Games that try to simulate “real life” have been with us since time immemorial. Who doesn’t know The Sims, now cult, which stand out the most in this regard. Many, however, are bothered by the expensive content expansions that keep popping up like mushrooms after the rain. But a new player is coming to the market and we have no doubt that he will leave no stone unturned in this genre.
I knew about inZOI’s ambitions before Gamescom, thanks to their massive social media campaign. It is not even possible to say that they would go after competition in the form of the already mentioned The Sims. The way inZOI works puts all existing competition back several years.
The inZOI stand in Cologne, Germany was not to be missed. It literally shone, and the eyes of every visitor were also attracted by Psychet, the game’s mascot, who in a larger-than-life size gazed from the ceiling at everyone passing by. The demo started with character creation. The character editor is very sophisticated and the only thing I regretted was the lack of beard length. This fact was immediately noted by one of the journalists present, so hopefully we will see bearded people like me before the publication in inZOI. We then took pictures of the characters we created and uploaded them to the Krafton server. Even before the games started, we received those photos printed as tags.
In inZOI you can be whoever you want, do whatever you want and build whatever you want. I started by building my own house on the coast of a town that looked like Miami from a distance. Having never played the game before, I managed to build a very nice house. To equip it, I had a library that contained thousands of ready-made items. Dozens of chairs, tables, kitchen equipment… in very high quality. And everything is functional. It is not a problem to come with your character to the stove, take a pan and cook an egg. I was also interested in the possibility of a 3D printer. Underneath this option is the option to upload a photo from your phone to the game and add it to the game. But it’s not just wall paintings, but you can take pictures of, for example, a tree in your garden. The game then transforms it into a 3D object through AI and adds it to the library.
But I didn’t want to spend hours building a house, so I chose one of the several ready-made models and started to get interested in other aspects of the game. After buying a few more plots in town, I ran out of money and went looking for a new job. When creating the character, I chose the option that I wanted her to have the ambition to do great things that would one day change the world. So I chose to work in a cafe as my first job. I was able to apply for the job in the normal way through a selection process and an interview. But there was also an opportunity to force work, which I did. But the game informed me that another NPC lost his job because of this action, so he is now out of a job. Playing on feelings worked for me and I ended up not going to the cafe. Instead, I used the Money Cheat and bought a car, which I then drove around the streets. Even if this article were a thousand words long, I would only skim the surface of what inZOI has to offer.
You can also see from the videos that the developers went the route of realistic graphics. Here you can freely change and apply all kinds of filters. The game is still in development, which could be seen by several errors and glitches when our characters did strange things or walked through walls.
But you can already play it on PC through Early Access. The developers promise to bring the game to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles later. We will continue to follow inZOI closely and you can find all the latest news from the new Krafton studio here on our website.
