Despite living with someone who’s got hundreds upon hundreds of hours logged in The Sims 4 and its various expansions, my relationship with that particular sub-genre of life sim has never really moved past a mild interest. Don’t get me wrong, they do some cool stuff, and I love the idea of them but it’s rare that I get sucked into them. inZOI has been on my radar for a while though due to the sheer amount of “stuff” that it appears to do, and with the new Island Getaway DLC arriving, it seemed like the perfect time for me to jump in.
Obviously I’d not played the game before, so rather than trying to preview both the main game and the DLC in one go, I thought I’d simply take you through a day in the life of my ZOI, who I named Ann Perkins. She’s a bog standard ZOI, because I didn’t actually create her at all. I’m a Simmer’s worst nightmare, and rather than spending an hour tinkering with the character creator, I’m happy just picking one of the default ones and rolling with that. From what I saw though, the character creator looks comprehensive, and if you’re into the realistic style inZOI is going for then I bet you could get a lot of mileage from the character creator alone.
From there we loaded into Cahaya, the new location in Island Getaway inspired by Southeast Asia. We arrived in Cahaya at 7.30am with no tutorial or any sort of onboarding as far as I could tell. This is a problem for me, and as I’ve gotten older I find it harder and harder to get into games that don’t take the time to teach me the ropes. Now, inZOI is in Early Access so I can forgive that, and there does seem to be some sort of in-game resource, but for a game with this many systems and settings it’d be nice to just get a bit of an intro to the basics.
So, in lieu of a proper introduction I decided to just do something I knew you could do in The Sims: I made some mac and cheese. Ann wasn’t hungry, but equally she didn’t turn down a bit of early morning carb-loading. I couldn’t work out how to open the map so decided to go for a little wander in the general direction of the beach. It’s at this point I feel I should probably point out a couple of things about how I’m playing:
- Firstly, I’m playing on a ROG Ally X. It’s my PC, I love it, and I’ve yet to find a game it outright can’t play. After a bit of tinkering I was able to comfortably play inZOI at 50fps, albeit on low settings and resolution. That said, the game is certainly attractive, and with the addition of an over-the-shoulder camera it definitely grounds you in the world more successfully than other similar games I’ve played.
- Secondly, as I’m on the Ally, I’m playing with gamepad controls rather than mouse and keyboard. Again, I was quite impressed with how it played. The game has full controller support (which is good as it’s coming to PS5 next year), and once I got used to accessing my in-game phone and the various different menus, it actually works quite well. This combined with the over-the-shoulder camera gave inZOI the feeling of a third-person adventure game at times.
Anyway, back to Ann. After struggling to find the turtle sanctuary, I let her mess around on a strangers surfboard. Bizarrely, after getting off the board, control was ripped away from me so Ann could go and post a letter. This was a common occurrence, and if you’re idle for longer than a couple of seconds, your ZOI will bugger off and start doing stuff of their own accord. There seemed to be a toggle for free will, and I toyed with using it, but I’d grown attached to Ann at this point and removing her free will seemed cruel.
Playing on the surfboard had put Ann in her bikini for some reason and as I didn’t know how to change her back, I thought we’d just take the water taxi over to the resort where she’d feel more comfortable. After playing on a kids swingset, Ann went and took a dip in the pool where she promptly got stuck, as I realised that as good as the gamepad controls were, there were a few oversights when it came to navigating the world. We finally got out, and to celebrate I took out a $5000 loan via Ann’s phone. If she wanted to keep living the island life then she needed to be able to fund it.
I also realised there were purchasable mounts, and so I procured Ann an e-scooter using her new funds. Summoning it is as simple as selecting it from your personal actions menu, and, much like Ann herself, you get direct control over your mount. Zipping around Cahaya on it was surprisingly fun and helped sell the island resort setting. After scooting around for a while we bumped into a chap called Randy Marshall who immediately took a dislike to Ann after she brought up rising crime rates in her opening conversation with him. I get it, it’s not really appropriate poolside chat. We tried to speak to him a few more times, and I was impressed by the huge range of conversation topics that inZOI has on offer, but I didn’t want to waste Ann’s time trying to appease this guy.
The rest of the day was spent whizzing around using the scooters (unexpectedly cool) first person mode and seeing what else Cahaya had to offer. We went and grabbed lunch, popped home for a midday pee, then went out to explore the turtle sanctuary and the local shops. There’s a huge amount to get stuck into, I just wish the game had spent more time on a proper onboarding journey.
I couldn’t help but feel the game was slightly sterile too. There’s no denying it looks great (even on low settings), but it lacks the whimsy and charm of something like The Sims and doesn’t really give anything to replace them. It’s hard to explain exactly what’s missing, although there’s a distinct lack of NPC’s in Cahaya, but I think as a package it doesn’t quite have the warmth that you find in The Sims visuals or background music. It’s still early days though and I’d like to think they’ll evolve inZOI’s style as they find their feet.
By the time you read this, inZOI: Island Getaway will be available. If you’re already a fan of the base game then I imagine you’ll get a lot out of exploring Cahaya, including the elements I’ve not touched on such as farming or renting boats. However, if you’re coming into the game blind, like me, then your mileage may vary and the game could end up feeling a bit overwhelming. Still, there’s something undeniably cool about a more realistic take on The Sims, and if you’re even remotely interested then it’s worth a look.
inZOI is out now for PC.
