Playstyles

[Ivlaya]

Hi, I’m here because I’d like to get some advice about the Inzoi gameplay mode. I think everyone likes or is used to playing in a different way, and I’ve been thinking about my own gameplay method. I always use a character who then develops their own family, and I end up moving the children out when they grow up so they can start their own. But I imagine there are people who play differently, or who even use the rest of the families in the game. In my case, I’m almost always with my character, I choose a successor and share control with them, until I take over controlling them 100%. But I usually don’t touch the other families or characters.

I’d like to know other gameplay methods you all have. Or if you simply watch the whole family, or if you play with different families, etc.

I really love the surprise factor. For example, my character fell in love with a married zoi, and one day when they were about to get married to their new partner, forgetting their forbidden love, they received a call the day before the wedding with the news that that love had gotten divorced. A surprise and quite the drama . But this wouldn’t have been possible if I controlled everything. So, what other ways do you all have of playing?

[Carnel]

Thanks, that’s really interesting – to learn about someone else’s playstyle

My approach is still pretty basic: I play lone male Sims and mainly try to level up some life skills for them, plus those needed to make money. I have aging turned off because it feels like I won’t accomplish anything if they’re growing old too. Plus, I’m honestly not mentally ready for any of them to die. I need to plan that out deliberately – create heirs, start playing as them, and only then turn on the aging mechanic.

3 families – young adults, and they live in different cities. And only when the school update came out did I deliberately create a lone teen and settle him in Bliss Bay to check out the school. Plus I have a story idea for him, but I’d need to create a few more teens for that, boys and girls, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. Especially since I keep waiting-waiting-waiting for the “posing tool” Without it, creating stories feels so labor-intensive that I lose motivation – I’m not ready to study hundreds of animations and figure out exactly when to pause so I can capture the specific emotion and pose I want. Too much going on in real life.

It’s easiest to play a lone Sim. Once I introduced my Sim from Dowon to an NPC girl, we went on a date, things were heading toward marriage… And that process was really difficult – she worked at the bank, and it was nearly impossible to have a proper conversation with her. But I was very persistent – I’d run to the bank like it was my job just to chat with her Sometimes I’d show up on weekends without tracking what day it was, and I’d be stuck for two days, then come back at opening with all their needs met so they wouldn’t be hungry, sleepy, or needing the bathroom, etc. Basically, he was really pursuing her attention, and I literally forced that date out of the game

Then the game got an update, after which they even demolished my house (though that wasn’t a big deal, I wanted to rebuild it anyway, but you should have seen the confused look on my Sim’s face when he came back to his lot and found… empty land ), and on top of that his relationship with that girl reset and they became completely indifferent to each other. So that’s where I left that save.

And there’s also a game in Cahaya where I started with a lone Sim, but then discovered that the house I moved into is laid out in a way that assumes two families living there. So after wandering around the island, I’d make friends with everyone, and whoever I could – I’d offer to move in together. Three people said no, but the fourth one suddenly agreed. That’s how I ended up with a two-person household. They’re both guys, but that’s not the point. It turned out to be pretty interesting when the other Sim has his own backstory – he had cooking skills and some other things developed. Plus, it turned out he “worked as a criminal,” and when I took control of him, he got “fired.” I figured it meant “he agreed to move in with me because he wanted to leave his criminal past behind, but he had nowhere to go, so he jumped at the chance to disappear into someone else’s household”

There, as an experiment, I created a daughter for my main Sim by cloning her. Just wanted to see what would happen. By the way, two girls also said no, but that same new roommate suddenly agreed right away So I got a little daughter there who considers my Sim her dad, but the roommate doesn’t participate in any way, despite his genetic material – they’re just friends with my Sim, and he has no relationship to the kid whatsoever. Though it seems she genetically takes after that former NPC anyway.

I raised her to “toddler” and now she crawls around the whole yard in a funny way, and my adults take care of her collectively. And they won’t go anywhere themselves – my “main” guy paints, and they have more than enough money, so I didn’t bother with work. But the moment one leaves the house – the other immediately heads out somewhere too. At least they meet up regularly on the street. And funnily enough, I haven’t even gotten around to visiting the resort yet – I just live on one half of the map, plus I regularly swim and travel to an uninhabited island.

So I still have a lot to explore: businesses, careers (except for the part-time job at the “Poseidon” shop in Bliss Bay – my teen works half-time there), travel… But even in this mode, the game brings me enormous joy! Though it would be really hard for me to play multiple family members in parallel. Eventually it’ll all happen – a wedding, my daughter growing up, maybe more kids – naturally this time. But for now it’s easier for me to play one character, only occasionally adjusting the lives of those around him.

And when I start staging scenes – that won’t be a game anymore, it’ll be theater. You need strict control over behavior, need fulfillment, and environmental setup. That’s when things will get really interesting, in my opinion. But I need to wait for that. Most people want to actually play, and have the game create stories for them, rather than making up scenarios themselves, and I understand that perfectly

[Ivlaya]

A thousand thanks for answering me!! It’s really interesting to learn about other people’s playstyles and so much fun to hear new stories . I agree that playing with a single Zoi is very random to have control over what happens. I’ve never played without aging enabled. Maybe I’ll follow your example and try a new game like that to see how it goes

[Sephrenia]

I prefer to play rotationally. I like having many of my families in the same world, and I enjoy it when they all know each other and I know them all.

I usually start with my favorite Zoi and then build their surroundings and community around them. Sometimes I turn aging off so I can get everyone onto the same timeline. I always have autonomy enabled and let the game do a lot on its own. Because of that, I might stay with one household for a very long time if things are getting interesting there.

Right now, I’m only playing one Zoi and haven’t changed anything else in the world because of the update, and I don’t enjoy it as much this way. I’m waiting for tomorrow’s update, and then I’ll build up a new save again with lots of families, stories, and connections between them.

[EllaEstella]

Great thread and really interesting to read how you all play the game Thanks for initiating it @Ivlaya

I’ve been playing my main Bliss Bay save rotationally since February, and I think this is the playstyle that works best for me.

All of my Zois originally started as separate single-Zoi households. I didn’t decide beforehand who would end up with whom or what their families would look like. They met naturally in the game, became friends, fell in love, moved in together, married and eventually had children.

I normally play each household for about one in-game week. Aging is enabled for the household I’m currently playing and disabled for the others, so everyone stays in sync as I rotate through the city.

At the moment, I’m rotating between six active households with 18 Zois in total, so Bliss Bay already feels quite interconnected.

What I really like about this is that I don’t completely control the story either. I give each Zoi a general direction, but if the game throws something unexpected at me, I usually make it part of their story instead of correcting it.

For example, one of my Zois, Timmy, had reached Director at Sync Up. While I was away playing other households, he somehow got fired. Instead of putting him back into the same career, I treated it as something that had actually happened to him. He eventually used the skills he had gained there to open his own business, a gaming lounge & café where he also teches lectures (so stuff he learned from his previous job ). Similar unexpected things have happened with other households as well, and those are often the parts of the save I enjoy the most.

Every Zoi also has a different focus. Some have traditional careers, some run businesses, some concentrate on things like programming, music, painting, fishing or crafting, and one of them even went down a rather criminal path . It keeps every household different and gives me a reason to explore parts of the game I might otherwise never use.

That is actually also how many of the guides I’ve posted here came about. Because different Zois specialize in different skills, careers and activities, I naturally ended up testing a lot of those systems while playing them.

Building is another big part of the save for me. Every house one of my households lives in and every business they own gets rebuilt or heavily remodeled until it fits that Zoi and their story. So Bliss Bay is slowly turning into my own version of the city. My long-term plan is to keep adding more Zois and households until eventually most, or maybe all, of the available residential lots are occupied by families that are part of the rotation.

One of the things I like as well is seeing a Zoi I played in the previous household appear as an NPC while I’m controlling someone else. They might walk into a friend’s business, show up at an event or just pass by somewhere in the city. Because I already know who they are, where they live, what they do for a living and who their friends are, they no longer feel like random background Zois.

I actually started InZOI with a more traditional single-household playstyle and followed one family into the third generation. I enjoyed that too, but eventually this became the main reason I switched to rotational play. With one household, the people around my Zois often started to feel temporary. A school friend might be important for a while, but later they were still just living somewhere in the background without really having a life I knew anything about. They never married, never get kids etc.

When I play rotationally, that same childhood friend may later have a career, a partner, children, a house I built and a whole history of their own. And if they eventually become the partner of another Zoi, it means much more because I already know both of them from day 1.

I still have an older rotational save in Cahaya that I might return to someday, and a much smaller Dowon save, but Bliss Bay has definitely become my main “living world” save for the moment.

So I guess my playstyle is somewhere between rotational control and letting the game surprise me. I control enough to make sure every household develops and stays interesting, but I try not to control so much that nothing unexpected can ever happen.

And that balance is probably what I enjoy most about it.

[mialuce66]

I play practically in the exact same way as EllaEstella, the only difference is that in the first generation I created 6 families with children (kids) and then several others were born in-game.
I play in rotation with the various families and enable aging only for the family I’m playing, so as to be consistent with age. The period during which I play with a family, usually a week, I consider as a year.
So far my second generation Sims have started to become young adults.
I like to make the various families become friends with each other.

[mimivision2022]

Haha, I’m the same way! I only play one character and immerse myself as that character in the game. I love building a family, but I don’t like how other friends get controlled by me once I do, so it can feel pretty conflicting sometimes. If I have children, when my character dies, I continue playing by controlling that child, so at that point I become that child. Back when I was playing The Sims, I always wished there was a complete roleplay mode where all NPCs felt like real people — where they could work on their own, become firefighters and police officers, climb the ranks to become top-tier bodyguards or criminals, and so on, without needing me to control them for them to have careers

I just want to see the world through my main character’s eyes and watch where those other characters develop on their own, without my control

[Annie]

I approach the neighborhood as if it were the beginning of a film that follows several families, at least 3 or 4. Each family is different from the others in various ways, whether it’s their financial situation, personal problems, or just the way they live. Everyone has their own story and goals in life, but those goals don’t always revolve around wealth, fame or crime. They start small, like in real life, when we don’t know how everything is going to turn out.

I’ll use a wheel with different outcomes and let it decide what happens to them that day, or whether they’ll reach their goal or fulfill their purpose. That way, one person might lose in life while another succeeds. I do this for relationships and friendships as well. Some of my Zois didn’t catch a break, but it was so much fun.