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 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.

※ For the video, please check it on Discord or the forum.

🔗 Discord: Link

🔗 Forum: Link

Kjun’s Reply to Your Comments

Hello everyone, and happy Wednesday.

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.”

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.

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.

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