Waffle Plays the Inzoi Demo (Patreon)

I will admit freely that hte contents of this post are frustrated and "agressive". I have a writing style that, in general, comes off agressive whether or not I'm actually trying to be, I know that. And yeah, these written-as-I-was-playing-with-it thoughts are aggressive- because I'm upset about how badly this runs, how badly it plays, and how limited it is. I really wanted more out of this.

If you cannot look beyond phrasing and perceived intonation to actually understand the criticisms underneath, or you believe criticism is not warranted unless one has a personal experience playing a game and you're not actually allowed to form negative opinions on video games you have not played or video games that are not finished, then take your own advice (people who say "Just don't play it"!) and simply don't engage with it. This post isn't for you. It's for people who want to know, for whatever reason, my critical thoughts on this game's demo content and content creator video showcases.

I am a 24 year Sims veteran who makes mods to improve the game. My perspective on the status of a competitor is, to not be humble about it for a second, insightful and valuable. I am a person who plays these games for the gameplay, and that perspective is a valuable insight for criticism when it comes to making a game competing with the main franchise that inspired it!

Anyway, here's the post as written as I went, while playing the demo and being baffled at all of its shortcomings:

First Impression: It runs very poorly. My PC is a prebuilt purchased last october. It's pretty reasonably high-end. Even the intro menu runs like this, which is wild. It's a menu.

The music is very uninspired. It's just not interesting and sounds very basic. Sims 1, 2, 3, and 4 have beautiful soundtracks, this is very forgettable and plain.

The game being framed as you being an employee at an augmented reality company overseeing little AIs called Zois is...a choice.

The default range of skintones is unforgivable. (Edit: There are more if you click to customize, but the game defaults to showing you 9 ranging from "milk" to "plywood" in tone.)

The UI is pretty unintuitive. It's taking me more than 5 seconsd to find options- that's too much. I can't find where makeup is to remove it. Turns out it's under "face" which feels like an odd choice since every other option there is genetic. There seems to be a lack of distinct, logical categories.

Things like bone structure are genuinely impressive, but this is a tool designed to create NPCs for other games, so that makes sense.

Changing a preset changes all your changes...and your color changes fade in which is an absurd waste of time. All changes fade in, it's very slow.

Wait, there arent presets for each feature? They're tied to the FACE preset you chose? So you can't have, say, strong cheek bones AND epicanthal folds, you have to pick one or the other?! If you choose a face with a certain type of eyelid you are LOCKED IN forever. If you choose a face with a certain chin, certain cheek bones, etc, you are LOCKED IN forever. This is unbelievably lacking compared to Sims 4's levels of freedom. This is the biggest dealbreaker for me. You cannot legitimately design new faces, you basically just edit the existing ones.

The body hair is a slider with no further options, the makeup is extremely limited, the hair and facial hair are extremely limited, the muscle slider does nothing but an overlay and does not adjust musculature, the body modification options might as well not exist, because they do basically NOTHING.

Here's the min and max width of your waist:

See the difference? Me neither.

The bulk of the body sliders essentially do nothing.



This is "0 muscle, 88 body weight". That's out of 100. It takes until 88 body weight for muscle definition to begin to disappear.

Ths is just awful. I am a narrow, slim, size small shirt man with a little belly and some loose skin. I cannot exist in this game. And I'm SMALL! We're usually OVER represented in these games! The body limitations here are absurd, in all directions- fat, thin, fit, scrawny, there's almost nothing represented here.

The clothing thumbnails are also too small to tell what anything is tbh. there is no alternative clothing whatsoever, everything is "shein popular now trending section for instagram". It's all the kind of "stylish" that is designed to take a picture for social media with, it's very very very limited otherwise. Also, it's all crazy baggy. Nothing actually fits on the body. There's nothing fun at all. several items are the exact same item with a different base texture. There are FOUR full body outfits, and they're two pairs. So only two full body outfits. And they're both womens rompers.

Most items can't even be recolored. Why are there 2 versions of many items, one that can change and one that cant. What is the point? i know some people appreciate this but the clothing has no gender tagging. there is no way to only see clothes intended for men. I am swimming through tons of womens clothing trying to find things for men. Accessories are only on the head? There are no rings, bracelets, etc.

There are no camera options besides DOF, FOV, and premade filters. The photo filters fuck up the background because they create outlines on the "tiles" that make up the background "model". The photo studio options are heavily marketed but very limited, basic camera controls don't exist.

The usability experience is miserable. From speed, to controls, to UI, to available features, to depth of options, to clothing choices, it's all miserably clunky and slow and lacking.

Here's "Every aspect of this was so rough I didnt even bother altering his face" waffle being upset with how unpolished this is.



ADDED BONUS: Gameplay Criticism

I'm not gonna lie, the more I see of this game the less I think it's an actual Sims competitor. It's so lacking in so many ways. The general day to day gameplay looks boring and really devoid of stuff to do. The zois not multitasking is ridiculous. The animations aren't great. The cutscenes are weird vignettes in some random void space? What the hell is up with that? Sims 4 may not have cutscenes but Sims 2 in 2004 managed to have them diegetically.

I haven't seen a video yet where there's a "gameplay loop" taking place. A sequence of things you do to "progress" in the game. In The Sims, that loop is developing skills, or crafts, and relationships, to develop careers, or hustles, or businesses, or whatever, to make money, that you use to improve your home, to buy cooler stuff, to make your day easier, to make learning skills easier, to make rising up in your career and handling a larger family easier. I'm not seeing any sign of that sort of loop in this game.

The animations are really throwing me, they're not very good across the board. Things like playing instruments are simple loops of generic animations that aren't even very detailed- Sims 4's animations are Pixar and this game's animations are some bargain bin straight to DVD knockoff, it's genuinely that big of a disparity. Zois paint a perfectly passable painting at level 1. In Sims 2, 3, and 4, paintings get progressively better and with more discipline in art history as you go. In Inzoi, what does that skill level actually DO?

You can't cook meals? You can't select to cook from the appliances? The amount of gardening options is STARTLINGLY limited, Sims 4 base game has enough gardening to make your whole game about gardens. You can't have planned outfits? The active careers look so boring...

There are only 15 traits, and each one is a "cluster" of traits. For example, you can't be an Artistic, Outgoing, Bro. If you want to be Artistic, you have to be a loner, you have to be moody, you have to be often sad, you have to be dramatic. They're built in together. You cannot separate them or design your own. You must choose from one of only 15 archetypes. I don't think you need me to do the math to explain how 15 preset character personalities is less than you get even with just Sims 4's "4 fresh out of CAS" traits, in thousands of combinations- regardless of how in depth those traits may or may not be. 15 is a small, small, small number- and what if I don't want my artist to be sad and lonely? It's very limited.

The open world is extremely limited and let's be real- it's not an open world! It's Sims 4 closed neighborhood style but on a much larger scale, and with open buildings. It's still a largely decorative area full of shells, with hard cutoffs at the edges. And there really doesn't seemt o be much to do in it. You can't even PET THE CATS!

Each world is a smaller scale area with limited scope and theming, with an outer background area that is inaccessible. Many homes and buildings in each area are inaccessible- much like in real life, honestly- and the bulk of them are decoration. The playable area has a few small features in it, but the bulk of the gameplay is on the lots. When traveling between lots, without walking or driving there, there is a loading screen.

What game did I just describe? Sims 4? Nope, that's Inzoi. It's missing one sentence- "Loading between lots is in real time, although there is a load screen if you fast travel."

 I guarantee this is gonna come out with less stuff and less variety of that stuff than Sims 4 did and people are gonna give it a pass for some reason.

I posted the above criticisms (truncated, and edited to remove some of the more outward frustration) on the Discord and while the moderators were appreciative of it and one even told me to be sure to add it to the Wishlist channel, the biggest response I got was very negative. I was told that I "clearly hadn't watched any gameplay videos" and when I said I'd watched 3 hours of them (Edit: We're now up to 8+) I was told that's "not that many" because there's videos going up every hour. Apparently I need to watch a minimum number to form any negative ideas on the game. I was also implied to be xenophobic for referring to the bland, generic clothing as fast-fashion Shein products. Several people gave your standard "Don't like it don't play it" response, and the irony was not lost on me that these are probably the same people who have something negative to say about Sims 4 every single time someone within 10 miles even thinks about the game positively. I was told that because it was a Demo, and because the game is incomplete, and because I am not actually playing the full game, that my thoughts weren't reasonable.
 
"You can't judge based on materials that exist to market to you" is such a wild take, I can't get over it. What on earth do they think Advertising is for? Do they not even realize they're being advertised to? Those videos with "#ad" in the description aren't a service to you- they are marketing, you are being marketed to. The entire point of marketing is to draw your interest and make you want something. You are more than allowed to form both positive AND negative opinions on content that is in demo format and content that is in preview format. That is the purpose of demos and previews.

Sorry that my 24 years of experience playing The Sims isn't good enough of a background to form reasoned opinions on footage, and content, put out to advertise and demonstrate the quality of a Sims-competitor, I guess!

I legitimately wanted to be into this game but it's not showing many signs of being a true Sims competitor. It really does feel like a dream life photo studio game that they slapped a few motives into. I wish it was more than that.

Also the game uses generative AI heavily and you can use generative AI to steal models and textures and designs from other people by simply sharing a photo with the game, and that's absolutely terrible and a huge dealbreaker anyway.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS, 8/25/2024:

Some further thoughts on Create-A-Zoi:

I am having a hard time explaining how, but they really do all look "the same". Like they don't...but they do. It's like a bizarro world version of sims 3 pudding face. distinct facial features...that somehow all look "the same". I think part of it is the limited animations, the complete lack of expressiveness in CAS, and that they're all being built from presets, so if two characters used the same preset, they have the same brow line/eyelids/jaw/nose/cheeks/chin. Because of the preset issues, EVERY character is made using one of the existing bases, and you will start to notice what seem like "family similarities" between two totally different people- because under every face is one of a handful of distinct skulls. Bone structure adjusts how someone looks tremendously, and Inzoi essentially doesn't let you adjust it.

The more western presets also do look like "anime adaptations" (let me clarify the game does not have an anime or anime adjacent style, they're just giving a vibe of "white professor guy, as designed by someone whose art style is korean women", which can be compared to how americans are drawn in anime and retain their anime influences).


(It is entirely possible this character is not intended to be read as "white", but the trailer he is from featured a wide range of diverse characters and was clearly designed around presenting character diversity- so I'm operating on the assumption this is meant to be a caucasian man. But his eyes seem a little misplaced, if so. He does look great though!)

I imagine the presets are largely all made with a "south korean perspective' starting point. Fair enough! But it means the presets for white sims or black sims and so on will all feel "A little south korean in design". You can see this easily with the eyes- A bulk of the face presets have distinct eyelid folds that westerners do not generally tend to have. This contributes a bit to people looking like they have a shared background. The facial diversity is definitely there, but there are little issues like this too that make things a bit odd when it comes to characters of color, especially.

(Pictured: An officially-made-for-promotional-materials character with more western-leaning features, but similar-to-the-other-characters eyes)

That upper eyelid really does a lot of work to muddle distinct looks, eyes are super important to character design diversity.

The black hairstyles are also incredibly limited. I find the hairstyles limiting across the board, as the bulk are very stylish womens hairstyles or very stylish kpop-adjacent hairstyles. There's very few options for hair and clothing that are just "normal people" styles.

Also, it appears the game does not have genetic diversity coded in.

Sims 4 has "filters" for sim spawning. There's a filter for "What do we do when a sim spawns...and is randomly generated as a black guy?". There's a list of appropriate names, appropriate hair colors, appropriate face presets, appropriate hairstyles...

And Inzoi does not appear to have that. Babies randomly generate fully korean names. The randomly generated characters around town appear TRULY random- Sims 4 has randomization issues, but it has Indian sims who spawn in San Myshuno, Japanese sims for Mt. Komorebi, indigenous american Sims for Chestnut Ridge, black sims, white sims, asian sims, etc. The devs pay a lot of attention to this. In Inzoi, it appears the default for everything is "Both korean, and random", which is very strange.

And some observations of the CAZ controls-

The control points are visually unintuitive. In Sims 4, the area that will be edited is highlighted with a faint glowing and ebbing grid, to show you what will change. Inzoi, nothing. In sims 4, turning the camera creates new points that adjust things in different ways. In inzoi, turning the camera retains the existing points, yet they still adjust things in different ways, which is not clearly communicated....by keeping the same point visible as the camera turns.

A lot of little aspects of the pull and pinch design of sims 4's sliders are easy to take for granted until you try inzoi and it turns out they're actually really important to the experience. The different cursors for different types of movement, the grid overlay on hovering, the minor detailing/major detailing distinction when zoomed in/out. Inzoi lacks all of these which can make using the tools feel frustrating and confusing.

I think its because the character creator is not hand-made and is a repurposed NPC creation tool.

It's quite literally a bulk NPC production tool using presets.

As a result, the basic Sims feature of "Selecting from presets for individal parts of the face" (A feature since Sims 2) is missing, because Metahumans doesn't have this, and the Inzoi devs are not in control of the features Metahumans has available to it. Can they fix this? I don't really think they can.

And on the topic of lacking diversity...this game's community is drawing a crowd. A crowd of people who, let's be real, are culture warriors only looking for a place to be indignant about the importance of diversity and representation. And some Inzoi fans are falling for their bullshit, and happily letting them in.





These are comments on Inzoi's tweet adressing the game's middling diversity options. These are right-wing, hatemongering culture war losers who saw a game getting shit for not having enough diversity and jumped in to say they think diversity is bad. But because some of them frame that with "Hey, worry about the GAME first and foremost!", vulnerable and ignorant players see this and go "Yeah, good point!" and signal boost the hate speech not realizing what they're doing. That's very scary and it's happening very early and fast in this game's lifespan and it needs to be squashed immediately.

ANYWAY...

The build mode is not doing so great, either!


I watched this video of Rudi playing the build mode.

• There is no pipette tool, you must click on the item and then click a second time on a copy button.

• Modifying doors/windows is the same- you cant just click it, hold, and drag to change direction, it requires menuing.

• Same for moving them off grid, requires toggling a button

• He tries to do sims 4 "drag the room to make it bigger" for a good 30 seconds and the best he can do is to drag one wall and lengthen it, and when he tries to drag a wall out to pull the room, it literally just pulls the wall off the room.

• The stair editing is the same as sims 4- except, yet again, it requires an extra click to open a menu before the options are visible.

• Stairs are free rotate, which is neat. Except...
  
  

• Stair openingis ENTIRELY above the stairs, it doesn't stop at the lower parts where you wouldn't be hitting the ceiling

• He cannot figure out how to adjust the hole.

• The interiors are consistently lit by no light source
  

• You can NOT remove the ceilings from a room, they are always there

• There is no object raising/lowering/scaling.

• When you place a roof, the defaultpiece is very mall, and the texture is scaled to the piece. it scales up with the piece. warranting constant hand-rescaling of the textures to make them match on different size roof pieces

• Multiple times in this video he uses columns to fake connecting fences together that he can't get to connect.

• He spends ages copying and pasting little chunks of floor, im not sure why he doesnt simply drag them out. They were "floor panels" apparently, and I'm not sure what makes those "not a normal floor" but I am thinking maybe you can't place floors outside?

• There are NO POOLS.

• There are NO BASEMENTS.
  

  Let's be honest. If people were watching a Sims 4 preview circa 2014 and someone placed a big round rug and said "haha look it's kind of like a pool", they would be raging and then continue to bring it up for 10 years. How do we know this? We're living it. The Sims 4's 10th anniversary is a week away and people still complain about it not having pools at launch.

For some reason, Inzoi is being given a pass on a LOT of things that Sims 4 didn't get a pass on, and doesn't get a pass on to this day, even though all tangible impact of those things no longer exists. You cannot play the pool-less version of the game anymore yet people still cite it as an issue with Sims 4- so you bet your ass I'm gonna bring the lack of them in Inzoi up as a valid criticism pre-release.

Back to Gameplay, I have some further thoughts on things like traits.

Even if Sims 4 traits can feel very surface level, the simple fact is, 3 of whatever you want (plus an aspiration trait) (plus now growing together trait moments) (plus reward traits) is infinitely more than fifteen archetypes...and archetypes are so much more boring.

Sims 4: Bro + Whatever you want x3
 Inzoi: Fitness guy who loves to work out and he gets bored if he's not working out and he's always got a lot of energy and he doesn't like doing art of any kind and he is also dumb (not a real example of a real Inzoi trait, just what Inzoi's "archetype" system would be like for a "bro" personality)

Sims 4 bro can be:
Bro/Gloomy/Slob/Dastardly = Depressed frat boy
Bro/Perfectionist/High Maintenace/Spa Membership = Spoiled Heir
Bro/Socially Awkward/Good/Gregarious = Himbo
Bro/Vegetarian/Recycle Disciple/Essence of Flavor = Kombucha dude

And that's before any Lifestyles come into the mix. That's before any Celebrity Quirks come into the mix. That's before any Occults come into the mix. That's before any Discovery Moments come into the mix. That's before any Reward Store traits come into the mix. That's before any Career rewards come into the mix. That's before any Skill rewards come into the mix. That's before any Character Values come into the mix. That's before any special unlocks come into the mix in general. And it's also only 4 examples I came up with off the top of my head!

Essentially, a Sims 4 Celebrity Werewolf who dedicates their time to completing aspirations and exploring content and is drowning in preferences can be a very, very complex character. A drunk (Get Famous) who hates being touched (Get Famous) who is sensitive to noise (Werewolves) and is a penny-pincher (Werewolves) with a penchant for junk food (Snowy Escape) and hates leaving the house (Snowy Escape) who is a Lazy Slob and yet inexplicably High Maintenance, with a business savviness that got them where they are now (Base Game, Base Game, Spa Day, and Aspiration From CAS), with little concern for being embarrassed and socially fulfilled by being mean (Twisted Heart reward trait), who lives in complete and utter filth without any issues (Filth Dweller reward triat), who grew up with loving compassionate parents (High Empathy Character Value) and struggles to balance their empathetic nature with their self destrictiveness and Irresponsibility (Character Value), with a Bad Reputation (Get Famous) from Playing the Villain (Get Famous celebrity perk which raises fame from negative interactions), who against all odds has a dedicated Entourage (Get Famous) and gets tons of gifts in the mail from fans (Get Famous)...and yet has high self esteem from growing up praised and loved as a child (Growing Together).

Of course, that example includes a lot of expansion content. But look at it. Look at the sheer breadth of that Sim's personality. Now imagine something similar in Inzoi...with the knowledge that they only get one trait out of CAS and it's hardcoded to be a specific type of person with no wiggle room.

The lack of variety in the Inzoi trait system is a devastating blow to the game IMO, because it means what you see is likely what you'll always get. Sure they can add additional stuff later like Sims 4 did (character values, etc). But the base system is archetypal. Any new traits this game gets can only be used on new character or replace an existing character, you can't mix/match.

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The moniker "casual game" has really done a number on discourse about games like this because the sims has a generally hardcore fanbase with a lot of standards and experience with the franchise. Taken one at a time none of these things are big deals, but lump them all together like this and it quickly becomes apparent that the game is missing a lot of QOL stuff required for the most basic usability of its tools and features...and then beyond that is lacking in major sweeping ways that will affect the entire experience if not solved before launch.

And unfortunately, the Inzoi community seems to have taken a hard general stance that it's not okay to judge- because the game isn't finished yet. If the game not being finished yet isn't an appropriate time to point out what needs improvement, when is? With how critical people are of Sims 4 to this day- even people who decided 7 years ago they don't like it anymore- I think it's only fair we give a reasonable critical eye to a game still in development, yeah? At least here they can make changes. With Sims 4, once you reach, hm, year 2 or 3, you're pretty much set with what you've got on a basic level (even that's not necessarily true though as Sims 4's >140 updates over the years have added a zillion major improvements and features). But people still criticize things from years and years ago. Seems only fair (and, one would hope, beneficial!) to give Inzoi criticism while it's still got time to address it.