inZOI, the Video Game That Mixes The Sims and GTA With Last Generation Graphics and Total Freedom

inZOI’s official page has just landed on Steam, which has made everyone talk about this video game. It’s a surprising simulator of everyday life that inevitably likens to The Sims. Still, aesthetics and particular gameplay possibilities remind games that pretend to be a somewhat more fanciful life emulation, such as GTA and other sandboxes. inZOI’s developer announced the game in November 2023. However, it was the impressive trailer and its gameplay released in April of this year that began to attract attention.

At the moment, we don’t know the official release date, although the game seems to be at a very advanced stage of development. Another proof that we’ll soon be able to try inZOI on our computers (press estimates 2025) is the announcement of its minimum requirements, which are frankly affordable despite the spectacular visuals derived from the excellent use of the Unreal Engine 5 game engine. These are the requirements:

Krafton, the developer of this South Korean game, has left behind a significant competitor in its attempt to overshadow the upcoming The Sims 5: Life by You, an ambitious project that Paradox Interactive finally canceled after a trio of agonizing delays. It’s possible that Krafton wanted to ride the wave of this cancellation to clarify that it’s the only company that aspires to the throne of The Sims besides the fifth installment of the EA simulator itself.

The creators of PUBG: Battlegrounds aim to make the simulation as realistic as possible. To do this, they have the technical support of Unreal Engine 5 and a wide range of everyday actions: looking for a job, starting romantic relationships or friendships, shopping, singing karaoke, and a series of actions that seem more typical of a GTA.

This means you’ll be able to drive cars and even be chased, get into accidents, and be fined by the police for running over or speeding. Of course, the game won’t delve into the option of becoming an outlaw. Still, inZOI wants to offer all the options to create a less cartoonish and innocent world than The Sims, with a suffocating amount of customization possibilities for our characters and exhaustive menus.

Three Cities at Your Disposal

Here are more examples of these similarities with the sandbox style: inZOI has three cities we can travel through by car or on foot. The vehicle and the characters will change according to atmospheric phenomena (dynamically raised). Of course, we can do all this alone or accompanied by friends in the game, NPCs called Zois.

A karma system will manage our relationships with Zois. There’s not much information about it, but it seems clear that positive or negative behavior with others will have the same impact on our score. And yes, back to GTA, we can behave violently towards non-player characters to push or attack them. All of this will cost us karma points, of course.

Finally, community mods are an aspect that Krafton wants to address. In the latest gameplay, inZOI director Hyungjun Kim stated, “We want the game to be easy to modify. Since we are using Unreal Engine, we will provide a special plugin and even guides from the beginning to help and encourage modders to work with the game and create their original content.” This is excellent news for the modder community and the life expectancy of the game, which may be infinite.

This article was written by John Tones and originally published in Spanish on Xataka.

Image | Krafton

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