[04.10.26] School Gameplay: A Preview (Updated)

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Hello,
We’re finally ready to begin sharing some of our latest developments in video form.
As we’re currently working toward the April and May update, we wanted to better organize the contents of these videos whenever possible.
For example, I know many of you are eager to see what School play will look like in inZOI, so we’ll show what we have so far for that this week.
Set to release in May, you can give us many feedback on this topic, and we’ll use our remaining time to implement those feedback.

Also, the last part of the video is to ask your opinion on a change we’re looking to make.
We are currently exploring multiple approaches to enhance CPU and GPU performance, as well as overall stability and crash prevention. Through testing, we have confirmed that reducing interior rendering and crowd density in areas outside the active Zoi’s vicinity can greatly improve game stability.
However, as this change may noticeably affect the gameplay experience, we are looking to implement it as an optional setting rather it being unchangeable.
We’re hoping this would greatly benefit performance for all players without losing very much as to what would be perceived as depth in your regular gameplay.
Since we would offer this as a changeable setting, those who prefer greater immersion can still turn it back on, even if it means you’ll be sacrificing some performance.

Let us know what you think about this and also our current rendition of School play.

Wishing everyone has a wonderful weekend,
-Kjun

Kjun’s Reply to Your Comments

Hello everyone! Happy Wednesday. The weather in Korea has been absolutely lovely lately, with flowers blooming across the mountains and fields—it’s truly wonderful. I hope things are just as beautiful wherever you are in the world.

This week, we received a tremendous amount of community feedback and suggestions regarding the High School system we are hard at work on. Many players shared their thoughts on high school content, game performance optimization, social interactions, cultural diversity, and in-game details, offering us a lot of great advice. Thank you, as always.

High School System & Content

Many of you suggested that the high school update should reflect unique school cultures for each city, such as implementing US, Korean, and Indonesian-style schools. Players are looking forward to a realistic school life with various activities, clubs, sports, exams, career choices, and graduation. There were also many requests for a complex system covering social dynamics within the school—like popular cliques, bullying, rumors, dating, student council activities, and various social statuses and drama. Ah, I’m sorry to say that what we are currently building might fall short of all these amazing ideas. T_T However, we won’t give up and will keep working hard on it!

Currently, our school system consists of homework, evaluations, exams, prom, and graduation. The foundation is built around classes and the basic duties of a student. We are also creating teens with diverse traits and adolescent aspirations.

In-School Social Dynamics & Club Activities

There was a strong desire for the school to be designed not just as a learning space, but as a living social environment with various popular groups and social hierarchies. Many of you suggested that club activities should go beyond simple hobbies and act as “power hubs” wielding social influence, allowing students to experience various social benefits and challenges through club memberships. You also mentioned that dramatic events like student rivalry, rumors, bullying, and spilling secrets would enrich the in-game storytelling.

Our current development plan includes creating diverse extracurricular activities with friends, various classes, and club activities. We are indeed developing in-school social activities as suggested, though I am a bit worried about whether they will fully meet your high expectations!

School Events & Daily Life

You shared ideas for various events like sports days, school festivals, after-school parties, exams, after-school activities, costume contests, voting, drama, and dance parties. You also requested social interactions like “promposals,” as well as actual practices, matches, and competitions for after-school clubs and sports teams.

Unfortunately, we likely won’t be able to develop full school events for this particular update. But we will definitely make sure to add them in the future!

Academics & Career

Suggestions were made for a system where students can choose various subjects and have their career paths determined by their academic performance, along with realistic educational and career routes like internships, part-time jobs, and college prep. You also asked for active roles for various school staff, such as teachers, principals, and cafeteria workers.

We currently plan to have teachers, a principal, and a cafeteria in the school, and we will look into developing these as active careers later on. We are also developing early graduation and expulsion systems, and yes, there will be lockers! ^^;

Game Performance & Optimization Options​

We plan to add options to adjust the spawn density of NPCs in distant areas and the building rendering distance. However, we are developing this so that it has minimal impact on players with high-end specs, aiming to make the overall experience even better. We are striving to provide options that improve performance for low-end PC users while maintaining deep immersion for high-end PC users. This feature will be provided as an optional setting, and we are developing it to make the game even more immersive.

Enhanced Customization & Interactions

Players wanted even more diverse customization options for character appearances, outfits, accessories, hairstyles, and makeup. In particular, there were many requests for detailed designs for prom dresses, high heels, sports uniforms, and school uniforms, along with styles reflecting diverse racial and cultural backgrounds. You also hoped to see various realistic school life interactions, like decorating lockers, classroom behavior, cheating on exams, bullying, and spreading rumors.

Fortunately, as of April, we are currently developing high heels and dresses! Please wait just a little bit longer.

Additional Requests & Other Feedback

Requests for various detailed features like school buses, driver’s licenses, after-school part-time jobs, exam prep, graduation ceremonies, school picture days, and active teacher careers.

The need to enhance natural activities and social interactions among NPCs of various age groups in the game.

Requests to add accessibility elements (wheelchairs, hearing aids, etc.) and various body feature adjustment sliders.

Reflecting unique cultures and rules for each school so players can experience school life specific to different regions.

Thank you so much for all the feedback on the high school development again this week. We are carefully listening to and incorporating your diverse community feedback and suggestions, and we will always do our best to share our development direction and progress with you in detail.

Thank you so much. See you again on Friday with a work-in-progress video!

kjun

When is the april update coming?

Thanks a lot, Kjun!

Looks like Cahaya will be finally getting a school if I spotted it right! This would be great, I was missing this part of Zois life in Cahaya.

They said the april update was coming on the 23th if I remember correctly ^^

Wow, that’s a lot of progress to improve the Inzoi experience. We’re very grateful to you.

The school items look amazing! I love the decals on the locker.

Since my animation has many school-related stories, I wish more school activities would be added such as freshman dances, graduation dances, school team activities, club activities, and so on. I hope the development team will give this aspect a lot of consideration. Also, I wish the pet system would be updated soon. I first became interested in the game after seeing a Ragdoll cat in the promotional video, but it’s unfortunate that I can’t adopt pets yet.

The school stuff looks right on, very nice

Will you be adding School Bus that picks up all the kids for school

Looking forward to the May update, the long-awaited campus life. It’s no longer the “rabbit hole” that players used to joke about. The teaching building looks great on the outside, and the interior design is really nice too. Keep up the great work!

I just love what i saw

Cahaya is amazing it has just been a sad thing in all that the island never had a school a bank or a health facility.

i think it’s the right approach that if you guys reduce the mass spawn a lot of people will appreciate it .

I can play with tons of zoi’s wandering around but not everybody can.

The steam forum is filled with complaints that they cannot play the game right now because it’s crashing for them and from what i can tell it seem like some is having problems when it’s get crowded in game.

I hope the kids , teens etc could change rooms for every different classes inside of the school, also maybe the teacher could interrogate them during the class (our zois or their classmates) , have interactions also for doing things for example (send a secret message to a classmate , make paper planes during the class or just trying talking discretly with our classmates without being caught by the teacher. Also as activities, i wish they really could belong to swimming class but i didn’t see any swimming pool inside of the school not sure that is possible, also added taekwondo sports activities for real inside of the school could be cool.

Yes! It would be fun if our zois could be disruptive or distracted during classes - shoot spit balls at people, doodle in their notebooks instead of taking notes. And I like your idea of zois getting in trouble with the teacher if they’re caught. Maybe even have detention for troublemakers

I think it’s fantastic that such a feature is introduced in Early Access and will therefore also be available in the base game later, without any additional expansion costs. School life is an important part of a life simulation. For teenagers and young adults, I’d like to see pimples and the “phases” that adolescents go through.

A post was split to a new topic: [04.10.26] School Uniform Customization Options

What a lovely concept. The team is doing such a wonderful job. Things i would love regarding high school :

• Only one to two big classrooms. This would make sure that classrooms are always packed with students of the same age and there is always some socializing going on.
• Interactions are possible during classes : cheating during exams, socialize with the student sat next to you, etc. So that every day feels rewarding.
• Classrooms are close to the gymnasium, toilet and cafeteria etc to avoid long walks between breaks that waste precious time.
• The meat of the gameplay should also be after school activities. Let each teen shine in what they like by letting them practice sports, instruments, art, comedy, cheerleading etc. Create fun memorable events like recitals, schoolplays, small exhibitions, sports matchs etc for people to attend
• Let adults become the teacher, the janitor or the director of the school. Have your players directing invested in that building !

About the new performance option you’re looking to make : i think it’s a great idea. Inzoi is a big game that generate a lot of things at the same time. “Reducing interior rendering and crowd density in areas outside the active Zoi’s vicinity” is the right move, especially if it’s just an option.

The only thing that can be tricky with this (and it’s already happening with businesses) is that passive gameplay related to areas outside of our active zoi”s vicinity suffers from this. Any business we own but out of sight of our zoi suffers from lack of interactions and sales, thus making them close to irrelevancy. You basically need to be on the spot or the attention it gets is divided by at least 10. So adjuments would have to be made for people to still benefit from essential aspects of the game with that new option on.

It’s great and amazing! We are waiting forward to these spring updates with schools! Thank you for your work

Looks great! You and your team are doing a fantastic job!

Hi Kjun and the inZOI team!

Thanks for sharing these new images. The schools look amazing. You can already feel the atmosphere; it really makes you want to dive in and create stories.

For me, performance remains the priority. If reducing the number of distant zoi areas helps maintain the fluidity and dynamism of the nearby areas, then it’s definitely the right choice.

Here are a few ideas:
Between classes, students gather near their lockers.
Personalize your lockers (photos, stickers, little notes, secrets).
Extracurricular clubs with concrete activities (school newspaper, theater, sports, competitions).
A cafeteria where social interactions depend on where you sit.
Sports fields (soccer, basketball) with matches, teams, and competitions.
Unexpected encounters in the hallways.
Rivalries between students (grades, sports, popularity).
Rumors and anonymous messages.
Embarrassing or memorable moments (being called on in class, misunderstandings, etc.).
Confessions, tensions, and relationships that evolve over time.
Academic pressure (exams, expectations) influencing behavior.
Social hierarchy among students.
Memorable experiences that impact relationships.
And also a system of school levels: first year, second year… with real progression and differences between students over time.

Thank you again for your work and for listening attentively to the community

Oh thank u Kjun and other creators ur working really hard this will be the most ranked update good wishes to u all on making the iresistable