I am a paper quiller. The ai generated ones I’ve seen are cool, though different than actual quilling). So nice you won’t need CC for this kind of decor!

Tip!! if you really want to see Inzoi testplay Do NOT watch it from these payoff youtubesimmers they only gives you 25 min or less of footage watch video's of people who is not Gamechangers payoffs there is some channels that actually play this gametest for 1h like this girl her channel is called ''Harry'' she is not a Gamechangers payoff and she did a nice job for her viewers she never play before you can see she didn't know at first what to do she did also a good job by look for a job and actually go and work the job she also shows a lot things that these payoff youtube simmers never did in their 25 min or less video's trust me I watch them fist but with them I started to see the pattern they all recoded for 25min or less and show nothing they all get job but never actually go to do the job get a car drive and that's it but there's so many others channels out there that has play this game test about a 1h and show a lot thins that these payoff youtube simmers did not do

I thought InZOI seemed interesting, but that AI integration breaks it for me. We need less AI, not more. I'm sticking with Paralives

Well, the graphics are really pretty!

I'll say this, I'm gonna point to the fanbase's reaction to InZoi when people insist they care more about gameplay than graphics.

When I see people play, it looks kinda basic, and the Zois themselves don't have much of a personality. But man, it's really pretty.

Regarding life in the world and it seeming empty: what I’ve noticed is there are a lot of cars on the road. If these are actually Zoi driven and not set dressing, that may be where they are. And also, when creators of gone to major destinations like the beach, there are definitely a lot of Zoi around. Given it’s a big open world, it makes sense to me that you won’t have streets teaming with Zoi, as each created character is fully fleshed out and playable. If there are say 80 Zoi in the world, then you’re not going to get more than one or two in any particular space. I absolutely don’t want set dressing style Zoi, I want Zoi neighbours with living breathing stories. So I’m good with the population I’m seeing now.

I heard somewhere that the screen shots can be modded, so people can make mods to replace them. There's little doubt that one of the first will be some kind of 'wicked whims' pack that replaces the procreation screen shot. 🤣 There's little to absolutely NO chance that the game will ever enlarge on that specific part of the game (in my opinion as someone who actually lives in Korea) – Korea is still VERY conservative in that way – these things are fairly strictly behind doors – it might be love hotel doors, but it's still VERY strictly behind doors. Sex before marriage happens here, but is still publicly frowned upon, similar to how it was in the 70s in the west, although that is changing rapidly with the young here. Even marriage is still almost exclusively via parental permission, even if a partner is chosen personally. I suspect (hope, too) that they might sell packs to replace some of those screen shots, eg weddings. And done properly – with all sorts of gameplay attached to weddings – picking the cake and dress and ring, either solo or as an event with friends/family, organising the weddding – the ceremony, the wedding breakfast – choose things like first dance/cake cutting/speeches, other small events within an event – organise the order of those events and who does it etc – that's what a wedding pack should be! Korea has weddings too, similar in some ways but with some differences, but generally a lot less fancy and with less fuss than western weddings, and extra special traditions like 'official meeting of the in-laws type' ceremonies. So, if they do a pack, I hope they add in a lot of opt in/out options for various types of ceremonies and events with regard to weddings – that would be amazing! The gameplay is, as one would expect, not diverse YET, but there's a lot of detail to the gameplay they have actually implemented, so I expect weddings to be at that similar detailed level. The pattern here is good! When they add a feature, they REALLY do that feature well! Instead of, "let's just do the basic corner cutting stuff, eg window rabbit hole, reuse existing mechanics etc". That's what I'm most impressed by so far. I really hope they continue in that vein – I'd very much prefer quality over quantity. Just like this. The Sims does the opposite of that: quantity over quality, eg lots of food options, but they're all exactly the same – just different picture assets, events mechanic overdone to death!

I'm intrigued to see what the rumour thing does in gameplay. I suspect that, if it has gameplay implications (and I certainly hope so, otherwise it's just window dressing) that repercussions and impact comes out later on in-game as they spread. So I hope we see more of that in the let's plays over the next week. Do rumours impact what people do an how they behave? Can a character start a rumour? Do rumours impact personality? Do rumours impact chances of making friends or getting a job or how people react to a character. Do rumours effect the karma mechanic? Eg spreading them falsely decreases karma? Are there true AND false rumours. Can you find out somehow which is true and which is false? Are there positive and negative (good/bad) rumours? And do THOSE things (true/false, negative/positive) impact gameplay? This is what I'm hoping to see.

It's great that all the personality and wants and likes and goals etc are all there from the get-go, instead of afterthoughts. Those things are really important and it's not a life sim without them. And that means that future implementations can actually consider them and include impacts for them. These give the game 'good bones' from the get-go – lots of aspects that future implementations of character actions can affect! This was a major problem with The Sims 4 – they weren't there from the get-go, so there were little or no impacts – it's very difficult to add a major feature that impacts the whole of gameplay retroactively – neigh impossible, I would guess. That's a major reason why The Sims 4 was so incredibly shallow from the very beginning, and that problem was obviously never going to improve – fleshing out stuff is not improving on features that have nothing to impact in the first instance. I want to see how all these aspects affect how the character operates and how that effects relationships. That's what a life sim is all about!! I want all these aspects to CAUSE different conversations, CAUSE close relationships, CAUSE rifts between people, CAUSE friction between people, CAUSE GAMEPLAY! This is what I want to see in a life sim. It all looks very promising, but the proof in the pudding is how those things play out in gameplay. As I said at the very beginning when I first saw this game, because the dev has a lot of experience in RPG, that might come out in THIS game. It's still looking very much like that's the case. Let's hope!! 🙂

Thanks for pulling all of this together! I am cautiously optimistic about this game, we'll just have to see if my computer can even run it… haha.

I've already watched most of these creator's videos so nice to see we have the same taste. 🙂 acottonsock is another pretty decent creator who has a couple of inZOI videos out too. She's also published a list of the life stages inZOI will have: Newborn, Toddler, Child, Adolescent, Teenager, Young Adult, Adult, Middle Aged, Senior.

It looks awesome but I can't get with "playing God."

I might play around with CAZ when the demo comes out. The game looks interesting for sure but I still haven't seen anything that's really sold me on gameplay yet. Not that what I've seen isn't decent but I haven't seen anyone explore things I'd definitely do if I were playing yet and some of the features are still in development, I believe.

Depending on how much it costs on release or on sale I may buy it but I'm cool sticking with Sims 3 and 2 for my life sim fix for now too.

😢i wish this will be f2p I wish it won’t need packs like sims 4

My favorite part of the review I watched was when the player was like "Woo! Let's drive a car!" Then it was annoying and clunky for 30 seconds and then she said "Actually, I don't want to drive" and opted to skip ahead to the destination. Which I think about sums up why I don't care if there are cars in life sims, and why I don't care if they never come to the Sims 4 lol.

Sadly my gaming laptop cannot handle it. RIP me.

Wait, did they add teenager? 6:40 I watched a video on Inzoi that said there weren’t teens. Has this changed?

Thanks Erin! I'm hoping I'll be able to take advantage of the free character creator but I only have Windows 7 so I'm not very hopeful. I know for sure I won't be able to get the game for many years because I have to buy a whole new computer to do so.

Great insights, thanks, this is what I've gathered from watching almost everything I can find on youtube thus far + some twitter stuff:

1) Yes, you do see your zoi drive in automated mode but you can skip to fast travel essentially to your location.

2) You can interact with the cats ( I have not seen so far if you can interact with the other animals)

3) The "Wedding" per-say is a cutscene and inzoi is actually developing a cut scene creator (I know you mention it later in the video) so we can role play and have the cutscenes we made play in place of the included cutscenes like the wedding one(I don't know at this time if cutscenes made from the community will be easily downloadable)

4) There is a surf interaction but as of right now we cannot swim in the ocean yet (it may be implemented on release).

5) I have watched at least 15 videos on inzoi yesterday and I also can't tell how much traits effect relationships.

I was almost sold on Inzoi, because I like so many things about the game. Inzoi just isn't my first choice, for a life stimulation game. The reason I love The Sims is because it has charm, and Paralives has that charm. Inzoi is flashy, and I don't feel any charm from it. I hope, it does well!

The game looks a little better than I expected but all the same reasons are there of why I don't want it.

– Multitasking and group forming are just not there I like playing my characters in groups it's why Get Together will always be Sims 4 best expansion
– No one has shown any meaningful family game play whatsoever actual the complete opposite one of the streamers had the dad come home to a baby who was home alone sitting in a hallway 😬is a babysitter or taking the kid with you not an option.
– The character creator still does a horrible job creating characters who don't like Korean you end up with a black character who looks mixed black/Korean or a white character who looks mixed white/Korean they need to add more face templates to add some diversity to this game.
– Am I wrong but I only seen 5 colors you could pick for your car and one of them was not red that's so disappointing to me

I'd also prefer to make my own worlds but at least unlike Sims 4 there will be space and somewhat the option to make it my own with things like changing billboards.

Major cons so far: no ability to multitask, very barebones conversation system, complete lack of family gameplay as far as i can tell, lack of animations especially facial, Zois personalities dont seem to shine through, cut scenes are very jarring.

Obviously, there are many pros as well, but im comparing it to base sims 2/3, and so far, it definitely needs more time. It seems to be going in a great direction though and in my opinion is close to being better than base sims 4 and thats pre-alpha.

Going to watch more game play vids, but where are all the Townies/NCPs? This could be a problem for me if other “sims” are only at places of business

Now I'm really looking forward to this game right here. The realistic look of it . I'm loving it already.

The "desired life" is interesting. However, I wonder if you can have a combination of desires. (I like the one about contributing but also the creative one. I'd like to see more about it. Is it like aspirations?)

The goal thing sounds like there is going to be a lot of emphasis on employment. That isn't something I'm interested in and it seems like it's been like that since the beginning of hearing about the game. I'm more into other aspects of "life."

Even when you don't play the game yourself (such as TS4's Wedding Stories), you still pull interesting information into the videos you do. (I'm especially interested in the videos you do about how things work in the game industry.)

Correction, there are no teens. Hopefully, they change that in the future, but the way it is now your Zoi will jump from a child to a young adult. It will be nice to finally have a variety of simulation games. I hope I can turn up the chaos. I've never liked that the Sims scaled back the spontaneity of the game from Sims 1 to 4, and you have to choose everything that happens.

Saw some gameplay footage as well and this game looks so good. Definitely going to have to get a new computer for this 😂 currently using my MacBook for sims

Game has major potential, but still needs a little bit more work. Hopefully this will be smoothed out. I wish there was more people inside the world wondering around because the city seems a little dead. I wish the buses would actually move.

As much as InZoi looks promising, I doubt it will "overthrow the Sims".
– The game isn't out yet, and any YouTubers giving it early reviews are likely going to miss or gloss over a lot of the issues. It's a promising early-access game, so what they do find issue with is going to be assumed a 'work-in-progress' – something that will be added or fixed by release.
– A lot of reviewers are playing the game the same way. We aren't getting a broad enough picture of the full game, including stuff like other life-stages or the Karma system. While this could be caused by a lot of reviewers wanting to give simplistic 'first look' style reviews, it could imply a larger issue that could plague the game going forward: a possible lack of scope and repetitive gameplay loop that players will quickly grow tired of.
– I'm not seeing many popular life-sim YouTubers doing reviews of InZoi. Either they aren't as big and I don't recognize their channel, or they focus on other genres outside life-sims. Contrast this with Life By You or Paralives marketing, which did/does rely more on well known, dedicated life-sim channels. This means InZoi is likely casting a wider net, but that the reviewers (and their audience) are less likely to be familiar with the genre, and thus less likely to notice glaring flaws that more experienced life-sim players might.
– InZoi is being made by a Korean team, not an international one. Korea is, at times, very different from what most people are used to and a lot of the quirks and issues with the culture and society, everything from school uniforms and cutesy gestures to unhealthy work-life balances and rampant sexism, are much more likely to be present in the game. Additionally, we could see the inclusion of stuff like subscription models or limited time DLC, because Korean culture has a different relationship with gaming.
– The art style is very realistic looking, which will age poorer than a more stylized game. Also, hair, clothes, furniture, etc. in this style are more prone to clipping issues, will give less room for variety (less clothes and hair options), and will be more demanding on your computer.
– Everything reflects modern life, which makes it harder to diversify gameplay. I'm not seeing traditional homes, clothing or furniture that could resemble anything older than the 90s, or any way to alter the world to create a truly alien landscape.
– There is a strong emphasis on social media and influencer culture. Not necessarily a good thing if you are looking to be… anything that doesn't heavily use those aspects of the game.
– The focuses in the game seem to be all over the place. You can do tarot reading, join the K-pop career, use AI to make a funky looking painting, make the city look post-apocalyptic, or die in a car accident. You can't plan a wedding, debut as a K-pop star, become a firefighter in Bliss Bay, live on a farm in the countryside, or have weather that changes automatically.

I hate to be sound like Mr. Negative, but it really sounds like the opposite of what I want, having never been a fan of active careers, minutia, or focusing too much or control of one character (in this kind of game at once). But since a lot of people seem really excited for it I guess that just show why the genera needs more than one game, since different players can have very different preferences.