InZOI Had Everything to Substitute The Sims… But Working in It Made It a Chore

InZOI promised to revolutionize life‐simulation games with an unprecedented level of customization and realism, designed to go head-to-head with Electronic Arts’ The Sims franchise. However, once you dive into its grueling daily routine—with eight-hour workdays built in—that ambition has turned into such a meticulous exercise that, ironically, it’s starting to work against itself.

An Unmatched Building Experience

Since launching in early access on March 28, 2025, InZOI has stood out for its comprehensive creative tools in both character design and home construction. Players can fine-tune every physical detail of their “zois” by leveraging Epic Games’ MetaHuman integration or, if they prefer, use an in-game editor to sculpt faces and animations themselves.

In its built-in Build Mode, InZOI flexes real graphical muscle thanks to Unreal Engine 5, delivering photorealistic lighting even without ray tracing—a hallmark of next-gen titles. The editor lets you tweak walls, doors, windows, and furnishings down to the last detail: from extreme minimalism to lavish, baroque setups featuring real‐world brands like LG or Samsung, and even AI-generated replicas of physical objects from photos.

Commercially, the game is available on Steam for €39.99, with a promise that all updates and future DLC will be free during the early access period. To date, over 18,000 users have left “Very Positive” reviews (81%), and 71% of recent ratings point to an overall favorable reception. These are great numbers for a game that it’s still in early access and might not be completely polished yet.

Extreme Realism: Entertainment or Tedium?

InZOI’s second major selling point is its social simulation, which enforces a daily routine that compels your zoi to follow work and household schedules with the same exacting realism as real life. Unlike The Sims—where you can speed up or skip your sim’s tasks—here every report, meeting, or break must be managed in real time, mirroring eight-hour workdays complete with meal breaks and household chores.

While this fidelity to everyday rhythms is praised by players seeking deeper immersion, it quickly becomes tedious. Sitting down to write reports or clean the house ceases to be a diversion and instead turns into an obligation the player already endures outside the screen. Even speeding time up to 30× during sleep doesn’t prevent the hours from feeling slow and repetitive almost immediately.

But this realism might have its perks in other situations. If InZOI developers implement in a future update some casino games, we might have in our hands an unlimited online gaming simulation of these types of games. The slots or the roulette experience could be closer to the real casino.

To mitigate this excess of realism, InZOI offers a “Heightened Free Will” mode powered by advanced AI: your zoi goes into autopilot, managing its needs and relationships without direct input—but in doing so, it removes the interactive challenge and reduces the player to a mere observer watching a digital fishbowl. Thus, this might be a small patch to make the game bearable to those not looking for this amount of realism.