Development Update: Our Direction After the Latest Update (Updated)

Since this update has just been released, we don't have a new development video to share this week. Instead, we'd like to talk about how our team reviewed the feedback you've been sending us and share the direction we've decided to take moving forward.

If you feel we've overlooked something or made the wrong call, please don't hesitate to let us know. We genuinely value your feedback, and if necessary, we'll revise our plans accordingly.

One important change we've made internally is reorganizing our development process. Rather than keeping a dedicated team focused solely on bug fixing and stabilization, every member of the development team is now contributing to improving the areas listed below while continuing to resolve bugs and increase overall stability.

**Our primary development goal after July is clear:**

To eliminate bugs, stabilize existing features, and ensure every system works together naturally and reliably, creating a game that feels as close to real life as possible.

Family & Characters

• Add family photo capture and saving.

• Support editing entire families together.

• Expand family relationship and family bond settings.

• Introduce family presets.

• Allow players to add new family members during gameplay.

Conversations, Personality & Emotions

• Improve conversations so they better reflect the current situation and context.

• Expand and refine dialogue choices.

• Allow new acquired traits to develop based on characters' values.

• Improve the Aspiration system.

• Further develop the Expectations system.

• Add more personality traits.

• Increase the maximum number of traits a character can have.

• Prepare the new Donut Trait specialization system.

• Add ambitions designed specifically for children.

• Improve emotional expressions and animations.

Life, Careers & Daily Activities

• Improve meal-related behaviors.

• Add a wider variety of dishes.

• Introduce an ingredient-based cooking system.

• Prevent objects from being cleaned up unnecessarily.

• Further improve the career system.

• Improve Smart Zoi behavior.

• Give top-performing graduates advantages during job interviews.

Skills, Furniture & Content

• Improve the skill system.

• Expand furniture functionality.

• Make food left unattended on ranges or stoves capable of starting fires.

• Expand career-related gameplay content.

• Improve toddler interactions.

• Ensure the Expectations system activates only in appropriate situations.

Autonomy & Relationships

• Deepen autonomy-related personality traits.

• Add the ability to stay overnight at another character's home.

• Expand the romance system.

• Strengthen family relationship storytelling.

• Allow NPCs to approach and initiate interactions with the player more naturally.

I've never developed a game like this before.

Creating a game together with the community is a completely new experience for me, and one that I truly treasure. I even find myself telling my son about this journey quite often.

Sometimes I see messages from people who are worried about me. Thank you, sincerely, for your kindness.

Right now, I'm making the game I've always wanted to create.

Of course, this game could fail. Life doesn't always unfold according to our plans. But I'm not sure "failure" is really the right word.

I once read a sentence in a book that has stayed with me:

"We suffer because of the standards we create for ourselves."

I believe life isn't something that has to prove itself by meeting a certain standard. It's something we're here to experience. The moment I truly accepted that, many of the worries and expectations that once weighed on me began to fade.

Please continue sharing your thoughts and feedback with us.

We'll continue listening with sincerity.

Thank you.

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

🔗 Discord: Link

🔗 Forum: Link

Kjun’s Reply to Your Comments

Hello everyone,

First of all, I want to sincerely thank everyone who took the time to write such detailed and thoughtful feedback. Our development team is reading every comment and suggestion one by one, and we’re not only looking at what was requested, but also trying to understand why those opinions were raised.

I’d also like to clarify something that seems to have caused some confusion. The list I shared last Friday was only intended to cover the work planned through the August update. It was not a complete list of everything currently in development.

Feature Feedback (FF) is still actively being worked on, and we’re tracking it internally while steadily checking items off the list. That said, because unexpected priorities and urgent updates inevitably come up during development, I can’t promise that every FF item will be completed within this year. However, these features remain an important part of our long-term plans and are always being considered. I think my post last Friday unintentionally created the impression that they had been abandoned, and that’s my mistake.

The development direction I shared on Friday came from discussions with the inZOI Creative Director after reviewing the feedback we’ve seen most frequently over the past few weeks. The strongest common message from the community was:

“New features are important, but right now it’s even more important to deepen and improve the systems that already exist.”

The list I posted reflects our effort to begin addressing that feedback while continuing regular updates.

At the same time, the foundational system improvements currently in progress, as well as the features many of you have been looking forward to from our Feature Feedback and existing roadmap, remain major development priorities.

Going forward, our focus won’t simply be on adding more content. Instead, we want to build stronger connections between existing systems so that they work together naturally and create an experience that feels more like real life.

For example, if your Zoi makes a new friend, we want them to naturally meet again at the park the following week. A gift received from a parent shouldn’t just be another inventory item—it should remain a meaningful memory that can continue to provide comfort even years later.

The family system is being designed with this same philosophy. Rather than simply allowing players to add family members, we want family relationships to influence memories and emotions, those emotions to affect autonomous behavior, conversations, and daily life, and those experiences to create new memories over time.

We’re approaching the personality system in a similar way. In the future, personality shouldn’t just be information shown in a menu. It should influence how a Zoi behaves, speaks, expresses emotions, builds relationships, makes decisions, and acts autonomously. Ideally, players shouldn’t have to open the personality window to understand a character—they should naturally think, "This is exactly the kind of person this Zoi is."

Dialogue is another area we’re continuing to improve. Conversations should reflect context and relationships much more naturally. A Zoi shouldn’t speak to a stranger the same way they speak to a longtime friend, family member, or romantic partner. Instead, conversations should evolve based on the relationship, recent events, and each character’s emotional state.

Many of you have also emphasized family gameplay and generational gameplay, and we completely agree that these are core parts of a life simulation game. Family creation and editing, genetics, life stages, parenting, family photos, and family presets are all areas we plan to continue expanding and improving over time.

Likewise, systems such as school, careers, the economy, cooking, vehicles, and daily routines shouldn’t exist as isolated features. They should naturally interact with one another. Cooking should connect to ingredients, shopping, farming, and the economy. School should influence friendships, personal growth, and personality development. Careers should affect finances and family life. Our goal is to build systems that support and enrich one another instead of existing independently.

We’ve also seen a great deal of feedback regarding bugs and overall polish, and we consider this just as important as adding new content. Even the best features lose their value if they aren’t stable or enjoyable to use. For that reason, we’re investing a significant amount of development effort into improving quality alongside new features. In particular, recurring bugs and issues that disrupt gameplay are receiving high priority.

Another common request has been for inZOI to strengthen its own unique identity. We completely agree. Our goal isn’t simply to increase the number of features, but to continue building a world with its own culture, atmosphere, and personality—something that feels distinctly like inZOI rather than simply resembling other life simulation games.

While it’s impossible to implement every suggestion in a single update, your feedback genuinely influences how we prioritize development. We’ll continue doing our best to communicate our plans openly and transparently as we work together with all of you to shape the future of inZOI.

Thank you, as always, for your support, your patience, and the thoughtful feedback you’ve shared with us.

kjun