InZoi Early Access Review – A Worthy Contender For The Life Sim Throne

If my years of drowning Sims in swimming pools and starting house fires have taught me anything, it’s that I was going into InZoi with the worst intentions, which also happen to be the best goals: I wanted a little love and a little murder.

All too eager to begin my Zoi’s new life, the second guy I spoke to—some Harry Styles wannabe named Quentin wearing a white tee with rolled up sleeves, the signature hat, and some leather trousers—was fated to be the man of my Zoi’s dreams. Harry Styles is not my type, but Quentin was better than the first guy I met, and I just wanted to get smooching. I relied on my usual tactics of inviting him over as often as possible and conversation bombing him with affection until he was forced to commit to a relationship. That’s normal, right?

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Kiss, Marry, Kill

I love how InZoi does relationships. I could check my Zoi’s relationship log with Quentin (or anyone) and see how they felt at different points of the relationship, such as first impressions, or regretting bringing up an ex in conversation. InZoi also logs shared memories, such as instant attractions, or getting married. Quentin would send text messages that I could reply to with various options, and he sent me a gift delivered to my apartment too.

The only setback in our relationship was that when I asked about his career, he didn’t want to talk about it until we knew each other better. This resulted in both Zois feeling a bit angry whenever I tried to bring it up. You know what buddy, considering I found you on the beach singing while your mate played guitar, I also wouldn’t want to admit that I don’t have a real job.

It didn’t take long to woo the leather pants off the guy. By the time I did unlock the career information on his Zoi card, after having to put a ring on it, it really did say unemployed: I had bagged myself a winner. Our wedding was lightly attended, but it would have been more spectacular if I had socialised more. The first guy I spoke to ended up as the officiant, and a random woman my Zoi had argued with was the only guest. That didn’t stop both Zois strutting down the aisle and waving to empty chairs as if they were the latest It couple though.

Now that I was married to a bum with bad taste, I could move onto my next goal: murder. You can’t instruct Zois to go and kill the other, but we all know accidents can happen. Yet no amount of wooden furniture near ovens or playing with electricals worked. In fact, making him watch TV repeatedly just made him even more of the stereotypical jobless spouse, especially when he asked my breadwinner Zoi for an allowance.

Eventually, I toggled off his autonomy and had him sit in a chair and starve. Sorry, Quentin, but this is for science, I need to know what happens. It took much longer than I had anticipated, but it was interesting to find out that when a Zoi dies, you’re offered a ‘Turn Back Time’ option. I refused. My Zoi was once again single and ready to mingle. At least, once she lost her ‘devastated’ emotional state.

The point of this black widow tale is that the core life sim gameplay that we all know and love is present in InZoi in spades. You can decorate your Zois and their digs in great detail, choose a career path, find love, laugh at the results of which genetics your children inherit, and build relationships with those around you. And if you really want, you can mow people down in a car.

However, InZoi introduces interesting layers to these familiar gameplay options, with more depth to relationships and a karma system. Your Zoi’s actions affect their karma levels, which in turn will affect their lives. If you’ve got high karma, you should buy a lottery ticket as it’s more likely you’ll have good luck. Though it’s not available yet, those who die with low karma will be able to return as ghosts to rebalance their karmic scales and move on.

More Than Just A Pretty Face

The most striking thing about InZoi is its gorgeous photorealistic graphics and hyper realistic world and characters. The visuals are very impressive, providing your PC has enough power to do them justice. My gaming PC is a few years old now but was built for high performance games, and can just about run InZoi on the best settings as long as I’m not running too much simultaneously, otherwise it can get sluggish and fuzzy in places. It runs a lot smoother if I knock down the graphics a bit, but with a game this pretty, I want to see it at its best.

The minimum specs will be a roadblock to some. Realistically, if you have a gaming PC from the past two to four years, it should run InZoi on the lowest specs without any trouble. The issue is that InZoi looks nowhere near as photorealistic on those lower specs, and that may be a dealbreaker for some. There will always be those willing to shell out for the best life sim experience, and there will also always be the causal cozy gamers that just can’t justify investing in pricey tech. But InZoi delivers on substance, not just style.

Unleash Your Creativity

InZoi’s character creator is almost as impressive as it is pretty. Notably, there are more diverse hairstyles on offer than in the demo, but there’s still no hijab, and I expected more hairstyle variety overall. There are currently 12 long-hair options, including tied up versions. For a game where players will want to be able to recreate anyone, including themselves, a wide range of options is a must. Clothes clipping is also still present on larger bodied Zois, though it doesn’t seem as bad as during the demo build. I had to remind myself this is an early access game, and so more options and improvements will come.

Of what is there though, it’s surprising just how much you can customise. You can edit the cities, from the weather to decorations and billboards, special effects, and even managing the levels of relationships and emotions. You can also craft clothing and furniture, for example, you can choose the type of top, including neckline, hem, and sleeves, before applying your own colours and textures. Some items are more limited than others, such as skirts that only offer four variations, but this will likely be expanded as the game develops.

Part of this customisation relies on a robust generative AI system, which has already been highly controversial. I asked for ‘black with gold filigree pattern’ for a shirt, and it delivered. Then I asked for a Pikachu pattern and it produced a hideous yellow llama face that couldn’t pass for our favourite mascot in a million years. So how much is the fairly harmless pattern generation tech that has existed for years and has been relabelled with the AI buzzword, and how much is the more sinister, art-stealing generative AI in its more commonly used form?

Krafton states in the InZoi Discord that “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, InZoiI’s AI capabilities are built in to the client as on-device solutions and therefore do not make communications online with external servers.” Even with those reassurances in mind, as impressive as the tech is, it can’t shake the criticisms that such use of AI might reduce the number of roles from artists and graphical designers.

Also, while Krafton claims it makes no communications with outside servers, you can upload pics yourself, creating emotes from videos or photos, 3D printer objects within the game, and saving images for patterns (say, uploading Pikachu manually) in ways that further blur the lines.

A Promising Early Access Start

There are plenty of features you will soon realise aren’t quite available yet, or still marked as experimental, such as the AI Smart Zoi feature. When enabled, this allows you to see the inner thoughts of Zois and understand their actions better, and you can input information directly to the AI via a pop-up box. I admit I didn’t fully understand what I was doing when trying to input thoughts into my Zoi’s head. She certainly didn’t go and hit Quentin when I tried to convince her she wanted to.

Motion and facial capture are also present, but still in development and therefore some aspects are not perfect, which is understandable for an early access game. The driving features are a prime example, which is quite clunky right now.

InZoi is undeniably impressive both in its visuals and gameplay, with more than enough to get stuck into even in this early access version. Players will spend endless hours customising characters, buildings, and furniture, and that’s before they even start living their digital lives. Life sim fans are certain to lap it up with gusto, providing they can overcome the graphical barrier. The real test of whether InZoi will reign as the life sim king will come with time, as long as regular updates happen and Krafton delivers on the promise of all it has in development.

Played on PC.

Systems

Released

March 28, 2025

Developer(s)

Krafton

Publisher(s)

Krafton

Pros & Cons

• Impressively beautiful graphics and world.
• In-depth creation and customisation tools.
• Provides familiar core life sim gameplay but with a unique InZoi flair.

• High graphic specs will be a roadblock to potential players, and many will have to lower the quality to play.
• The use of AI may be offputting for players.