[05.22.26] School Gameplay Pt.2 (Updated)

Hi everyone.

It’s been a while since I first introduced our concept shots for inZOI’s school gameplay.
All the feedback you gave us helped us improve this system for a hopefully better introduction.

We have worked quite a bit since then and would like to show you our current status.
I imagine we will continue to make improvements even after its first showcase in June, so please continue to give us feedback in the comments on what looks good and what we can do to make it even better.

Just like last time, we’ll have a calming music in the background as we show some footages and screenshots of the school gameplay.

Thank you again for watching today’s video, and I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.
I’ll see you all in my reply next week.

-Kjun

P.S. If you’re wondering why today’s video doesn’t have my voiceover, I was about to export the voice file for today’s script, but then I realized our subscription for the voice generation tool we use had not been renewed.. and since everyone has left the office for the weekend, I couldn’t get help to get our subscription renewed :sad_but_relieved_face: We’ll have the voice tool available again next week, and you’ll get to hear my voice then. Apologies and thank you for your understanding.


Kjun’s Reply to Your Comments

:psycat_cahaya: Hello everyone, and happy Wednesday.:psycat_cahaya:

This week, we received far more community posts and feedback than usual. The survey responses have finally been organized and shared with the development team as well. Thank you sincerely to everyone who participated — your feedback has been an enormous help to development.

Overall, expectations for the upcoming school update seem very high. We saw many positive reactions toward classroom activities, sports, clubs, graduation ceremonies, and the expansion of child and teen life stages. Many players also mentioned that the game is beginning to feel more like a true life simulation than before. Since schools naturally create opportunities for relationships, stories, and events, a lot of players appear excited about the possibilities this update can bring.

At the same time, one opinion was repeated very consistently throughout the community: simply adding new content is no longer enough. More and more players now seem to care less about “what gets added” and more about “how deeply and naturally the existing systems connect together.”:saluting_face:

We read your community feedback every single day, and while developing inZOI, we’ve come to deeply understand how important these natural connections between systems really are.

In addition to the school update, we are also preparing new child traits, inheritance systems, acquired traits, and additional personality traits.

The most frequently mentioned topics were core systems such as personality, autonomy, animations, life stages, and dialogue structure. Many players feel that characters currently behave too similarly, autonomous behaviors become repetitive over time, and personality traits do not meaningfully affect gameplay enough. Because of this, we saw strong support for improving behavioral depth itself, rather than simply increasing the number of animations. Personally, I strongly agree with this feedback as well. We will pay very close attention to this area moving forward.

Regarding the school system specifically, many players expressed that they want more than presentation-focused content. Instead, they hope schools will connect naturally into actual gameplay systems. Examples included exam results influencing grades and future education paths, club activities affecting friendships and reputation, and behavioral issues creating long-term consequences. We also saw requests for school-related playable careers such as teachers or coaches.

Our team is making a major effort to include as many meaningful features as possible into the school update.

Rather than focusing only on scripted presentation, we are preparing systems that can create relationships and storytelling opportunities naturally through gameplay. For example, just as earning good grades in high school may help a character perform better during future job interviews, we want school experiences to have meaningful influence on later stages of life and society as a whole.

We also received a large amount of feedback regarding child and teen growth stages. Many players mentioned that the visual differences between age groups currently feel too small, and that teenagers often appear too similar to adults. Beyond appearance, many players also want more life-stage-specific experiences such as first love, rebellious phases, and emotional growth during adolescence.:folded_hands:

For customization, repeated feedback mentioned the lack of variety in face presets, body types, height options, hairstyles, voices, and skin details. One comment we saw frequently was that “it is possible to create a character, but difficult to make them feel truly unique.” We are currently reviewing development plans in this area and hope to greatly expand character customization options so players can create more distinct appearances.

For the UI and dialogue systems, many players felt that while there are many dialogue choices, the conversations often lack contextual depth. Similar conversations repeat regardless of relationships or situations, and players sometimes struggle to understand how their dialogue choices actually affect gameplay. Because of this, many players want conversations to evolve more naturally depending on relationship level, emotional state, personality, and surrounding context.:blush:

For child and teen growth, we are preparing systems that will allow younger characters to feel genuinely different from adults through school life, inherited traits, and age-specific lifestyles.

Our internal teams are also heavily researching body customization and height systems. Voice customization is currently in development as well, so please look forward to it.

For relationships and dialogue, we are preparing systems where future conversations can naturally evolve depending on previous dialogue context and interactions.

As always, thank you for continuing to support our development team. inZOI is still a game with many shortcomings, and we are fully aware of that. But thanks to your support, we continue to find reasons to keep building and improving this game.

After the school update, we are gradually shifting our long-term development direction toward improving foundational systems such as character individuality, relationships, growth, autonomy, and overall gameplay depth, rather than focusing primarily on large-scale feature additions.

We’ll return again on Friday with more development updates.

Thank you.

— kjun :growing_heart:

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The high school content looks fantastic!

I’d love to see some additional animations for clumsy zois. For example:

  • hitting themselves in the head when doing a cheer dance
  • failing to catch the football and getting hit in the head
  • dropping their pencil during an exam

Life is full of small funny moments, especially when you are clumsy. I’d love to see these moments reflected in the game.

13 Likes

Hi Kjun and the inZOI team :custom_butterfly:

Excellent progress ..!! This looks great and thank you so much for this update - I’m really looking forward to the school gameplay and I love the entire cheer leading vibe - well done - it’s very impressive..!!
Please may I remind you of some of my earlier topics that could appreciate feedback:
:psycat_paw: Should inZOI implement a creator controlled feature in Canvas to protect creations from being re-uploaded?

:psycat_paw: Can we please block creators on Canvas from seeing our content if we block them?
I wanted to link a few examples of current unresolved bug reports and wishlists but unfortunately, there are too many to mention :sob::face_holding_back_tears:
I really hope the team can address some of them so that we can enjoy the game with all the current systems working properly.
Thank you so much Kjun and the inZoi Team - Have a wonderful weekend :thankyou: :custom_butterfly: :psycat_paw:

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Apartment & Rental System

Please also consider this matter. :upside_down_face:

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Would love to see a prom release at some point.

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(post deleted by author)

Hello, i love the outfits and the rooms that i saw in the video. I thought i saw in the video that the teacher was scolding a primary school student; if that’s the case, i think it’s good to have this kind of interaction. What i’m worried about it’s the number of students in the class (in the video the classes look empties) , and for the activities. It still seems four for the chearleading activity which can be nice but as we have eight zois it could be great to create group of eight (and this work also for the interaction for eating all together at home). The interactions that the students can do at school seem super cool we can figure out if they are thinking (i hope they could try to cheat at their exams or tests) , struggle with their homeworks etc… I really hope that the students will be able to interact with each other during the lecture and/or with the professor (for example if they are not listening the lecture or falling asleep during the class the teacher could do something)

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Will Gao Zhong (高中) be updated at the end of May? Or will it be updated in June?

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It will be really cool to play through school life! Unfortunately, I don’t know Korean, so I might make a suggestion that’s already been in the video, I apologize in advance.

Please add extracurricular activities: various hobby clubs and interest groups.

More child interactions. The video mainly has animations for more adult characters, but the children look boring. Give the Zoas the ability to play tag, mess around, tickle each other, etc. I’d also like to see more interesting homework and activities for them. After all, working with children requires a different approach.

When working as a teacher, it would be great to have a choice in how to conduct a lesson. Whether to be a strict teacher, speak in a monotone, or make the lesson more fun. Perhaps teaching methods could unlock depending on the level. Or, as an option, have the ability to plan the lesson yourself. (a lesson consists of an introduction, review of material covered, studying new material, reinforcement of what was learned, and conclusions) If you can change these stages, you could influence how students absorb the material, whether the lesson will be boring, or whether students will come to hate you (if you give a lot of tests and are a mean teacher)

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The demo video shows that there are several flaws (hereinafter referred to as the numbers - timecode):

0:20 - Why do objects just disappear from the desk? Zoi has backpacks, why not make backpack usage animations. It’s not necessary, but it would be nice to see such a small thing + it will give Zoi a certain grain of life.

1:15 - The school cafeteria is good. But why is she “dead”? Where are the chefs? Where is the queue for food? Where are the food distribution staff? Where is everything that is in American movies about school?:grin: This should definitely be added.

1:33 - And what do they draw?:grin: As a professional artist, I say that no one teaches drawing lessons like that. The teacher will never stand so far away from the student to whom he explains something, otherwise he will not see all the small details and will not be able to help correctly. In most cases, the teacher himself will intervene in the work to correct certain details of the work.

2:20 - Cheerleader dancing is good. But what does this give us players? Will there be performance events and tasks to complete them? I don’t understand.

3:00 - I don’t understand. We will have sports games as a global event, or we can manually play sports games for Zoi, or it’s just a costume. It’s not clear to me.

To be honest, it’s not exactly what I don’t want to see right now. That’s great, of course, but I don’t understand a lot of things. I saw a lot in this video, but I didn’t get any answers.: What’s it? How will it work? And what’s the point of that?

It seems to me that the animations have remained wooden, the Zois are still not alive as far as I’m concerned. We have already discussed on the forum how to add Zoi to life. You need to make a mix of the necessary action animations + random action animations, etc. For example: I didn’t see a single time in the video that Zoi accidentally dropped something he was holding in his hand and then picked it up. Or just randomly picked his nose, scratched, sneezed, farted, etc.

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My friend that’s very disgusting. I wouldn’t want that. :laughing: I don’t want to feel nauseous while playing game.

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As a former teacher and lecturer, and based on my previous professional experience in Asia, I would prefer it if there were no “mandatory” in-person classes and extremely long study hours :sweat_smile:. The proposed school system looks great. I’m excited to see how it turns out :+1:.

Hey Kjun, thank you for your amazing work because this game is CRAAZY GOOD!
My “suggestion” is not related to this matter specifically but with the mods in Macbook. I know that it has been an issue for quite some time but I would love to enjoy my game with mods since everyone is already using them on Windows :smiling_face_with_tear:

Sorry for bringing this subject again but its something that’s bugging me out :smiling_face_with_tear:

Again, love the game and I think you guys are being amazing with this project!

Lots of love from Portugal :portugal:

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So my thoughts about the patch in whole i would say you guys brought a new idea to the table and i can’t say much about the school gameplay because i haven’t dived into it but i have taken the time to explore the new jobs and i think you guys are on the right track.

The best part is you do need skills to get hired and you have to go through the interview.

The downside in all is that the task you are given they are fairly easy to do and it leaves your zoi hanging a bit before it’s time to grab lunch .

I am going to take it the time in between was created just so you could hone your skills.. but if you enter a job with a zoi who is qualified it becomes a dead zone ( i always let my zoi take a nap before it’s time for lunch because it is pretty much the only option right now unless she brings a book with her)

It would be nice if we could do some side tasks as an option or something else .. it would help to have an extra tool just incase

If you guys can imagine yourself you are done with your duties and boom there is like 3 hours left before it’s time for lunch what do you do? :slight_smile:

Alright that is my honest opinion i promise drop one

time to get into bed

nighty night :zzz:

One thing I have been noticing is that when you use the built in curseforge to download mods for the game the more mods you download the more curseforge tends to lag when clicking into a new mod hitting install and waiting for the application to install it and confirm that its installed.
I would imagine at a certain point in time the built in curseforge will be so laggy that the user will not be able to download new mods and that can seriously deter users that love to mod their game.

My suggestion would be is there a way to make this integrated system to be faster as this is/will affect players who love to mod their games and tend to have a lot of mods (over 1000 currently).

Don’t get me wrong this feature is HUGE for modders like me who like a one stop shop that makes it easy to add mods without having to do a million and one things just to update their mods or go through what they have. Brilliant feature but needs some work.

Thank you Kjun and team for all you are doing for this game.

EDIT: Last night I was downloading outfits from canvas and some outfits had mods I had not installed and it was so laggy the game froze on the screen that says “installing mods/applying mods” I have close to 2000 mods at this point largely due to furniture and clothes.

Current specs:
Nvidia RTX 4070ti
Intel Ultra 7 270k
Gigabyte z890 Eagle Wifi7
Crucible DDR5 6400
inzoi is also installed on a NVME M.2

1 Like

A post was split to a new topic: [05.22.26] Careers, Pets, Crime & Realism

I love what I’ve seen so far about the schools. They seem very interesting and entertaining to me. But there’s something that worries me a bit, and I’ve also read about it in comments from other people.

The visual style of the school feels very inspired by the United States, and while that’s fine and I like it, I think it would be amazing if in Dowon, for example, the aesthetic and perhaps even part of the educational system were more inspired by Korean methodology and school environment. I love that essence and I’d like InZoi to continue reflecting the origin and cultural identity of each city.

I understand that doing so can be complicated, but it would be great if depending on where your Zoi lives, you could really feel the culture of Cahaya, Dowon, or Bliss Bay. That it’s not just the landscape that changes, but also the atmosphere, customs, school, and the way daily life is lived. I think that would make each city feel much more unique and immersive.

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