Today is a public holiday here in Korea. Even so, I wanted to keep my promise and share another development update with you. Just kidding—this post was actually written yesterday.
I joked because I sometimes feel that if I let you see how hard we're working, it might be a little easier to understand why the game is still a work in progress and to keep waiting for us. This week as well, I'd like to share some of the things we're currently developing.
This month, we've been spending a great deal of time fixing bugs and improving existing features. This is now my fourth year developing games in this genre. If someone asked me what the single most important element of a life simulation game is, I would answer without hesitation: the autonomy system that makes ZOI feel like real people living their own lives.
When development first began, we studied The Sims extensively, along with many development materials and presentations about how that genre had evolved. We even consulted experts in robotics. In the end, however, most of what we needed simply didn't exist, so we had to create it ourselves. Building a system that allows Zoi to think and act independently was easily the most difficult challenge I've faced.
Right now, each ZOI scans nearby interaction targets, evaluates them based on needs, traits, personality, preferences, and other factors, calculates a score for every possible action, and then chooses the highest-scoring one. Within roughly a 40-meter radius, the system evaluates a large number of possible interactions, selects the most appropriate target, moves there, and performs the chosen action.
This approach has served us well so far, but recently I've become increasingly aware of its limitations. Because of that, we've decided to go back to the drawing board and redesign the autonomy system itself.
In the future, I want ZOI to satisfy their immediate needs first, but after that, instead of repeatedly choosing whatever action has the highest numerical score, they should naturally make decisions that reflect who they are. Rather than relying primarily on score-based priorities, we're moving toward designing behavior through rules that resemble the way people actually make decisions.
For example, an outgoing ZOI should naturally spend more time socializing with others, while a family-oriented Zoi should prefer spending time with their spouse and children. If a couple visits a park together, I don't want them to immediately wander off in different directions. I want them to walk together, chat with each other, and naturally enjoy spending time as a couple.
Looking back, I think I temporarily lost sight of the fact that this system is the true engine of a life simulation game. Adding new features is certainly important, but I've come to realize once again that autonomy should be the foundation that naturally connects every other system together.
As our plans become more concrete, I'll continue sharing them with you and listening carefully to your thoughts. Your feedback has been an enormous help in shaping the direction of development.
Writing this also reminds me that I'm still showing you a game with many unfinished parts, and I genuinely feel sorry for that. My biggest goal right now is to turn that feeling into meaningful updates as quickly as possible.
Throughout July, improving the autonomy system will be our highest priority. Then, next month, we'll focus on strengthening the connections between the game's various content and systems so that they work together more naturally. Step by step, we'll continue making steady and meaningful progress.
kjun
P.S We also have quite a few channels and categories on our Discord now, so we're planning to reorganize them to make everything easier to navigate. Of course, none of the existing content will be lost—we'll be keeping it all. As with our other improvements, we'll share the proposed changes with you first and ask for your feedback before making any decisions.
※ For the video, please check it on Discord or the forum.
🔗 Discord: Link
🔗 Forum: Link
Kjun’s Reply to Your Comments
Hello everyone,
Wednesday's communication time has come around again. It seems like you all enjoyed last week's candid dev talk, so I'd like to keep it going (please let me know if it's just me who thinks so).
I'm really glad you gave such enthusiastic support for the jump shortcut issue we discussed last time. As requested, we'll offer a shortcut key option, change it to the spacebar, and announce it clearly in the patch notes. We'll continue to ask for your opinions on Wednesdays before making important changes like this going forward.
Next, we're working on expanding the family creation feature in the character creation UI, which we mentioned before. Currently, inZOI's character creation UI requires moving back and forth between several screens to create a family, and setting up family genetics/relationships has also been inconvenient for a while — we're working to improve this. We're also preparing to let you add voices, add family members, and change family relationships in-game, as well as select characters at the baby/toddler stage, and capture the final look as a photo. We've tried to preserve existing usability as much as possible, but there will be some minor changes as features are added, which we'll cover in detail in a video.
We're also continuing work on the meal/cooking system enhancements we previewed recently. Playing inZOI at a relaxed pace, I once again realized how much time meals take up besides sleep. While working on adjusting cooking/meal priorities, we discovered an issue where large-portion food couldn't be taken directly from the fridge or inventory to eat, so we're working with the team in charge to fix this inconvenience. We're also considering adding more lively reactions related to meals — for example, realistic reactions like a fire breaking out if food is left unattended on the stove. Just the cooking/meal features alone might take the person in charge the whole year, but since so many of you brought it up, we're raising its priority. We're adding a lot of new dishes too — is there a food you'd really like to see added to inZOI?
We're also preparing the "spend the night" feature this time. Instead of turning existing friend/romantic relationships into family members or a social event, we're planning to offer it as a choice within a more natural conversation flow. We had pushed this down in priority since similar features could substitute for it, but with the goal of making your immersion and NPCs feel closer to you, we're going to build it starting now and use it as a tool to gradually expand relationship narratives. If you have any ideas for immersion-focused systems like this, please feel free to share them.
That's all for today's dev communication. We're deeply grateful to those who continue to show unwavering love for inZOI despite its shortcomings, and inZOI Studio will keep working hard to improve and complete the game to repay that love.