(Read Part 1 Here: My InZOI Review - Part 1: Create A ZOI )
(Read Part 3 Here: My InZOI Review - Part 3: Gameplay )
NOTE: This review may have things edited here and there over time for any updates/patches that fix and addressed those things, to prevent misinformation! I also acknowledge that it's in Early Access and things are bound to change/improved on.
One of the most exciting parts of any life sim is stepping into its world for the first time—and InZOI doesn’t disappoint when it comes to first impressions. With two fully playable cities available at launch, each offering its own unique vibe and layout, it’s clear the devs put a lot of thought into giving players a variety of environments to explore.
But beyond the surface-level beauty, how do these worlds actually play? Are they just pretty backdrops, or do they offer meaningful gameplay opportunities? In this section, I’ll be diving into both cities, what makes them stand out, and where they still fall a little short—because while there’s a lot to love, there’s also room to grow.
I will also try my best sharing my thoughts on what the current state of InZOI would mean for rotationary players and players who love to play townies for their drama.
And I'll finish with talking a bit about routing and driving!
The Worlds of InZOI
The game currently comes with two ready-to-play worlds: Dowon, a South Korean-inspired city, and Bliss Bay, which has more of a laid-back, California vibe. A third world, Kuchingku, a Indonesian inspired City, is also on the way, which is exciting!
Bliss Bay
As mentioned earlier, Bliss Bay is a California-inspired city, complete with a gorgeous beach and—yes—a full-on amusement park!
This was the first world I played in. I figured Babette, the ZOI I created, would fit right in with its surfing vibes and her love for nature. And honestly? She did. I mean—an amusement park and a laid-back coastal lifestyle? It felt like the perfect match.
Bliss bay does come with seasons, but it's more true to it's californian weather, where snow in winters are not a thing. It gets brisker, but not at any freezing point.
One thing to remember as well: You will have no neighbors! All the houses in the street are props that either are bordered up or have a "rent/buy" sign, making it actually really empty feeling, as if your ZOI is Carl from UP! who refused to get out of their house, meanwhile the whole street has left. This isn't so much the case in Dowon, so if this is a big deal, you might want to start with Dowon.
Bliss Bay includes quite a few locations to explore, including:
- A Café
- A City Square
- A Park
- Baseball Courts
- Two Beach Lots
- The Amusement Park
- A Wedding Venue
- A School
- A Police Station
- A Hotel Lounge and Lobby (unfinished, but pretty cool so far!)
- A Furniture Store
- A Tarot Shop
- An Art Museum
- A Themed Studio
- A Bank
- A Clothing Store
- A Surf Store
- ... And a Fast Food Restaurant
Overall it comes with a cool few active Careers as well:
- Fast Food Cashier/Manager
- Furniture Store Cashier/Manager
- Surf Store Cashier/Manager
- Amusement park Cashier/Manager/Office Worker.
Bliss bay should be next to check out if you play...
- Generational
- Have a fitness ZOI
- Don't care much about community lot experiences.
- Want an all-around summer season experience
- Want a more American/western world to play in
- Want a less City-like world for your story to be surrounded in.
- Don't care much for active careers.
- Like finding collectables/fishing.
- If you like to build houses over playing the game.
- Have a ZOI that hates cooking (or maybe you do) and want to use more of the food truck features.
Truth be told, of the two worlds though, I feel that Bliss bay may be the one that feels very unfinished. There's really not that much to do unless your ZOI is into fitness (there's plenty of fitness objects around that blend in really nicely with the world. Plus, at level 6 fitness you can surf!)
The Amusement park attractions can be ridden on, but this will result into a first-person view of what your ZOI sees, rather than seeing your ZOI ride the ride. That's fun the first time, but after that... eh.
Sometimes lots are also simply a bit strange in it's layout. For example, the furniture store also serves as a supermarket. I'm guessing they were trying to go for a mall-like vibe, but judging from the layout... It's just not there.
Dowon
Dowon is the first city built by the devs, and honestly, you can tell—in the best way. In my opinion, it translates into a more polished and cohesive gameplay experience overall.
It’s a South Korean-inspired city, and what makes it stand out is how authentically those cultural elements are woven in. From the architecture to the layout and even the general atmosphere, it feels like a real place with its own identity. It’s a refreshing change of pace from the usual Sims formula, which tends to lean heavily into American suburbia—even when trying to mimic European settings.
(this is the deepest snow can be. I set it to Snowy Level 3)
Dowon's season system does feel much nicer if you're into seasons. While it's not fully fleshed out yet (Snow levels are... eh, a suggestion at best?), ZOIs do switch to their winter wear (or summer wear!) when the temperature goes to temperatures where those types of clothings are appropiate.
Dowon includes quite a few locations to explore, including:
- A Gaming Café
- A City Square
- A Park
- A Firefighter Station
- A Baseball Courts
- A Karaoke Booth.
- A Wedding Venue
- A School
- A Police Station
- A Lounge (Which includes a fashion store, bakery and a little place for toddlers and children to play)
- A Tarot Shop
- An Art Museum
- An Entertainment Studio
- A Themed Studio
- Temple Grounds
- A convenience store
- A Bank
- A Fashion Store
- A Flea market
- ... And a Fast Food Restaurant
Dowan should be next to check out if you play...
- A smaller generational family. (houses are quite small often)
- Want more active careers to try out (also tends to be more fleshed out).
- Want a more variety in community lots to experience.
- Want to try more features from the game in one world.
- Want a full-fleshed city experience for your story.
- If you're not much of a builder, this can be also a great option
- Want to explore self-employment features more.
- Want to explore InZOIs season system a bit better
- Want to train your ZOIs skills outside the house.
- Want less families to worry about.
- Don't mind much for less fillling vendor foods.
Overall my personal experience with Dowan was much better than Bliss Bay. There's just way more to do, and also from a skill based gameplay!
Community lots often have easles to paint on, microphones to sing from, fitness equipments... If not, from an entertainment perspective it's just a much more fun experience (I mean, karaoke booth?! With friends?! That's really cool! A gaming cafe?! And a functional convience store?! Sign me up!)
However, be aware that as of right now, a lot of the menu kiosks (where you can get food and drinks ordered) don't work often in Dowan. Bliss Bay I haven't found any yet that didn't work. So that might be a deal breaker!
Pathing & Routing
I figured I'd tackle this too because we all know how The sims 3 worlds are like routing wise... 😬
Controlling your ZOI
First things first—your ZOI can be controlled in two different ways:
- WASD movement
- Click-based navigation (just like in The Sims)
The click-based control works pretty much how you'd expect: click on the ground, and your ZOI will walk there. Simple and familiar!
However, if you want your ZOI to travel to a community lot that’s farther away—like something across town—you’ll need to either open the map or head to a nearby bus stop or metro station (depending on the city).
Once your ZOI reaches the station, they’ll start walking, and a loading screen will kick in to fast-travel them to the destination lot. This also happens if they generally are "walking" to said lot.
It’s not quite a seamless open-world experience, but given how big the worlds are compared to the sims 3, I can get behind this feature.
Another thing to keep in mind—and something I found a little odd—is that when you sprint (WASD + Shift), there’s no stamina system. Your ZOI can just run infinitely.
I think it’d be really cool if stamina was tied into the fitness skill in the future—like, the more fit your ZOI is, the longer they can sprint before needing a breather. It’d add a nice bit of realism and progression to movement.
That said, I was honestly expecting to struggle with the WASD controls, but they turned out to be way smoother than I thought! Sure, it feels a little strange at first, but if you’ve ever played The Sims 2 on console, it’s very similar—and it doesn’t take long to get used to. The only real struggle I had with WASD movement was during conversations. If you're chatting with another ZOI and accidentally press one of the WASD keys, it immediately cancels all interactions. Which means... yep, you’ll have to re-queue everything from scratch.
It’s not a huge deal, but it can be a bit frustrating—especially during longer or more meaningful interactions. So if that sounds like a dealbreaker for you, I’d honestly recommend sticking to mostly click-based play. It’s a little more reliable for social stuff and helps avoid those accidental “oops, conversation over” moments.
The Click-and-go system by itself does way more automatic routing however, and you can really see that when your ZOI is walking around (especially outside). Often it seems to follow some pre-defined hidden path for townies to walk on.
The beach, for example, in Bliss Bay has this the worst. The beach is quite spacious and has plenty of routing planning potentials, but every townie will follow this same unnecessary roundabout route to get to a specific location.
It's interesting to see that the sims 3, a game from 2009 does this better than InZOI a lot of the times. Obviously though, this may change later on the line.
Public transport you say? 👀
My little European heart definitely skipped a beat when I saw that public transport is actually a thing!
In Bliss Bay, your ZOIs take the bus—and there are tons of bus stops scattered throughout the city, which makes it feel a lot more connected and grounded. Meanwhile, in Dowon, they use a metro system. Your ZOI will just enter the subway station (you don’t actually see them riding it), but still—it’s a super nice touch!
Even if the travel animations are minimal, just having public transport built into the world makes everything feel more alive and believable—especially if you're coming from a place where buses and trains are part of everyday life. (Even if you hate them with a burning passion lol)
Traffic and Cars:
So, as you might have noticed, InZOI has a lot of roads and pedestian elements in their worlds. Which is nice and definetly makes it feel more "Real" in a way.
ZOIs who are on foot heading to... somewhere (they tend to spawn in and walk around, not really simulating going to places like the sims 3 did) will wait at a traffic light when it's red, and go when it's green.
What about those drivable cars?
Quick tip if you end up getting the game:
🚗 GET YOUR CAR FROM THE PHONE APP!
I made the rookie mistake of grabbing one of the decorative cars from Build Mode… yeah, don’t be like me 😅 It looks nice, but it’s basically a fancy paperweight.
If you want a functional car your ZOI can actually use, make sure to get it through the phone app 'Dream Car' instead.
Moving on...
While pedestrian traffic lights don't have any painful waiting times, driving your car... Yeah it's annoyingly long. Not only does it take a long time, but if it finally turns green, the next traffic light is also red, having you wait a long time as well.
When I was driving in the game, I found myself going more GTA mode over the roads. I tried! I promise! To be a good little, law abiden ZOI citizen, but the red lights were just taking so long! (And you never get fined or penalized from doing it either.)
Hitting another ZOI's car also results in an animation playing where they simply yell at each other. You don't have to pay any fees or do anything consequencially speaking.
This is probably where sim players who love chaos might get a bit disappointed: Your ZOI (and townies) can't get hit by a car and die. And hitting ZOIs with your car... well, right now is really broken too.
So here’s the thing—whether it’s your ZOI getting hit by a car (which, to be honest, is pretty tricky to even pull off), or a townie walking into traffic, the result is usually just a quick animation where they jump to the side.
I’m not sure if they removed the full-on ragdoll physics we saw floating around in pre–Early Access videos, but in my experience, it looks like that feature is either gone or seriously toned down.
And then there’s the even weirder part: when a townie does get hit by your car, they don’t ragdoll—they just... pop out of existence. Like, not dead. Just teleported somewhere else entirely, like nothing ever happened. Other times they do make a tiny jump aside, and play an animation jumping away from the car. But that's it.
It feels a bit unfinished or placeholder-y right now, but hey—early access quirks, right?
Speaking of things popping out of existence—right now, driving your car is kind of pointless. As soon as you finish driving to your destination, your car just teleports back to your house.
Which, honestly? Super annoying. That means once you're done wherever you went, you either have to take the bus or walk all the way home—even though you literally drove there.
So while I love the idea of drivable cars in theory and always wanted to since The Sims 3 days, they definitely got a long way to go. At the moment, driving just feels... weird. The car has almost no friction, the handling is floaty, and the whole system feels like it’s still in an early alpha state. Definitely one of the roughest features in the current build.
So, just stick to public transport for now. 😉
Overall impressions:
While I spent more time playing in Bliss Bay, I noticed that both worlds share a common issue: there's… not that much to do.
Or well—there is stuff to do, technically—but for an open world, it doesn’t really reward exploration in the way you’d expect from an exploring perspective.
Driving or running around feels kind of hollow when you realize that about 80% of the buildings are just shells. Some of them are so well-designed, you don’t even realize they’re fake until you get right up to the door and… yep. It’s just scenery.
Now of course I'm aware that this is an Early Access game, but I was really hoping we could ride bicycles and scooters too! You'll see them scattered around the cities of Dowan and Bliss bay, but those are all props as well.
(A Sims 3 sim collecting a bug they found in the world)
Often games with open worlds include a collectable system to promote exploring around, but this is also something that InZOI doesn't have, in it's current state. Or at least, not as strong and rewarding as The Sims 3 did it (and to a lesser degree The Sims 4). So far, I've seen only on the beach the possibility to collect things.
That said, I do appreciate that each world has its own strengths and flavor, depending on your preferred playstyle. The downside? You kind of have to figure that out yourself—there’s no real guidance on which world suits what kind of gameplay. So unless you read this review (hehe), first-time players might end up choosing a city that doesn’t quite fit what they’re looking for.
Another thing I noticed is what I like to call "Sims 4 World Syndrome": only a handful of lots are available to play or build on. While the overall city atmosphere helps soften that disappointment a bit, I was really hoping for something more in line with The Sims 3, where most buildings were real, accessible, and part of a truly open, interactive world. Heck, even rabbitholes would’ve been fine!
I think right now with the way the lots are done, you'll soon run out of space when you're at generation 5.
Environment pieces are often real-world related
I figured I'd add this for the ones who really love the sims and their simlish text and language in the world.
InZoi happens to be a full 'real life' representation as we might see every day. While logos are all fictional, most text (depending on the world) are either in plain english or korean. The speech language though is in a similar non-sense language though! So there are still some elements of it.
Editing the World
Every world comes with a way to edit your world! Whether it's appearances or through changing statistics, that doesn't really matter. InZOI shows a really cool freedom perspective that in the Sims we always had to either do manually or install mods for.
For example, each save comes with a "Manage City" page. Here you can see how well the town is doing, how many relationships have been formed and other stats. Just to get a feeling how your city is doing overall!
The sliders on the left hand-side helps you tweak the frequency of when certain things are happening. Should your city have more, or less romantic relationships happening on their own? Should it have a high or low population?
The nice thing about these sliders, is that you can make the town in a way you'd like to see! Want things to be as crappy as it can be? Or would you like it to be a safe and considered place? That's all your choice! This adds a really nice layer for both "hands-off" players and players who love a bit of chaos.
Now, right now I havent quite seen much in regards to relationships since most ZOIs still seem to be single even after a few days of playing, but it's entirely possible that I haven't played long enough to truly see how much these settings affect ZOIs.
In the City Appearance menu you can also set the weather! I actually did this once in Bliss Bay, since I really wanted to experience what the winter would look like. Setting the seasons does actually change the temperature and making it so ZOIs switch to their "Summer/Winter" wear. The game does say that it doesn't impact ZOIs but I'm not sure in what way it means this. Maybe in a way of freezing to death?
The World Appearance menu comes with the following menus to edit your City with:
- Billboards,
- Trees
- Grass
- Decorations
- Special effects
- Adjusting Environment (Cleanliness)
Billboards let you change the picture onto them, which also includes Youtube videos! I thought that was cool, even though I don't think I'll ever be using that option. But I can see how this would really help roleplaying experiences!
Editing a city's decoration and vegetation is also a really nice touch. The customization options let you add a personal flair to different areas, and being able to tweak the environment helps make the world feel a bit more yours.
That said, I noticed that special effects, like butterflies or other ambient elements, seem to only apply to one or two specific locations—usually wherever the City Edit menu has you focused at the time. For example, I added more butterflies expecting to see them scattered throughout different areas of the city... but to my surprise, they only showed up in the main park.
The same goes for decorations—changes don’t always carry across multiple zones or feel city-wide, which is a bit limiting if you were hoping to give the whole world a cohesive makeover.
I really love the option to change your city's cleanliness. I’m not sure I’d personally ever use the option to make things look super dirty, but I totally get the appeal—especially if you’re going for a more apocalyptic vibe or telling a gritty story.
It’s actually pretty cool that InZOI gives you the tools to adjust the city’s cleanliness level. Combine that with the city management settings that let you tank the quality of life, and you’ve got everything you need to turn your beautiful neighborhood into a truly terrible place to live. 😉 Definitely a great tool for storytelling!
What Rotational and Townie-Loving Players should know:
InZOI actually has a couple of features that either make a lot of sense for you, as a rotational player, or you might get quickly annoyed at depending on your playstyle!
The map comes an ability to check on your families (or townies!).
Through the map, where you see here 5 Blue icons with these meters from red to green, those are your playable families in the world. It's very similar to the sims in that sense!
Premade townies do come with their own backstories, and some of them are actually quite interesting! While others feel a bit... lacking from, a roleplaying perspective.
Townies however, despite their backstories, don't really have much to go on right now. Their skills are often either level 0 or 1, and they know no one in the city, despite their backstory making it sound like they have lived in the city their entire lives.
However, that's not to say that the places themselves don't have any storytelling elements currently. For example, the Park family in the pictures has a couple of objects that gets you thinking a little about what's going on.
For example, they have a storage room with some elements of where a wedding was indeed going to happen.
Or an unfinished postcard. Maybe Chulsoo was trying to reach out to his ex-spouse?
The computer is also broken, which might have been Jeongsook's (Chulsoo's mom)'s doing for intervering in his social life.
As well as a bed in the living room, maybe indicating that Jeongsook is not doing so well (or Chulsoo is forced to sleep there).
Of course, future updates may improve the depth of townie storytelling, but as it stands right now, it’s definitely not at Sims 2 levels of drama—and to a lesser extent, it falls behind Sims 3 and sims 4 as well. There’s not much going on in terms of pre-existing relationships or juicy backstories between townies.
So, if you’re the type of player who enjoys filling in the blanks yourself, or if you're more than happy to build your own narratives using family setups and storytelling through the lots they live in, this should still work just fine for you.
But if you’re coming in hoping for deep, ready-made lore or chaotic neighbor drama... you might need to bring that spice yourself (for now, at least).
Otherwise, you might want to wait a little before picking up InZOI.