Inzoi: The New ‘Kid’ on The Block

Who doesn’t love a good life simulation game?

I, like many people, grew up playing The Sims. There’s something so addictive about being able to build your perfect life, or create absolute chaos, and watch your characters live it out. I think it’s the customisation that makes these games so compelling. This article by Prudence Dodds shares a similar perspective, as a university student she speaks about how these games can be a source of relief, but her main argument is that “life offers us a lot more adventures than any video game can possibly provide”.

While I adore The Sims, its endless cycle of paid expansion packs has become frustrating, and lately I’ve been craving a game that feels complete without extra purchases. That’s how I stumbled across Inzoi, a new life simulation game developed by Krafton. It launched in early access in April 2025, and as a long-time life sim fan, I couldn’t resist trying it out.

I hate to compare it to The Sims, but it’s impossible not to. There hasn’t been anything this close in years.

When I first booted up Inzoi, I was blown away by the visuals. The game’s quality makes The Sims 4 look dated. Lighting is realistic, characters are highly detailed and the world feels alive. It’s also important to note I play on a high-end PC, so performance and visuals may vary for others. Still, the overall presentation is stunning and makes the world feel far more immersive than I expected.

Of course, my first stop was creating a character. And here, my excitement quickly dipped. The game offered an abundance of white presets, with very little diversity on display. Coming from The Sims, where Create-A-Sim is incredibly inclusive, this felt disappointing. That said, the customisation tools are powerful. You can adjust almost anything. From facial structure to clothing to colour palettes. It’s clear Krafton put effort into customisation, even if they’ve got work to do on representation with their clothing choices.

Once I had my character, I bought a pre-built house to start off. The designs were lovely and the interiors felt more realistic than what we see in The Sims. I explored the home, cooked a simple meal and noticed Inzoi uses a skill system. You unlock more advanced options as your skills increase, which adds a satisfying sense of progression. When I left the house to explore, I quickly discovered Inzoi’s biggest strength- the open world. You can walk down the street freely, visit the library, pop into a café and more. It genuinely feels like living inside a real city. However, the illusion breaks when interacting with other characters. The NPCs feel stiff and robotic, more like background pedestrians in GTA than living, breathing neighbours. Social interactions are awkward, and menus are incredibly confusing. I never really connected with them, which hurts the overall immersion and player experience.

Something that I truly loved is Psycat’s Advice, the in-game help system. It’s packed with useful information including how to activate cheats (and honestly, who doesn’t love free money in a life sim?). I was absolutely thrilled when I found this, and it helped me understand the game a lot more.

As someone who can spend hours in The Sims building, I was curious to see how my experience would be on Inzoi. Sadly, this is where my experience completely fell apart. The build mode interface is clunky and unintuitive, to the point where it became frustrating rather than fun. I’m clearly not alone: this Reddit threat shows that many players feel the same way. The customisation depth is impressive, but the usability just isn’t there yet. After struggling for hours, I gave up and honestly, I haven’t opened the game since.

Despite its issues, I can’t say Inzoi is a bad game, it’s just an unfinished one. It’s still in early access and Krafton seems to be actively responding to player feedback with updates. The game shows huge potential as a true competitor to The Sims, especially with its stunning graphics, open world and realism. But for right now, it feels like a skeleton of what it could be. Clunky building, awkward social systems and stiff NPCs. It’s ambitious and beautiful, but not quite enjoyable yet. I’ll definitely return to Inzoi once it’s had more time to grow. I want it to succeed, and I think it could. It just needs some extra polish. Hopefully, the next time I try to build my dream house, I won’t rage quit halfway through (this could also be a complete user skill error… but let’s blame it on something else).