Today, as we celebrate inZOI’s 1st anniversary, I wanted to share a brief reflection and our plans moving forward.

As with many things in life, every beginning starts with excitement. However, when we first met our players on March 28, 2025, I felt more anxiety than excitement. inZOI launched into Early Access after just one week of demo testing. Preparing a demo before launch was not an efficiency-oriented decision from a development standpoint, as it required us to prepare two builds simultaneously. Even so, we made that choice for a reason. At the time, I felt inZOI was not yet ready to be sold as a paid product. I wanted players to try the demo first so they wouldn’t purchase the game if it didn’t suit their preferences or hardware. A year ago, I wasn’t asking players to buy the game. If anything, I was closer to asking them not to.

To test stability across various hardware specifications, I brought my personal PCs to the office and spent entire weekends testing and troubleshooting. There were many moments when problems remained unsolved, and I faced limitations that our team alone couldn’t overcome. These are the moments that can demoralize a developer. Despite this, many of you continued to play and support us for over a year. I wanted to express our gratitude in some small way. So in this build, I included a special anniversary cake, and that cake reveals a special message when sliced. It may not be a grand gift, but it represents my appreciation for staying with us through an imperfect and evolving game. Even now, I still feel a sense of apology. There are still bugs to fix, awkward or incomplete content, and unfinished memory optimization. However, our team is gradually becoming more familiar with the genre, and we are steadily building the experience needed to do better.

If I could go back to the beginning of development, I might hesitate before choosing this genre again. This is because the development difficulty is extremely high, and delivering proportional enjoyment for the development cost spent is really tough. Perhaps that is why there are so few games in this genre. Or perhaps, it would reflect my own limitations. Even through these challenges, the process of receiving your feedback on Discord and improving the game step by step has been a great source of happiness for me. To be honest, I thought many of you would try the game at first and quickly leave. I never expected such a long and ongoing dialogue with so many of you all. Among all the games I have developed over a period of close to 30 years, this journey has been the most meaningful. Thank you, sincerely.

To mark this anniversary, I would like to recommend you a book: The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer. The book emphasizes a Stoic mindset, accepting what we cannot control and letting go of unnecessary worry. This philosophy resonates with the emotional direction we aim for in inZOI.

Now to get back into sharing our development for inZOI, these are the plans we have for the rest of the year.

[Fundamentals First]

The ongoing “Fundamentals First” project is progressing faster than expected thanks to the strong support from our players. So far, we have successfully completed a total of 55 items. Based on this positive progress, in April we plan to slow down the pace of adding new features and instead focus on addressing bugs. We will refine the content that was introduced quickly to meet previous schedules, improve overall quality, and prioritize fixing identified issues. Although some timelines for the remaining Fundamentals First items have been adjusted due to internal circumstances, we will carefully ensure that all items are addressed without omission.

The main goal for April is “full-scale stability improvement and optimization.” To achieve this, we will focus on the following:

• Expanded Graphics Settings,

We will add more options to graphics settings within April, allowing players with lower-spec hardware to enjoy a smoother and more optimized experience, while ensuring that high-end rendering quality remains unaffected.

• System Memory Optimization,

We will focus on improving memory leaks and overload issues, which are common challenges in simulation games. We also plan to introduce options that allow players to better manage system memory usage based on their PC specifications.

[New Content Roadmap]

As we focus the majority of our efforts into fundamentals, we will also be working on some new content based on this schedule.

April — Jobs & Freelancing

The career system will be significantly expanded to include interviews, promotions, collaborative tasks, vacations, remote work, and retirement/pension systems. A new freelance system will also be introduced, allowing players to take on work such as package delivery alongside their main jobs. Additionally, the revenue model for created content will shift from one-time earnings to a weekly income system.

May — High School Life

In addition to the existing rabbit-hole system, a new on-site high school system will be introduced. Players will be able to experience a wide range of school life, including classes, exams, prom, and graduation, alongside unique classmates.

July — Travel, Resort Improvements, and Prison

Players will be able to move between cities through both immigration and travel, and the Cahaya resort will be enhanced with more content. A prison system will also be introduced. Additionally, issues related to family trees and cross-city Zoi connections will be resolved.

September — Festivals & Vehicle Interactions

City festivals and user-created holidays will be added to the calendar system. Vehicle interactions will be expanded, including repairs, car washes, audio systems, in-car conversations, call taxis, and taxi driver jobs.

October — Karma System Improvements

A new system will be introduced to track changes in a Zoi’s karma throughout their life. The karma report will also be improved with a summary feature.

December — Fame, Reputation, Celebrities, and Social Media

This will introduce new content related to celebrities, influencers, social media, performances, fame, and reputation. We hope you look forward to a more dynamic and unexpected Zoi life experience.

[Enhanced Mod Support]

Through our year-end survey, we confirmed strong demand for script mods. To meet this demand, we are dedicating additional resources to accelerate its development, and timelines are continuously being shortened. Depending on progress, we expect to introduce this feature as early as this summer.

Our goal is not just to enable modding, but to provide an enhanced modding environment. Key features currently in development include:

• Improved Usability: A dedicated GUI for more convenient use of cheat functions.

• Modder-friendly Environment: An HTML-based GUI for more intuitive and efficient mod creation.

• Communication Channels: Dedicated support staff available on Discord for quicker responses.,

• Modder Support: Ongoing consideration of support programs and additional tools for mod creators.

As someone who personally enjoys and values creation of mods, I am committed to delivering a satisfying experience in this area. We will also conduct another survey to gather your feedback as we continue improving the system.

[Canvastown]

While simulation games offer high freedom, they can sometimes become repetitive. It isn't always easy for interesting situations to emerge naturally. Just as YouTube can gather interesting real-life moments to show the world, we wanted to create a system within inZOI where players can save and share their unique gameplay experiences.

While the existing Canvas focuses on sharing created buildings and characters, the upcoming Canvastown will focus on sharing real experiences and stories in the form of save files. Players can upload their created stories for other players to experience, and players can also jump into one-of-a-kind save files that were created using mods and cheats. These shared worlds can either be enjoyed alone with other NPC Zois or with a small group of other real-life players in a multiplayer session.

Over the past year, through the diverse feedback I received from all of you, I’ve come to realize that every one of you is a remarkable “creator,” full of incredible ideas and imaginations for this game. With that said, the sheer amount of requests I received from all of you is something I could spend my entire life on and would still not be able to complete with my team. That's one of the main reasons we designed Canvastown, for it to be a space where we can aggressively support modding to allow you, our players, to expand upon what's available and create content that our development team isn't able to provide, all by yourself.

The goal is to build a UGC (User-Generated Content) ecosystem where the entire playerbase can be involved in the creation process. With the rich variety of high quality assets and data already available in inZOI (with more continually being added) alongside easy to use modding solutions, the future could see countless player-created scenarios collected in Canvastown, at which I think inZOI can grow beyond just a game and evolve into a truly living world.

We are eager to prepare a test build for this as soon as possible so that we can gather your valuable feedback. However, before that, we need to first ensure the completeness and stability of the existing systems.

In just a few hours, inZOI will officially reach its 1st anniversary. For the next year of inZOI, we will continue to listen to the community, improve stability and quality for the game, and keep taking bold creative risks. We will keep working toward making this game a truly living world.

Thank you sincerely for reading.

We hope inZOI brings a small sense of happiness and enjoyment to your daily life.

With lots of love,

Kjun

🔗 Discord: Link

🔗 Forum: Link

Kjun’s Reply to Your Comments

Thank you so much for all of your support and kind words. We shared your messages with the entire development team and had a really wonderful time reading them together. We are truly grateful.

Some of you were especially worried about the person in charge of motion production, so I checked in just in case—and please don’t worry, they said they are having a lot of fun working on development.

The Unreal Engine 5.6 update, improved rendering options, and memory optimization that were originally planned for April 9 will no longer be released on that date. Instead, they will be included in the update coming at the end of April. The reason for the delay is simple: we want to improve stability even further. We will take the extra time to make sure everything is stable before releasing it at the end of April.

Community congratulations and thank-you messages

Many users expressed their appreciation for the inZOI team’s hard work and shared positive expectations for the game’s future direction. Thank you so much for that. This is actually a time when your encouragement and kind words are especially meaningful to us, and reading this week’s messages made us genuinely happy.

In particular, many of you showed great interest in future updates such as Canvastown, the job system, the high school system, and script mod support. While much of inZOI has been a new development experience for us, modding in particular is an area where we made quite a few unexpected and unconventional choices. Because of that, we have recently been focusing on it more intensively, and with our improved direction, we believe we may even be able to shorten the development period. Game development really feels like something you can keep learning forever.

Bugs and gameplay issues

There were many requests for improvements to major features and systems. In particular, many of you reported crashes occurring in certain situations, and we have already released some hotfixes in response. There were also many comments about restricted visibility and inconvenience caused by camera view changes, as well as issues such as limited NPC conversation and behavior autonomy, and moments where dialogue would freeze. We have already hotfixed more than five crash issues. As for the camera, we will roll it back for now and reintroduce it in April as an optional setting. We sincerely apologize for how carelessly that change was handled.

You also gave us feedback about the phone call system, especially the weak animation and UI. We have identified those issues and will work to improve them. We are aiming to add phone call motions in May.

Core systems: personality, memory, and autonomy

Many of you pointed out that, although the personality system is one of the core foundations of the game, its development direction has not been clear enough. There were also many requests for improvement regarding the memory system, which is currently too focused on conversation, lacks memory of major events or daily activities, and tends to fade over time in unsatisfying ways.

We plan to add more distinctive types of memories, such as trauma, and personality traits gained through those results are scheduled for the May update.

There were also many requests to strengthen both NPC and player character autonomy, and to improve the naturalness of emotional expression and social interaction. We plan to focus heavily on this in April. This time, I think we may have finally found a way forward, so I really hope the results will feel much better. Once the system is more organized, we will also try to share it with you in advance.

Social and relationship systems

Many of you asked for improvements to relationship systems, including better recognition of family relationships between NPCs, expanded family narratives such as marriage, divorce, and romance, and more emotionally rich and realistic social interactions. There were also many requests for deeper relationship changes involving conflict, reconciliation, and memory-linked interactions. You also suggested increasing the variety and immersion of social events such as parties, festivals, and group activities.

Content expansion and regional identity

Many of you asked for more detailed implementation of the high school system, including differences in school culture by country, as well as after-school activities and sports clubs. There were also many requests to expand city customization in Canvastown, such as theme settings, environment design, and controls for NPC diversity. We are also improving the system so that job-related crowds and merchants can be placed and function properly.

You also suggested regional festivals and cultural content—such as Korea’s Boryeong Mud Festival or summer festivals in the United States—to help make the game world feel more immersive and locally distinct.

Jobs and emergency services

Many of you requested more realistic implementation of emergency service jobs such as police officers, firefighters, and paramedics, along with better interactions and a wider variety of career options. We are planning to strengthen the presentation of the firefighter profession and also add burglar break-ins on lots.

We will continue expanding service-related professions going forward.

Other features and improvements

You also asked for:

expanded outfit and appearance customization, including improvements to hair, beards, and body sliders

• longer and more natural in-game animations

• updates on multiplayer release timing and development progress

• stronger mod support and more opportunities for community-created content

Many of you also pointed out the importance of balancing improvements to existing features with the addition of new content in order to improve the game’s overall quality. You also emphasized how important it is for us to gather a wide range of community opinions and use survey data to guide development. Next time, when the survey results are ready, we will share them with you and use them as a reference for our development direction as well.

To everyone who has actively communicated with us over this long year and shared your thoughts on the future direction of the game and its development, we want to express our heartfelt thanks.

We will continue working hard to improve the overall quality of the game. We will remain committed to balancing improvements to existing systems with new content development, while continuing to listen to community feedback and communicate transparently.

inZOI may not be the best game, but you are the best users.

kjun