Please meet storytellers in the middle
I genuinely love what inZOI is trying to be. The character creator, building, family gameplay, Canvas, photography, and modding have enormous potential, and those are exactly the features that make me want to spend hours creating stories.
But I feel like some of the simpler parts of the life-sim experience are being overlooked while much more complicated systems continue to receive attention.
I’m not asking for everything to be perfect. I’m asking for the existing storytelling systems to feel complete enough to actually tell a life story.
1. Please expand the base-game art library
The current library of people-focused artwork is extremely small. There are only around ten images featuring Zois that can be used as decorative artwork, and only a couple feature Black Zois. I appreciate that representation exists, but those images are styled more like advertisements or billboards than natural portraits that would actually feel at home in a house.
I’m not asking for representation simply for the sake of counting people. I’m asking for useful variety.
I’d love to see:
- Family and multigenerational portraits
- Couples, friends, and children
- Diverse people across different ethnicities and ages
- Abstract and fine art
- Food and kitchen artwork
- Botanical and landscape pieces
- Cultural and festival imagery
- Restaurant, café, salon, market, and other business decor
- Posters, advertisements, and storefront signs
- Community and neighborhood imagery
It doesn’t need to be thousands of assets. It just needs to be a thoughtfully curated library that gives players enough variety to make their homes and businesses feel lived in.
And representation matters here. If I can create a Black family in CAS, I want enough base-game artwork to make their home feel like their home. The same should be true for players of every background.
2. Give us more physical reminders of our Zois’ lives
If a Zoi graduates high school or college, why not give them a diploma, degree, plaque, or another physical keepsake?
Let me put it on the wall of their childhood bedroom. Let them take it to their first apartment. Let me display it in their office. Let it remain in the family home after they move out.
Those little objects become memories.
The same applies to marriages, birthdays, family milestones, achievements, businesses, and other major life events.
I don’t just want my Zois to do things. I want the game to give me ways to remember that they happened.
3. Please address Canvas asset persistence for cloud players
This is an especially important issue for players using cloud gaming services.
The problem isn’t simply that Canvas creations cannot be downloaded. They can.
The problem is that some downloaded presets contain textures and 3D-printed/custom assets that do not persist between cloud-gaming sessions.
Because those assets are attached to the preset, there isn’t always a way to download the build while excluding them.
This creates a particularly frustrating situation: a player can download a beautiful house, play with it normally, log out, and return later to find that some textures have disappeared and the missing 3D assets have been replaced by large blue placeholder blocks.
And these aren’t simply harmless placeholders that can be cleaned up afterward. The blue blocks cannot be deleted or removed by the player. They can permanently remain where the missing assets were, effectively breaking the appearance and usability of the build.
The player also can’t necessarily tell beforehand which parts of a build are custom assets. Sometimes they’re obvious decorations, but sometimes they’re architectural elements such as porch columns, beams, pillars, framing, or other pieces that look like ordinary parts of the structure.
That means a player can unknowingly download a build that will later break in their environment and leave behind objects they cannot even remove.
I’d love to see one or more of these solutions:
- Allow creators to mark assets as persistent/nonpersistent.
- Warn players before downloading a preset that contains nonpersistent assets.
- Show a list of nonpersistent assets before download.
- Allow players to download the base-game-compatible portion of a build without the problematic assets.
- Automatically replace missing assets with a removable base-game placeholder.
- Allow missing Canvas assets to be safely deleted or replaced after they disappear.
- Provide persistent cloud storage for user-created Canvas assets where possible.
This would make Canvas much more usable for cloud-gaming players without requiring KRAFTON to control how every third-party cloud service handles local files.
4. Please remember who your storytellers are
I understand that autonomy is important. I understand that deeper simulation systems take time.
But inZOI is also a storytelling sandbox.
Some of us aren’t just watching our Zois live. We’re writing their lives.
We want to create the family photo.
We want to put the diploma on the wall.
We want to decorate the restaurant with artwork that reflects the people who own it.
We want to build a neighborhood that actually reflects the people living in it.
We want the objects around our Zois to tell us that these characters have actually lived there.
Right now, I sometimes feel like inZOI is very focused on making Zois do things autonomously, while not giving players enough ways to preserve and build upon the things those Zois actually do.
I am not asking KRAFTON to stop working on autonomy or other major systems.
I’m asking you to meet storytellers in the middle.
If some of the larger systems are going to take time, please give us more of the smaller tools that immediately make the existing game more complete.
A better art library/picture gallery.
More diverse and natural people-focused imagery.
Family and group photography.
Meaningful graduation and life-event keepsakes.
Better Canvas asset management and persistence.
More ways to preserve memories.
More ways to make our homes and businesses reflect the people who actually live in them.
These may not be the most technically complicated additions, but they would have an enormous impact on storytelling.
You’ve already built the tools that let us create these people.
Please give us enough of the smaller pieces to let them truly belong in the world, too.
I don’t think players should have to leave the base game immediately, rebuild their mod libraries after every cloud session, or risk broken builds with permanent blue blocks just to make their worlds feel complete.
We don’t need thousands of new assets.
We just need enough of the right ones.
And we need the systems we’ve already been given to work together.
Please don’t just give us a simulation of people living. Give us the tools to remember that they lived.
If ingame photos would persist, I could handle the photo and representation issue on my own. There’s no point in me taking all these picture of my Zois when the next time I go to play they will be deleted; which sucks because once my zois start aging and them, their friend and family members start passing away, there’s nothing to really make that feel significant nor to commemorate all the work I put in to building those connections. I understand how VMs handle files is not their fault, but there are so many features I can’t enjoy because there is no alternative nor inclusivity for cloud gamers who paid for the game just like everyone else (and are even paying extra for cloud gaming services just to be able to run the game). I can’t even run the mod kit on my computer, so that’s not a creative alternative that’s available to me, either. This post doesn’t have much engagement, but I do hope they consider doing something to ease the gap.