The early access launch for fresh new Sims competitor Inzoi is just about six weeks away and information about its features—those coming in time for early access and those planned to be developed later—are arriving at a weekly pace now. Over the weekend we got yet more details about Inzoi's life sim features, this time revolving around the afterlife.
In his weekly teaser for fans in Inzoi's official Discord server, game director Hyungjun "Kjun" Kim got into talking about the paranormal, specifically ghosts. He acknowledges that Inzoi is mostly focused on realism, which is obvious from its glossy, well-lit visuals but also the features it's chosen to prioritize. Kjun does want to see some fantastical elements make it into the game though.
"We want to keep the playability of ghosts fairly limited so it doesn’t overshadow the main gameplay, but we also want to make sure the experience is engaging enough when it does happen," Kjun told players in Discord.
'Ghost gameplay' as Kjun's currently explained it revolves around Inzoi's karma system, which we saw a little of during some Inzoi playtests with content creators last year. They showed some karma-affecting actions (like farting?) and a karma score in each Zoi's profile.
Kjun says that Zois who die with enough karma points will pack up for the afterlife peacefully, but those with poor karma will remain as ghosts and will need to hang about attempting to restore their karma. Ghosts as they'll be implemented for Inzoi's early access in March will be present but you won't be able to control them. That's planned for later.
"Any further development for ghosts will have to come after the release," Kjun says. "That said, our current build allows you to encounter ghosts at set times under certain conditions."
As for what's planned for even further down the line, Kjun doesn't count out the possibility of other paranormal Zois. "While we’re committed to refining the realistic elements of inZOI first, I’d love to explore more fantasy-driven elements in the future," he added.
The majority of life sim players coming from The Sims 4 will be familiar with the popularity of "occult" sims like ghosts, vampires, werewolves, mermaids, etc. They're a whole popular gameplay category, some with their own dedicated expansions packs. As Kim says, that's not really Inzoi's aim, but it's nice to see Inzoi Studio entertaining the idea of dipping into some of those popular fantasy characters.
You can keep up with everything we know about Inzoi ahead of its early access launch in March and in the meantime keep track of the other upcoming games like the Sims that we're expecting this year.
Oh great, the full Inzoi system requirements are posted and I'm barely above the minimum specs so I guess my Zois will be beautifully blurry
'I was recklessly brave to even think about creating a game of this scale': Inzoi director admits he now sees 'why so few companies have attempted to develop a life simulation game'
