Krafton’s inZOI gets an ambitious roadmap surpassing The Sims

Sleepwalking, city editing, drivable vehicles, and more are coming to the life sim

Krafton

Krafton, the developer of PUBG, is working on an ultra-realistic life simulation game, and it just got an exciting update. inZOI was revealed to the public last year during the G-STAR 2023 event, and it now has a roadmap along with some new gameplay footage.

inZOI surprised everyone last year with its high ambitions for the genre. While life simulation games like The Sims and Second Life offer plenty of options to the player, inZOI aims to offer expanded gameplay mechanics like driving in first-person view, going to karaoke, working out, sleepwalking, and more.

An impressive character creator. / Krafton

It’s everything you can do in a Sims game but rendered in extraneous detail. The character creator shown will be familiar to those using the Unreal Metahuman creator, with a similar interface. The game is being built in Unreal Engine 5, although there’s been no announcement of a release on consoles.

These are some of the features coming to inZOI as revealed in the developer update:

• Customizable vehicles
• Autosaves (called “Time machine”)
• Group activities
• Relationships 
• Reputation system (called “karma)
• Procreation (which the karma system will also affect)
• City editing features
• Cityscapes (based on real-life cities like Seol and Los Angeles)
• Dreams
• A studio set for in-game photo sharing

Game director Hyungjun Kim also said that an external plug-in for Unreal Engine will also be released so players can create new content for the game directly. The video also revealed an expanded look at the highly detailed character creator.

As for player-made mods, Kim stated that the game will feature what is called “the canvas”, where community-made content will be hosted for free. Think of it as the creation club in Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim. He also acknowledged the fan’s wishes for the character creator to be released as a free demo, though whether that comes to pass is up in the air.

“In ‘inZOI’, you can freely manipulate the world like a god, and make your dream ideal life a reality. You can also be the protagonist of the life you want, rather than simply living the life you are given. It's time to create your own story in ‘inZOI’, where endless possibilities await!,” reads a post on Krafton’s website.

Krafton is currently planning to add three cities to the game. “There is a ‘Dowon’ map, inspired by Korea. There are plans for maps inspired by the United States or Europe. Next, we plan to develop a map set in Southeast Asia,” Kim said about the game last year.

The visuals are very impressive. / Krafton

The life-simulation genre has seen many games rise in the past, but none have managed to make as big a mark as EA’s The Sims franchise. EA is currently working on The Sims 5, codenamed “Project Rene”, which is being developed for both mobile and PC. The next Sims game will also focus heavily on multiplayer experiences, of which there are no indications from inZOI’s gameplay video. Besides inZoi, other South Korean developers like Pearl Abyss are also working on realistic Sims-like games, such as DokeV. Paradox Interactive is also releasing a life sim game, Life by You, into early access this June.

With Unreal Engine 5 focusing on platform scalability, it remains to be seen if inZOI will make it to mobile platforms, although it seems unlikely. While we’ve yet to see complex, AAA open-world games on mobile, there’s a paradigm shift happening soon with Apple bringing console games to the iPhone and iPad.

Krafton will release another development update video later this month answering fan questions from the game’s discord server. inZOI is currently in development with a planned release later in 2024 on unspecified platforms.