u/Forrest-Runn

Hello everyone.

Today, I’d like to talk about Active Mode.

This is the feature we showed back in June, where you could use a frying pan to affect another Zoi. Active Mode isn’t intended to be a feature focused simply on violence. It is content we’ve been preparing to offer experiences that you normally wouldn’t expect from the traditional life simulation genre.

One of the things we thought about most was whether this kind of action really belongs in inZOI. What we generally expect from this genre is to watch Zois live their lives like real people, behaving according to their temperament and traits. Because of that, we were concerned that interactions like these might disrupt the overall atmosphere of the game.

At the same time, some members of the development team felt that giving players a wider range of actions would allow for more diverse stories and greater freedom to express the situations they want to create. So we’ve decided to introduce it cautiously.

We’ve also taken steps to prevent it from disrupting the game’s atmosphere too much or escalating excessively into violence. There is still a lot of work to be done, including conditions for ending fights and connections with the police system, and we plan to continue improving these areas.

We haven’t been able to polish every aspect perfectly this time either, but rather than keeping it from you until everything is complete, we’d like to cautiously introduce it as an Experimental Feature. We hope you’ll try it yourselves first, share your feedback with us, and help us improve it from there.

Next, I’d like to talk about restaurants.

While preparing the business content, we wanted to include a wider variety of businesses, but managing Zois through a specific sequence of actions proved extremely difficult. Initially, we planned businesses around activities that took longer to complete, but there were more challenges to solve than we expected.

Cooking was particularly difficult because each individual interaction takes quite a long time. We wanted running a business to feel lively, with many customers coming and going, but achieving that was not easy.

After documenting these issues one by one and working through them over time, we’re finally ready to show you what we’ve been preparing.

In the new restaurant system, you’ll be able to see groups of customers visit and dine together. Customers will take available seats and place their orders with a waiter, while the chef quickly prepares the requested dishes. Cooking time has been streamlined compared with the existing cooking system so that it works better when preparing meals for groups.

Once the food is ready, the waiter serves it at the customers’ table. The customers enjoy their meal, pay the bill, and then leave.

We also plan to renovate the existing restaurants that have been sitting unused around the cities so that they can make use of this new functionality. I hope you’ll be able to enjoy wonderful moments at restaurants together with your family, partner, and friends.

The main focus of this update is city travel, resorts, and restaurants. Of course, we’ve also spent a great deal of time fixing existing bugs and addressing awkward or unnatural behavior.

There are still many areas where we have more work to do.

Even so, I hope you’ll have fun with everything we’ve prepared.

Things are extremely hectic right now as we prepare the update, so I’ll stop here for today and get back to wrapping everything up.

Thank you.

Kjun

On DISCORD :

https://discord.com/channels/1162040845181124618/1537758566251761754/1539594308167008446

Hello everyone, it’s great to see you again. I hope you’ve all had a good week.

First, I have some slightly disappointing news to share. The August update has been delayed a little, and we are now planning to release it in early September. I’m sorry that we couldn’t bring it to you sooner. I’ll keep running as hard as I can to deliver it to all of you.

For this update, rather than adding new content, we’ve been focusing on making the fundamental aspects of everyday life and behavior in inZOI feel more natural. While this won’t be a particularly large update, a lot of development work has gone into strengthening the foundations of our life simulation systems for the future.

Today, I’d like to introduce one of those systems and hear what you think about it.

Previously, when a Zoi visited somewhere like a burger restaurant, they would remain there for a set amount of time. However, instead of ordering and eating during that time, they might talk to other Zois, look at nearby objects, or perform other actions unrelated to the reason they visited in the first place.

To improve this, we’ve developed two new systems (*for these, please refer to the video on the top comment*).

The first is a system that allows us to define actions that Zois should prioritize when they enter a particular location.

The second is an interaction permission system that allows us to specify who can use each object.

For example, at a burger restaurant, we can have a Zoi order from a kiosk, wait in a customer seat, receive and eat their food, and then naturally return home once their visit is complete. Employees will no longer sit in seats intended for customers.

However, if you have previously customized regions or spaces yourself, you may need to register some of this newly added information again. The amount of data itself is not large, but if you have customized many different areas, it could mean a little additional work. We are also preparing a way to apply the new system correctly through a reset.

I wanted to share this with you before applying the system to the development build so that we can hear your thoughts first.

If you are against this change, we are prepared to stop and reconsider it.

I believe that putting these small but fundamental systems in place one by one is essential if we want Zois to feel less like characters who simply spend time at a location, and more like people who act and live according to their own purposes.

Lastly, when I look up at the sky on my way home from work these days, the stars seem especially bright. The evenings are starting to bring a little cooler breeze as well, and it makes me feel that summer really is beginning to pass.

The long, hot summer is gradually coming to an end.

Thank you for spending another week with inZOI. Since the update is arriving a little later than planned, we’ll work hard to make sure we can show you something even better when it arrives.

Have a wonderful weekend, and I’ll see you again next week.

Kjun

Link on DISCORD

https://discord.com/channels/1162040845181124618/1537758566251761754/1537758566251761754

Hello everyone.

Today, instead of sharing several different updates, I’d like to focus on just one topic: outfit changing.

inZOI has a variety of outfits designed for different situations, such as sleepwear, workout clothes, and swimwear. However, you may have felt that the rules for when Zois change into these outfits, and when they change back haven’t always been very clear. So today, I’d like to explain the new rules as simply and clearly as possible.

To be frank, we hadn’t established a fully unified outfit-changing system in the past. Instead, we often handled each situation individually as the need arose. This led to unintended outfit changes. For example, if a Zoi started exercising at a gym, they should ideally remain in their workout clothes until they leave the gym. However, performing another action in between could sometimes cause their outfit to change.

To address these issues at a fundamental level, we have rebuilt the overall rules for outfit changing.

# Zois will change their clothes according to the situation

What we’re preparing is a system where Zois automatically change into clothing appropriate for their current situation, then return to their everyday outfit once that situation ends. This will be provided as an Experimental Feature.

For example, currently, when a Zoi starts swimming in the ocean, they change into swimwear. But the moment they step out of the water, they immediately change back into their everyday clothes. This often creates awkward situations where a Zoi is still at the beach but is the only person walking around in everyday clothes. This experimental feature is intended to reduce situations like this.

Until now, the rules for changing clothes differed depending on the location or interaction. As a result, Zois sometimes changed clothes when they shouldn’t have, or remained in a special outfit when they should have changed back.

We’ve now unified those rules.

Let me explain by following a Zoi through a typical day.

In the morning, the Zoi wakes up wearing sleepwear—the same sleepwear they changed into when they went to bed the night before. Simply waking up does not immediately change their clothes. They might drink some water or look out the window while still wearing their sleepwear. Once they take a shower and come out, they finally change into their everyday outfit.

The everyday outfit they choose depends on the temperature that day. Everyday clothes, summer clothes, and winter clothes are treated as a single group. When the weather is hot or extremely hot, the Zoi will choose summer clothes. When it is warm, mild, or cool, they will wear everyday clothes. When it is cold or extremely cold, they will choose winter clothes.

From this point on, whenever I say that a Zoi “returns to their everyday outfit,” I mean that they return to the appropriate outfit from this group.

Now dressed for the day, the Zoi heads to the gym.

As soon as they enter the gym lot, they change into workout clothes. They remain in those clothes while they are at the gym, and once they finish exercising and leave the lot, they change back into their everyday outfit.

In the afternoon, they visit a swimming pool.

When they arrive at the pool, they change into swimwear. Even after getting out of the water and relaxing on a sunbed, they remain in their swimwear. They only return to their everyday outfit once they leave the pool lot.

So, in simple terms:

While a Zoi remains at a location, they keep wearing the outfit appropriate for that situation. Once they leave, they return to their everyday outfit.

This return happens when they begin leaving the lot or start another type of transition, such as going home, going to work, traveling through the World Map, or entering a building.

At night, when the Zoi gets into bed, they change back into sleepwear.

And with that, their day comes full circle.

# There are a few exceptions

When exercising at home, Zois will not change clothes.

If a Zoi does yoga or uses exercise equipment at home, they will simply exercise in whatever they are already wearing. We made this the one location-based exception because having Zois constantly change clothes even inside their own homes could feel unnecessarily inconvenient.

Zois you are directly controlling also behave a little differently.

A Zoi under direct player control will not automatically change clothes simply because they arrive at a particular lot. Otherwise, they might change into swimwear just because they walked through a beach or briefly stopped by a swimming pool to use the restroom.

Instead, directly controlled Zois will change clothes when they actually begin a relevant interaction, such as swimming or exercising. Their clothes will not change simply while you are moving them around using WASD controls.

# If you don’t want automatic outfit changes

We’ve prepared two options.

If you only want to exclude a specific Zoi, you can turn off “Use Situational Looks” in that Zoi’s autonomy settings.

If you want to disable the feature for the entire game, you can turn off “Automatic Situational Outfit Changes” under Settings → Experimental Features.

The individual Zoi setting always takes priority. If “Use Situational Looks” is disabled for a particular Zoi, that Zoi will not automatically change clothes even if the Experimental Feature is enabled.

If you disable the Experimental Feature itself, Zois will immediately return from any outfit they are wearing under these rules to their original outfit, and the previous outfit-changing behavior will resume.

This feature will be provided as an Experimental Feature and will be enabled by default.

# What will remain unchanged

School uniforms and work attire are not affected by this change.

They will continue to work as they do now: Zois will change into their school uniform when it is time to attend school and into their work attire when it is time to go to work.

You will also still be able to manually change a Zoi’s clothes through wardrobes or the Zoi menu as before.

Costumes and Character Studio are also unaffected by this change.

# Closing

Since this is an Experimental Feature, your experiences while actually playing with it will be extremely helpful in determining how we develop it further.

If you encounter any awkward situations, or moments where you think, “I wish my Zoi wouldn’t change clothes here,” please feel free to share your feedback with us.

We’ll continue refining the system based on your feedback.

I’ll be back again with another development update.

Thank you.

Kjun

On DISCORD

Hello everyone. Somehow, another week has flown by.

Once again, I’d like to share some updates on what the inZOI team has been working on. We’ve had a lot going on this week. In particular, we’ve been spending a great deal of time revisiting some of the systems we developed last year that were still somewhat rough or incomplete, and improving them one by one so they work as intended.

Recently, we’ve been putting a lot of effort into improving the baby system. Previously, babies and adults used completely different systems, which resulted in many functional issues and also limited how richly babies could be represented. This time, we’ve integrated the baby system into the same underlying structure used for adults.

Now, as babies grow, if there is a small child’s bed available, they will move to it on their own and go to sleep. Once your child starts walking, please make sure to provide them with a bed of their own. This will allow them to sleep longer and more comfortably.

We’ve also made improvements to genetics and family photos, although there were limitations to how much we could improve the genetics system. There is a fundamental issue behind this: the base facial data for male and female Zois is different. We are currently considering whether we should unify this underlying data so that inherited facial traits can be passed down consistently regardless of gender.

We’ve also improved vehicle behavior so that when Zois travel by car, they can continue driving all the way home. In addition, we’ve further enhanced the system that automatically changes Zois into outfits appropriate for the location they are visiting.

There are still so many things on our improvement list this month that I’m a little concerned we may not be able to deliver the update as quickly as we would like. Once the update date has been decided, I’ll make sure to let you know in advance.

Today in Korea marks Ipchu (입추), the traditional beginning of autumn in 2026. It is supposed to signal that summer is passing and autumn is beginning, but we are still experiencing heat that feels very much like the middle of summer.

Even so, the seasons are slowly changing, and the crops in the fields are surely beginning to bear fruit. I hope inZOI, too, can make it through this summer in good health and continue growing into something even better.

See you again next week.

-Kjun

☺️ Hello everyone, ☺️

This is my first post of August. I hope you are all enjoying your summer vacations.

The heat in Korea has been especially intense lately, and I often find myself wishing I could escape to the beach or a swimming pool. For those of you planning a trip, I hope you have a wonderful and safe journey. At the same time, Korea has been so hot that I sometimes feel genuinely fortunate to be at the office under the cool air conditioning. (And I really do enjoy being in the development studio.

😸😸

As I began writing this post, I thought it would also be a good opportunity to talk about some of the content I mentioned previously.

First, I would like to explain why summer was the only season left without a public holiday when we introduced the calendar and holiday features in the first anniversary update. This explanation is a little overdue. Although summer is hot, it is also a season when many people go on special trips, and we wanted that aspect of summer to be reflected naturally in the game, just as it is in real life.

Previously, the travel system was combined with the relocation feature, which made it confusing and inconvenient to use. This time, we are developing it with the goal of providing an experience that feels like actual travel rather than relocation.

We are preparing accommodations, various events throughout the cities, and a range of interesting places to visit. The development team and I have also spent a great deal of time thinking about how we can bring the meaningful experiences we have each had while travelling into the game’s content.

I imagine many of you are also looking forward to the accommodation feature. In my view, accommodation in inZOI should involve more than simply staying somewhere as a guest. Some of you will likely want to operate your own accommodations as well.

We will first introduce a feature that allows both players and NPCs to stay at accommodations. Later, through the business system, we plan to gradually provide the UI and features needed to create accommodations and configure individual guest rooms. I would love to show these features to you as soon as possible, but we will continue refining them with the development team so that we can deliver them at a high level of quality.

Another area we have recently been working on is improving the autonomy options.

Previously, the settings for the city, the player’s family, and the actively controlled Zoi were defined across several different layers, which likely made the system difficult to understand. Going forward, we plan to simplify this so that the most recently applied option will be the one reflected in that Zoi’s behaviour.😁

We are also preparing improvements that will allow autonomy settings to be applied not only to the character currently being played, but also to certain NPC families. At the same time, we hope to provide a broader and more flexible range of options.

As the hot weather continues, please take good care of your health and stay cool this summer. Every comment and piece of feedback you share gives us tremendous encouragement. We will return soon with further improvements.

Thank you.

kjun 💗

On Discord

☺️ Hello everyone, ☺️

This is my first post of August. I hope you are all enjoying your summer vacations.

The heat in Korea has been especially intense lately, and I often find myself wishing I could escape to the beach or a swimming pool. For those of you planning a trip, I hope you have a wonderful and safe journey. At the same time, Korea has been so hot that I sometimes feel genuinely fortunate to be at the office under the cool air conditioning. (And I really do enjoy being in the development studio.

😸😸

As I began writing this post, I thought it would also be a good opportunity to talk about some of the content I mentioned previously.

First, I would like to explain why summer was the only season left without a public holiday when we introduced the calendar and holiday features in the first anniversary update. This explanation is a little overdue. Although summer is hot, it is also a season when many people go on special trips, and we wanted that aspect of summer to be reflected naturally in the game, just as it is in real life.

Previously, the travel system was combined with the relocation feature, which made it confusing and inconvenient to use. This time, we are developing it with the goal of providing an experience that feels like actual travel rather than relocation.

We are preparing accommodations, various events throughout the cities, and a range of interesting places to visit. The development team and I have also spent a great deal of time thinking about how we can bring the meaningful experiences we have each had while travelling into the game’s content.

I imagine many of you are also looking forward to the accommodation feature. In my view, accommodation in inZOI should involve more than simply staying somewhere as a guest. Some of you will likely want to operate your own accommodations as well.

We will first introduce a feature that allows both players and NPCs to stay at accommodations. Later, through the business system, we plan to gradually provide the UI and features needed to create accommodations and configure individual guest rooms. I would love to show these features to you as soon as possible, but we will continue refining them with the development team so that we can deliver them at a high level of quality.

Another area we have recently been working on is improving the autonomy options.

Previously, the settings for the city, the player’s family, and the actively controlled Zoi were defined across several different layers, which likely made the system difficult to understand. Going forward, we plan to simplify this so that the most recently applied option will be the one reflected in that Zoi’s behaviour.😁

We are also preparing improvements that will allow autonomy settings to be applied not only to the character currently being played, but also to certain NPC families. At the same time, we hope to provide a broader and more flexible range of options.

As the hot weather continues, please take good care of your health and stay cool this summer. Every comment and piece of feedback you share gives us tremendous encouragement. We will return soon with further improvements.

Thank you.

kjun 💗

On Discord

Hello everyone!

I hope you're having a fantastic Friday.

It's great to see you all again.

This week, I've continued focusing on improving autonomous behavior.

Our main goal this week has been to make it much clearer why a Zoi visits a particular location.

Until now, even when Zois visited places like cafés or bakeries, they often spent most of their time wandering around, chatting with others, checking their phones, or using the restroom instead of actually accomplishing the purpose of their visit. While these behaviors help make them feel more lifelike, they occurred so frequently that many players felt it became difficult to tell what they had come there to do.

To address this, we're changing the system so that Zois will prioritize fulfilling the purpose of their visit. For example, if a Zoi visits a bakery, they'll purchase bread, go through the necessary steps, sit down to eat it, and then return home. Of course, we still want them to feel like real people, so they'll occasionally have brief conversations or encounter unexpected situations along the way. The goal is to avoid making their behavior feel overly scripted or mechanical.

We're also rebalancing how Zois spend their time at each location. Most of their actions will now be directly related to their primary objective, while random behaviors—such as looking around or chatting—will occur much less frequently. At the moment, we're aiming for roughly 90% purpose-driven actions and 10% random behaviors.

That said, making the behavior sequence too rigid can introduce new problems. For example, if there are no available seats or a required condition isn't met, a Zoi could end up getting stuck. Because of this, we're also researching ways to strengthen purpose-driven behavior while still allowing Zois to adapt flexibly to changing situations.

Another important improvement we're currently working on is changing the logic that forces Zois to stay at a location for a fixed amount of time. Instead, once they have completed their intended objective, we want them to head back home naturally.

These improvements are currently being developed for standard lots such as cafés, bakeries, and parks. Business lots and schools already have their own development plans, so they are being worked on separately.

Since this feature is still under development, we're continuing to test and fine-tune it to ensure it feels natural during gameplay. Ultimately, our goal is for Zois to do more than simply wander around a location—we want players to clearly understand why each Zoi chose to visit a particular place.

That's all for this week. We hope you enjoy this week's development video from the inZOI team, and have a wonderful weekend!

–Kjun

Hello everyone. Hard to believe we're already halfway through the week.

Here's another update on what we've been working on.

1. Diving Content

A little while ago we shared a preview video of diving. Back when we introduced the open ocean and scuba diving last summer, many of you told us you wanted to swim freely beneath the surface.

As we finally started building the diving feature we'd been putting off, simply moving through the water didn't feel like enough — so we've added gatherable resources and other things to do down there as well. We'll do our best to make it live up to your expectations.

2. Smart Zoi Improvements

We've been receiving a lot of feedback about Smart Zoi lately, and we're currently in discussions with the team responsible to get those improvements implemented.

As our existing content expanded, several bugs appeared where Smart Zoi failed to respond properly. That's where we're starting. Once those discussions wrap up, we'll share the details with you as soon as we can.

If there are functions you'd like Smart Zoi to handle, please leave your thoughts — we'll review them together.

3. Discontinuing the AI Building Feature <:Psycat_Sad:1173555989434335232>

We'd love to only ever bring good news, but we have something disappointing to share as well: we've decided to discontinue the AI Building feature.

We're sorry to those of you who have been using it. However, we concluded that with the technology available today, we can't reach the level of quality you're expecting from it. We'd rather redirect the research budget behind this feature toward other AI features where it can make a real difference.

If there are AI features you'd like to see, let us know and we'll pass your feedback directly to the team.

Decisions to remove a feature are never made lightly. Next time, we hope to be back with better features and content.

It's been brutally hot in Korea lately — even stepping outside for a moment is exhausting. How is your summer going? Please drink plenty of water and don't push yourselves too hard in this heat. We'll do our best to at least give you a cool ocean to escape into in-game.

It's thanks to your continued interest and feedback that we're able to find our direction. Truly, thank you. We'll see you again next week.

On Discord

Hello everyone, and happy friday !

As always, we're sharing a video showcasing what the inZOI team has been working on this week.

Lately, the team has been approaching development with a fresh mindset by going back to the fundamentals. We've been carefully reviewing every part of the game and improving it piece by piece. The more closely we look, the more areas we find that should have been better from the beginning, and that leaves us feeling truly sorry.😭

Even so, I believe that as long as we have a clear goal and continue moving toward it, we may stumble, but we won't stop moving forward.

Recently, I've been focusing on redesigning our autonomy system. For this update, I wanted to revisit it from the ground up rather than making small adjustments, so I've been rebuilding much of its decision-making logic.

For example, when a ZOI wants to sit down and eat, the game now searches for the most appropriate dining location step by step.

First, it checks whether there is a dining table or table in the same room. If none is available, it gradually expands the search to look for suitable tables farther away.

If the ZOI is inside a residential or business lot, the search covers the entire lot, prioritizing indoor dining areas before considering outdoor spaces. If the ZOI is in a public area or somewhere outside a lot, the search looks for a suitable table within a 40-meter radius.

If no usable table can be found, the ZOI will instead find a nearby chair and eat while holding the food. If family members or friends are nearby, the system also tries to have them sit close together so they can share the meal naturally.

Of course, if many ZOI's perform this decision-making process at the same time, it can become expensive from a performance standpoint. To address this, we've also been optimizing the search order, limiting the search scope, and reducing unnecessary calculations so these improvements remain efficient.

I'm honestly embarrassed that such fundamental behaviors still needed this level of attention. If you've noticed other situations where a ZOI's autonomous behavior feels awkward or unnatural, please let us know. Your experiences and feedback are incredibly valuable and often help us design better solutions.

We'll continue reviewing the game one system at a time and keep working to make inZOI a better simulation.

The summer heat has been especially intense in many parts of the world lately. Please take care of yourselves, stay cool, and have a wonderful weekend.

Thank you.

Kjun ❤️

On discord

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.