Inzoi lets you customize your entire house down to the last thread, which is great in theory but doesn't feel good in practice

When I started building my character, or Zoi, for the first time, Inzoi impressed me with the amount of customization at hand. I spent a lot longer than I like to admit meticulously crafting a Zoi that in reality, looked nothing like me. But I still felt proud of it. The amount of points you can twist and manipulate to create your perfect character is never a bad thing when it comes to making the experience of a game feel personal and putting you in complete control. So it's not surprising that this carried across to home customization, yet the same satisfaction and feeling of pride didn't follow once I left character creation.

Don't get me wrong, you are given a lot of choices when it comes to customizing the furniture in your home, which is great for someone who is prepared to fine-tune their interiors down to the very last thread. Especially considering Inzoi is releasing into early access, and there's a high chance more options will come in the future. But for someone like me who isn't so creatively inclined, yet still wants to at least try and make it more personal so I can feel like I've made my mark in Inzoi, certain elements could've done with slightly less freedom.

Each time you go to customize an item, you have to place it first and then select the paintbrush icon that pops up above it. From here, you have to choose each individual section of it depending on what part you want to change the appearance of. For a bed, this includes the frame, the mattress, the sheets, and two sets of pillows. All of which can be independently customized.

On paper, it just sounds like a thorough process, which many players will enjoy I'm sure. But I just wanted a simple way to change my whole bed to something other than off-white rather than having to painstakingly select which section I wanted to color, change it to gingham and some off shade of pink, before moving to the next.

There's no doubt that this completely open approach to things will appeal to anyone with a passion for interior design, or even someone who has the patience to dedicate themselves to customizing a house to a T. But for me who didn't want to settle for the millennial grey interior of every apartment in Inzoi, I would've appreciated a little bit of hand-holding and some extra help to save me so much work.

When you create your character and style an outfit, there are a handful of color presets you can work with rather than having to rely on the color wheel if you don't like the default look. So, I can't understand why furniture didn't get the same treatment.

The Sims 4 made me feel too comfortable in my decorating abilities, and I'll confess that now. Each item of furniture you pick has a variety of pre-made color sets for you to choose from if you don't like the default. Inzoi, on the other hand, opens up the opportunity to customize every single element of a piece of furniture down to its color and texture. It really is creative freedom, but it feels almost like overkill.

Sometimes I didn't want to have to change the entire pattern and texture of a rug, I just wanted to generally change it from grey to pink. But if I selected pink for each section of the rug, it came back with a muddied color due to the texture. It was more effort than I thought it would be, and that applied to every single item around the house. Even down to things like your oven, or a simple floor lamp.

By the end of the first two hours I spent trying to get my house feeling like a home, I had already fallen out of love with the scale of customization. I felt uninspired to keep going through each room and trying to personalize them to my Zoi's aesthetic because each time I did I was met with different versions of muddy colors thanks to the amount of textures there are to select as well. It was hard to make things match, inevitably making my apartment seem like a complete shambles, and making me wish I'd stuck with how basic it looked in the first place.

Having picked a pre-built house, I didn't exactly do myself any favors. But I can't say sifting through the furniture catalog was particularly inspiring either. Compared to the level of customization, the variety of actual furniture items is incredibly limited. I like to think more options and items will be given once Inzoi comes out of early access. But for now, the options you are given are also incredibly basic by design unless your favorite color is beige, so you're almost forced to spend your time customizing them. That is, of course, unless you use the ability to scan your real-life items into the game. But let's be real, if I didn't have the patience to change the pattern of my entire bed including the mattress, you probably won't catch me scanning in any of my actual belongings any time soon.

It's a shame really, because decorating a house is usually one of my favorite elements of a game like this. I love the feeling of being entirely in control, and making a space so personal it does feel like that extra important push to bring your character to life. But the feeling of having too much to do is overwhelming with Inzoi, leading to me feeling like I don't even want to bother in the first place.

I want to think that over time customizing my belongings in Inzoi will become easier, and my gripes are due to not yet getting a solid grasp on the controls. Especially once we are out of early access. But, having spent at least five hours attempting to convert my house from its modern, grey appearance to something with more color and character, I can't say my feelings will change until then. Maybe I'll wake up in a cold sweat one night and know the only thing that will fix me is changing the texture of two sets of pillows and a mattress before I've even thought about color. But for the time being, I'll spend every possible second outside of my house mourning the loss of color presets and praying for more decorations in the future.