InZOI entered Early Access to overwhelmingly positive reviews, and will hopefully grow to become a heavy hitter in the life sim genre. InZOI contains all the features expected of a life sim, such as a robust character creator, the ability to customize clothing, a build mode, many gameplay options, and life stages. However, InZOI also includes several features that aren’t typical of life sims.
One of the most prominent features of InZOI is the karma system, which tracks the actions of the player’s entire city of Zois. Each city has a karma meter ranging from great to terrible. Managing the actions of an entire city and being responsible for the state of their souls after death is a big responsibility and, while it’s closely tied to InZOI‘s lore, some have found it tedious. The problems some players have had could be fixed with a toggle that turns off the karma system completely, which is perfect for those who want to focus on their own household and gameplay, while others who are interested in the actions of the city Zois can keep it on.
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inZOI allows your ZOI to take on many different career paths, depending on the workplaces available in their home city, so here’s a breakdown.
InZOI’s Story and Morality System
While being a life sim, InZOI’s framing goes beyond that of a simple world where the player creates and controls characters. InZOI‘s premise is that the player is a worker at an augmented reality company, and has a god-cat supervisor named Psycat. The player’s job is to control an InZOI city and its occupants but, most importantly, to keep the city’s karma in check. A city’s karma is influenced by the actions of its Zoi inhabitants. Many good actions will result in net positive karma, while many bad actions, such as stealing, insulting others, and fighting, result in bad karma.
If the city’s karma slides into bad or terrible karma, Psycat will send a warning. The player can intervene in individual Zoi’s actions by encouraging them to do more good or bad actions for the next 24 hours, which can be helpful for managing NPC Zois. Zois who die with terrible karma linger on as ghosts with unfinished business, and need to get their karma back into a positive range before they can move on. It’s encouraged to clear ghosts out because they can prevent new Zois from being born or created if there are too many in one city, as their negative karma prevents the creation of new life.
Implementing a New InZOI Mechanic
The karma mechanic works well with the established lore of managing the morality of a city, and it’s one feature that makes InZOI stand out. However, it requires a lot of micromanagement, and may not be what some players want to deal with in a life sim. Some players also feel uncomfortable about policing the morality of a city, and feel that it should be an optional feature rather than one that has consequences if ignored.
Including a toggle for the karma system, so players have the option to use it or not, would be a sound middle ground. Players who do want to use the karma system can keep it on, while those who just want to build and play with families in InZOI without worrying about the entire city can turn it off. The ghost system has not been implemented yet, but when it is, ghosts could also be excluded from the karma system and exist in a world state without karma, or they could have the option to appear and leave when the player chooses. Ultimately, with all of its current and future systems, Krafton will hopefully strive to keep player freedom in mind.
