thank you for the new jumping feature and the fascinating look into the autonomy redesign. Since you asked what else could be done with the jumping system, here’s my suggestion: Parkour!
Before anyone falls off their chair – it’s less daunting than it sounds, because you wouldn’t have to start from scratch. Epic Games provides the Game Animation Sample, a free Unreal Engine 5 example project containing over 500 high-quality motion-matched animations, including a fully integrated traversal system that demonstrates vaulting, climbing, and jumping through a world in one fluid motion. All animations and Blueprints are free to use in any Unreal project, which could save enormous development time if the system can be adapted to inZOI.
One caveat: In the sample project, traversal currently depends on scripted obstacles with invisibly marked ledges. Making it work on regular inZOI furniture and architecture would be the real engineering challenge – but that’s exactly the kind of systemic integration work the team has been demonstrating with every recent update.
Gameplay Potential
Zois sprinting through the city, vaulting over benches and fences, climbing low walls – jumping becomes real traversal rather than a ragdoll generator
Fitness level as the gatekeeper: A fit, athletic Zoi flows over obstacles smoothly, while an unfit Zoi attempting the same move fails and ragdolls, just like in real life
Personality integration with the new autonomy system: Adventurous or energetic Zois might autonomously choose parkour routes, cautious ones take the stairs
A trainable Parkour skill, with visible progression from clumsy hops to fluid traversal
New emergent moments for storytelling – escaping pursuit, rushing to get to work on time, showing off to impress a crush, or spectacularly failing to
I truly hope this helps give the jumping system the meaningful gameplay layer it deserves.
Links
For anyone wondering what the Game Animation Sample looks like in motion, here’s a short demonstration:
And here’s the project itself on Fab, free to download:
king InZoi into another Assassins Creed? Why not? But first of all, it’s a separate complex mechanic (I don’t think the developers will be able to do about the same level of parkour as in Assassins Creed) Secondly, you need to completely redo all the locations, since it’s not that you can’t parkour, because all the locations are smooth and flat - without relief.
I agree, as a bare number, 500 sure sounds a lot , but we have to keep in mind that most of these animations are just steps in all the different directions and at various speeds, multiplied by variations such as an active and a relaxed stance, and naturally a character vaults over obstacles differently depending on whether they’re walking, running, or sneaking. Also, there are many transitional animations, like say you’re running forward-right and suddenly decide to run backward-left, your character naturally would slide for about half a meter while adjusting their movement in the new direction, or even simple things such as crouching from a standing position, and getting back up, etc.
Simply moving your character around the game world takes a whole heap of animations most people never even realize are there – until they aren’t, which is why direct control can sometimes feel a little clunky, and natural movements such as the ones demonstrated in the sample project are some of the most difficult animation work in any game. Having them already done and fully animated would save the inZOI Team a lot of time they can then spend developing other important aspects of the game.
Fair points! To be clear, I’m not asking for full Assassin’s Creed climb-any-building parkour — you’re right that would need a complete location overhaul. I mostly mean the movement foundation underneath it: smooth transitions, turns, and simple vaults over the furniture and low obstacles that already exist. Basically making direct control feel fluid rather than choppy.
It would also solve some very real everyday annoyances — like when a Zoi gets “trapped” behind a fence and has to walk all the way around the entire lot just to reach a mining spot that’s right in front of them on the other side. Being able to simply climb over the fence would save a lot of that pathfinding pain. The full free-running fantasy where you scale buildings and jump across rooftops belongs to the actual Assassins, though.
Ok, it’s all fine and dandy, but we’re forgetting that this game is early access, and many of its fundamentals still not work properly?
Honestly, I was surprised when Kjun showed this. Like really? Don’t we have other things to add/change/improve in inZOI?
I’m really glad aside from jumping, the devs are talking about improving the autonomy and stability of the game, because it REALLY needs it.
And many, many, many gameplay mechanics are buggy, don’t work at all, or feel like a very early draft at best.
So yeah, if I’d want to play Assassin’s Creed or Mirror’s Edge, I’d play those. Please Kjun and the inZOI team, focus on the core mechanics which make for a truly next-gen LIFE SIM first and make the game stable and working well.
I don’t want this to turn into another No Man’s Sky, where the devs started adding weird stuff, just because they wanted to appease their player base, ultimately making the game full of shallow and half-baked features which don’t really fit the overall experience, make NMS even more unstable, and simply lose its identity.
That’s a very fair point. I kind of don’t mind jumping, but right now they’re kind of unnecessary. InZoi has so many problems right now that you don’t know where to start. Well, since the developers decided to make the jump, then let it be. However, then the jump should have a gameplay rationale - now it’s a function for the sake of a function. It’s a strange decision, to be honest.
The fact that they’re implementing new features doesn’t mean they’re not fixing bugs. But who said they should focus only on that and not develop the game further at all?
In fact, the game really is in early access. What does that mean? It means that by release, they need to have a game full of planned features and without bugs (ideally, of course). But if you develop a game on the principle of: polish what exists to perfection — then add new features (and new bugs) and fix both those and everything that arises from this combination in the base set — it will never end. Bugs can be fixed for a year, two years, or 15 years, as the experience with Sims showed.
So by the end of early access, the game should have all the planned functionality. Including jumps, frying pans, car races, hang-gliding, and everything else the developers dreamed up. And once they’ve fully assembled and integrated all this functionality together, they should start bringing the game into a working state.
The fact that they’re “fixing” the game in the process so we can play it now while it’s still unfinished — this is, in essence, a gesture of good faith. We all agreed to buy a product with all its bugs, shortcomings, and the possibility of drastic changes in the final result when we purchased it in early access.
So I think it’s unreasonable to demand they stop implementing something new when they’ve planned to add all of it in the final version. That also needs to be implemented and tested, including by us, so that later we get a product with minimal bugs.
Just, as I wrote above, this also needs testing and polish. So the sooner they implement it — the sooner we’ll notice bugs — and the faster they’ll fix them in the final version. Otherwise they’ll give us a perfectly polished base right now, and everything they add on top will be hopelessly buggy. That’s not much fun either…
I also agree with this suggestion. I think both things can happen at the same time. Of course, fixing bugs and improving current systems is important, but in every game development process, bugs will always exist and continue to be fixed over time. That doesn’t mean new content and new gameplay ideas cannot also be added or prepared alongside these improvements.
Regarding parkour, I think it is a really interesting idea. The two approaches are not mutually exclusive, and there are always good things to take from different suggestions. A life simulation shouldn’t limit itself only to what we already know from previous games like The Sims.
There are other aspects of simulation, especially roleplay, where many great elements can gradually be added. I think this mix between a life simulation and a more immersive roleplay experience is part of what makes InZOI’s direction so interesting.
With today’s technology, a modern life simulation can offer much more than what was possible before. More freedom of movement, more immersive activities, and systems that naturally connect with each other are exactly what can make a world feel truly alive.
So yes, I think parkour is a great idea. It doesn’t have to replace anything else, but it could become another fun activity between everyday moments like school, work, taking care of needs, and building relationships. It could create new stories and unexpected moments, which is exactly what makes a life simulation exciting.
Of course, I’m not a developer, so I can’t judge the technical challenges behind it, but I think suggestions like this are interesting because they show how many possibilities there are for InZOI to grow.
Couldn’t agree more; while I’m happy for those who like the idea of it, I know I personally would never use it as I don’t have any need nor desire for it. We know it’s possible the team isn’t solely dedicated to one feature and has the ability to work on improve other things, that isn’t the issue. I just feel like some of these random things being added have such odd priority over other basic things, even in this early access stage… But like I said, good for those who want it
I’ve written about this before, but I understand that not every user is interested in searching the forum and reading my specific messages, so I can allow myself to repeat.
As for what you call a “strange priority” — that’s perfectly normal. I’m confident they haven’t dropped everything right now to integrate this jump feature; it’s just one of many functions they’re actively working on. The thing is, they need to show something in the video. Something special, something that catches attention.
If I were to talk about “reworking the personality system” — that’s much more convenient and clearer to do in text, which is what Kjun does. In a video, it would just look like two slightly different behaviors in interactions: we wouldn’t even notice that something changed unless they added new animations or showed a bug fix like a plate stuck to someone’s hand.
But when they show jumps off a trampoline in a car, fights with frying pans, or now, Zoe’s jumps — that’s as spectacular as it gets, and it’s better to actually show that in a video rather than just say “Zoe learned to jump”. So there’s no “the whole team drops everything and only develops jumps!”. That impression might form, but it’s fundamentally wrong.
P.S. I never thought I’d enjoy riding a scooter or a motorboat in a life simulator. But here we are — these features appeared, and now I can sometimes just ride around the city, looking around. So maybe with the arrival of jumps (and parkour), we’ll be merrily jumping over little fences to take shortcuts
These are all fair concerns, and I fully agree that stability and core systems come first – that work is happening, and it should.
But I think there’s a misunderstanding about the scale of what I’m suggesting. This isn’t something Kjun’s team would spend years building from scratch while everything else sits ignored. The system already exists – Epic built it, with the animations, the movement logic, and most of the programming work done, and it’s free to use in any Unreal Engine project. inZOI is an Unreal Engine project. When Ubisoft animates an Assassin, they build everything from zero. inZOI has every right to simply adapt what’s already lying there, at a fraction of the effort.
And it wouldn’t even be “extra” work on top of fixing things – it would be fixing things. Try holding W+D in direct control and suddenly switching to A: your Zoi turns on a dime, nearly instantly, with almost no momentum or body weight at all. Compare that to the movement in the Game Animation Sample, where characters realistically shift their weight before changing direction. Improving inZOI’s direct control with parts of that system isn’t a random gimmick bolted on – it’s an upgrade to a core system that currently feels like an early draft of something that should be absolutely amazing, because direct control is a revolution in the life simulation genre.
One last thing worth remembering: a dev team isn’t one singular entity doing one task at a time. Animators rarely fix bugs — that’s what programmers and QA specialists are for, and they’re already on it. Having the animation folks integrate ready-made, professional movement in the meantime doesn’t slow the bug-fixing down one bit.
If implementing more movements would mean ultimately making ZOIs move more naturally, then sure.
I just wanted to clarify, that gamedev is never “easy”. So even if Epic already created this pack, it’s probably not going to be easy for the inZOI devs to just plop this into the game engine and it’ll work. It would most likely need implementation and unification with the rest of the game, the environments, the interactions, etc. and would - also, most likely - introduce more bugs.
@Carnel I’m not saying to make the game perfect, then add new stuff to break it again. I’m saying to make the game work as intended with the features that are already there. The scheduler is broken, making planning (and un-planning) meetings and events a disaster. My ZOI went for a taekwondo class, and after 2 meetings it just… ended. No explanation, no message like for the fitness club, where they ask each week if you still want to attend, nothing. That’s just one example of a core mechanic, that’s supposedly there, and yet it’s not working.
So yes, I understand, they’re experimenting, and OF COURSE it’s a lot better to implement better movement/jumping mechanics NOW as they introduce ragdoll physics, instead of trying to change that later on, when the game’s almost finished.
It’s just something I wasn’t expecting, and - going back to my No Man’s Sky example - it feels a bit like adding Pokemon battles in No Man’s Sky, which is kinda out of the blue and that game is still unstable after 10 years of development. (Yes, they literally added Pokemon battling in NMS ).
Well, that’s great if they implement jumps right away and at the same time sort out the scheduler completely. Otherwise it could go like this:
fixed the scheduler
added jumps
fixing the scheduler again and discovered bugs in jumps
I’m for this option:
added jumps, pans, and everything-everything-everything
now they fix everything all at once until it’s in working condition
And when they get it to the point where there are almost no bugs — they can announce a release, put out small patches, and at the same time work on developing add-ons, running beta testing of new features for those interested. I would have participated if they invited me, of course, though I understand it’s unlikely to happen But in any case, even without me there will be no shortage of volunteers
That said, I’m no game dev, so I can’t comment on HOW it should actually be tackled.
Anyway, I hope I’m clear now, I have nothing against adding stuff, even the more wacky things (which made The Sims more enjoyable and surprising anyway, so why not inZOI), it’s just that I don’t want the game to become a bag full of everything, without anything actually working correctly.
The game turns into an RPG. 
, but we have to keep in mind that most of these animations are just steps in all the different directions and at various speeds, multiplied by variations such as an active and a relaxed stance, and naturally a character vaults over obstacles differently depending on whether they’re walking, running, or sneaking. Also, there are many transitional animations, like say you’re running forward-right and suddenly decide to run backward-left, your character naturally would slide for about half a meter while adjusting their movement in the new direction, or even simple things such as crouching from a standing position, and getting back up, etc.
).
But in any case, even without me there will be no shortage of volunteers