Main idea
- Create a customizable family routine system so children, teens, and parents have meaningful responsibilities and schedules.
- Allow routines to be saved for school days, weekends, and days off.
- Zois should autonomously follow assigned routines while still allowing the player to intervene or change plans.
- Different children can have different routines based on age, school schedule, and household rules.
School Morning Routine
- Parents can wake up before children to prepare for the day.
- Wake Child/Children for School interaction.
- Make breakfast for the household.
- Pack School Lunch for individual children/teens.
- Children shower/bathe, brush teeth, get dressed, make their beds, and eat breakfast.
- Children collect their backpack, homework, and lunch before leaving.
- Parents can prepare lunches and outfits the night before.
- Older children/teens can prepare their own breakfast or lunch.
- Saved routines allow these actions to happen autonomously instead of requiring constant micromanagement.
- Poor time management can cause a child to miss the bus or be late for school.
Transportation to & From School
- Ride the school bus.
- Parent/guardian drives children to school.
- Parent pickup after school.
- Carpool with another household.
- Walk or ride a bicycle when appropriate.
- Licensed teenagers can drive themselves to school.
- Licensed teenage siblings can drive younger siblings to school.
- Allow different transportation choices for each child.
- Create a normal dismissal plan that can be changed for individual days.
- Missing the bus should require another transportation option rather than automatically sending the child to school.
School-Day Experience
- Elementary, middle, and high-school students have age-appropriate schedules.
- Classes, lunch, recess/breaks, electives, PE, art, music, etc.
- Homework and projects.
- Grades/report cards.
- Parent-teacher conferences.
- Behavioral and academic notifications for parents.
- Field trips.
- Picture day.
- School dances/prom.
- Clubs and sports.
- Testing days.
- Graduation.
- School calendar with holidays, breaks and teacher workdays.
School Lunch System
- Choose Packed Lunch, School Lunch, or Student Chooses.
- Parents can pack lunches using actual groceries in the home.
- Choose which foods to pack.
- Children can develop lunch preferences.
- Older children and teens can pack their own lunches.
- Prepare lunches the night before.
- Children physically take their lunchbox/bag to school.
- Forgotten lunches could result in buying school lunch instead.
After-School Routine
- Ride bus home, parent pickup, sibling pickup, carpool, walk/bike, extracurricular activity, or after-school care.
- Come home and put backpack away.
- Change out of school clothes.
- Get an after-school snack.
- Complete homework.
- Complete assigned chores.
- Free time/play with friends.
- Family dinner.
- Bath/shower.
- Prepare clothes and school supplies for tomorrow.
- Bedtime based on age.
- Parents can customize the order of these activities.
Homeschooling
- Parents/guardians can choose Homeschool instead of traditional school.
- Parent can become the child’s Homeschool Teacher.
- Homeschool multiple children of different ages.
- Create a customized homeschool schedule.
- Parent actively teaches lessons.
- Independent schoolwork for older children/teens.
- Reading, writing, math, science, social studies, art, etc.
- Science experiments and educational activities.
- Educational field trips.
- Homeschool groups/co-ops.
- Homeschool children can still participate in social activities and extracurriculars.
- Create a dedicated homeschool classroom at home, while still allowing families to use a kitchen table or other space.
- Academic progress and grades.
- Parents improve their teaching ability through experience.
- Allow children to switch between homeschool and traditional school without losing academic progress.
Chores & Household Responsibilities
This should be a real system, not just random cleaning interactions.
- Parents can open a Household Chore Schedule.
- Assign chores to individual children, teens, or adults.
- Assign chores by day of the week.
- Choose daily, weekly, or occasional chores.
- Create Before School, After School, and Weekend chores.
- Chores automatically appear in the Zoi’s routine.
- Age-appropriate chore options.
- Parents can reassign chores when someone is unavailable.
- Rotate chores between siblings automatically.
- Children can complete chores without the player individually commanding every action.
Possible chores could include making the bed, cleaning bedroom, picking up toys, putting dirty clothes in the hamper, doing laundry, folding clothes, putting clothes away, washing dishes, loading/unloading the dishwasher, wiping counters, sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, taking out trash, cleaning bathrooms, feeding pets, walking dogs, watering plants, setting/clearing the dinner table, helping prepare meals, and helping put groceries away.
Age-Appropriate Responsibilities
- Young children: toys away, make bed with help, dirty clothes in hamper, feed pet, carry lightweight groceries.
- Older children: bedroom cleaning, dishes, table setting, sweeping, simple food preparation, laundry assistance.
- Teens: laundry, cooking meals, bathrooms, vacuuming/mopping, trash, pet care, helping younger siblings, and more independent household responsibilities.
- Parents determine what their children are allowed or expected to do rather than the game forcing one parenting style.
Allowance & Parenting
This could make the chore system even better.
- Parents can choose whether chores earn an allowance.
- Set weekly allowance amounts.
- Pay per chore or give a weekly allowance.
- Children/teens can save their money or spend it.
- Parents can praise a child for completing responsibilities.
- Children can be reminded to complete chores.
- Parents can establish household expectations.
- Optional consequences for repeatedly ignoring responsibilities.
- Responsibility could become something children develop over time.
The most important part: autonomy
I would emphasize this heavily in the suggestion:
Players should be able to create the routine, not have to manually perform the routine every day.
If I establish that my child wakes at 6:30, brushes their teeth, gets dressed, eats breakfast, grabs their backpack and catches the 7:30 bus, the Zoi should attempt to follow that routine autonomously every school day.
Things can still go wrong—that’s part of the fun. Someone oversleeps. Dad forgot to pack lunch. A teenager takes too long in the bathroom. A child hasn’t finished their homework. Someone misses the bus.
But those should be life-simulation events occurring within the routine, rather than the player having to click 15 interactions every morning.
That autonomy piece ties your entire idea together: parents establish how their household operates, and the Zois actually learn and live that routine.
AI isn’t capable of thinking about the essence of the game, it tries to churn out standardized suggestions, which end up becoming bloated and turn almost every rational idea into something taken to absurdity.
Let’s hope that someday it will be fixed. Because the problem comes and goes, and it’s completely unclear when quoting might break everything and when it won’t 