With the InZOI Development team returning from a special event in China where they discussed and previewed future multiplayer features for InZOI, Hyungjun 'Kjun' Kim and the rest of the InZOI Development Team addressed some muddy areas of communication, primarily regarding the creation of a multiplayer mode and how that could influence the creation of the main single-player game experience.
Both the main developer diary and catch-up from Kjun had attached videos, so read on for a breakdown of each!
Table of Contents
Wednesday September 16th Catch-Up
Kjun's Follow Up to "9.11.26 Canvastown Preview"
Hello everyone,
Having safely returned from our event in China, I am writing to express my heartfelt gratitude to all our players. Meeting inZOI users in person at the venue was truly meaningful and delightful. At the same time, showing a build of 'inZOI Canvas Town' that wasn't as polished as I had hoped due to limited time and venue conditions left me both grateful and deeply apologetic.
Event Demo & Multiplayer Clarifications
inZOI is actively being developed with the goal of becoming an online life simulation where players gather and live together in a town. However, given the event constraints, we felt it would be difficult to properly convey this core structure in a short window. As a result, we focused the demo on mod support and select story-save features.
This led to several misunderstandings. To clarify: in our upcoming small-scale tests, we plan to evaluate whether the experience of playing together in a town with other players offers genuine value. Focusing our video content around the China event caused confusion, and part of this was a misjudgment on my part as a developer.
Building inZOI Together
To be frank, the hardest part of game development is deciding a direction that the public will love. I am not a developer who intuitively knows exactly what players want at a glance. I deeply respect and envy those with that instinct, but it is a talent I lack. However, I genuinely love the process of making games, and that passion is what shaped inZOI into what it is today. I am convinced that the right path forward for inZOI is to continuously communicate with you, test features together, and discover long-term fun through your feedback.
Attached Video & Current Multiplayer Features
The attached video showcases a preview of a new city currently in development. We are designing it so that all lots—with the exception of roadways—are fully editable. Since roads and certain elements cannot be completely removed yet, we are currently exploring ways to provide a dedicated editor. Additionally, to verify existing features in a multiplayer environment, we are testing these capabilities on the 'Dowon' map as well.
Here are the main multiplayer features we are actively developing and testing:
- Multi-story residential housing system
- Support for 20+ players residing simultaneously in a single town
- Door locking and visitor eviction mechanics
- Simultaneous house building by multiple players
- Multiplayer verification for existing core inZOI features
- Forming relationships by attending parties and earning income through careers
(During today’s playtest, we identified an issue where non-family characters could not board vehicles together. We are actively tracking down and resolving bugs like this.)
Single-Player Priorities & October Update
Please rest assured about our single-player experience: the vast majority of our development team remains dedicated to single-player, which serves as the foundation for everything we build. Only a small dedicated team handles the process of adapting these systems for multiplayer.
We are preparing an update for October. This update will introduce modding capabilities, implement daily routines for Zois (living, working, and returning home), and provide features allowing you to edit these daily schedules directly.
Reflecting on the flight back, I felt fortunate that our team has built a flexible framework allowing us to test the game in diverse ways. Because I know my own limitations in predicting what everyone will love, we will continue running multiple small-scale tests to improve the game step-by-step alongside your feedback.
I will follow up with another update this Friday. Thank you always for your patience, support, and trust.
Sincerely,
kjun
Catch-Up Attached Video Gallery
An attached video was provided with the response to last week's developer diary, providing an early look at a new town being built that will be fully customizable, with the team also discussing ways to make things like roads, decor, and landscaping customizable as well. This is likely an early neighborhood/test save file for the creation of the multiplayer system.
Developer Diary Recap
○ A functional basketball system that has a mini-game attached, meaning that the time you release your Zoi's shot will dictate if they make it or not.
○ Expansions are being worked on for surfing and diving, including the addition of first-person.
○ Avoidance animations are being improved, making the simulation work and function much better when many Zois are consistently colliding with each other, like in crowds.
○ You can now walk up to cash registers at the cinema/movie theater to order popcorn and drinks.
○ Worker will also walk to the respective machines to serve them to you. However, other food items like tacos or hot dogs are prepared "more instantly", and lack animation variation at the moment.
○ You can now view a Zoi's relationships to each member of their household in Create-A-Zoi by hovering over the family member's icon.
○ You can now adjust relationship levels between Zois before entering the game.
○ A door permissions/locking system is being worked on to allow for locking doors properly, as well as identifying Zois as owners or co-owners to make the area accessible.
○ Zois will now only autonomously seek full meals when their hunger is in the red. In the yellow, Zois will now search for lighter sustenance, like a dessert or drink.
○ Zois can now re-do already done dishes, as some people in real life do. You can only be sure if they're clean if you do it yourself!
○ Zois will no longer change into their full athletic outfit for lighter/casual exercises, like stretches that can be chosen when clicking on their person.
○ A new "Talk on the phone" interaction has been added to "kill time". Your Zoi will speak on the phone (This will not target a specific Zoi or relationship) and improve their social need.
○ Karma-influencing interactions are now removed from the recommended list, so your Zoi's karma will not change unless you make direction action for it to change.
○ A new modkit feature being added is the ability to change the animation/positioning for Zois seated while driving.
This Week's Developer Diary
09.18.26 On to Another Update
Hello everyone, and happy Friday.
Autumn has already arrived here in Korea. The weather is becoming cooler, and the skies are beginning to feel higher and clearer. Today, I’m writing once again to share some materials prepared by the inZOI development team.
Recently, the areas the inZOI development team has been focusing on the most are autonomy and conversations. As I mentioned before, we are working to make Zois behave in more natural and human-like ways. Personally, one of my biggest regrets from the September update was that we were unable to include the autonomy editing features we had been working on. As I previously explained through our posts and materials, when Zois enter a business, we want customers to have their own places while employees use chairs and tools intended specifically for staff.
We are improving the conversation system in the same direction. Conversations are also an important part of Zoi autonomy, but until now, the system has not sufficiently considered the relationship between the Zois or their emotional states. As a result, conversations that felt somewhat awkward or inappropriate for the situation could sometimes be selected. There was, of course, a reason the system was designed this way. Creating conversations that account for every relationship, emotion, and situation requires a very large amount of dialogue content. Because of this, many of our conversations have been presented in a relatively abstract way. However, we found that this approach alone still made it difficult for conversations to feel truly natural.
For the October mini update, we are improving the system so that it can select more appropriate conversations by considering factors such as the relationship between the Zois, the emotional state of both Zois, and their current situation. However, as we developed this further, we encountered another issue: the more strictly the system selects conversations appropriate to each situation, the smaller the pool of suitable dialogue becomes, causing the same conversations to repeat more frequently. To address this, we are currently increasing both the variety and overall amount of conversation content.
I believe autonomy is one of the core systems that makes Zois feel like living beings. Through these improvements, we hope Zois will better understand their surroundings and circumstances, naturally continue actions that fit their purpose, and ultimately allow you to live alongside Zois who feel more like real people. The inZOI development team will continue working to improve the quality of autonomy.
I hope you enjoy the materials prepared by the development team today, and I wish you all a wonderful weekend.
-Kjun
Do you plan on playing any multiplayer additions to InZOI, or are you waiting for new content in the next InZOI Update coming in October? Let us know, and follow Sims Community for more news regarding InZOI and all of your favorite Life Simulation games!
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