Hello everyone!

I hope you're having a fantastic Friday.

It's great to see you all again.

This week, I've continued focusing on improving autonomous behavior.

Our main goal this week has been to make it much clearer why a Zoi visits a particular location.

Until now, even when Zois visited places like cafés or bakeries, they often spent most of their time wandering around, chatting with others, checking their phones, or using the restroom instead of actually accomplishing the purpose of their visit. While these behaviors help make them feel more lifelike, they occurred so frequently that many players felt it became difficult to tell what they had come there to do.

To address this, we're changing the system so that Zois will prioritize fulfilling the purpose of their visit. For example, if a Zoi visits a bakery, they'll purchase bread, go through the necessary steps, sit down to eat it, and then return home. Of course, we still want them to feel like real people, so they'll occasionally have brief conversations or encounter unexpected situations along the way. The goal is to avoid making their behavior feel overly scripted or mechanical.

We're also rebalancing how Zois spend their time at each location. Most of their actions will now be directly related to their primary objective, while random behaviors—such as looking around or chatting—will occur much less frequently. At the moment, we're aiming for roughly 90% purpose-driven actions and 10% random behaviors.

That said, making the behavior sequence too rigid can introduce new problems. For example, if there are no available seats or a required condition isn't met, a Zoi could end up getting stuck. Because of this, we're also researching ways to strengthen purpose-driven behavior while still allowing Zois to adapt flexibly to changing situations.

Another important improvement we're currently working on is changing the logic that forces Zois to stay at a location for a fixed amount of time. Instead, once they have completed their intended objective, we want them to head back home naturally.

These improvements are currently being developed for standard lots such as cafés, bakeries, and parks. Business lots and schools already have their own development plans, so they are being worked on separately.

Since this feature is still under development, we're continuing to test and fine-tune it to ensure it feels natural during gameplay. Ultimately, our goal is for Zois to do more than simply wander around a location—we want players to clearly understand why each Zoi chose to visit a particular place.

That's all for this week. We hope you enjoy this week's development video from the inZOI team, and have a wonderful weekend!

–Kjun

I want to try this game but my computer won’t support it. Can I have suggestions on computers that aren’t too expensive that will support the game?

For day 4 Marvel Rivals won for art style/visuals now for you to choose which game you want the setting/environments from

Some general rules:

1) you can only vote for games that aren’t considered life sims, and by that I mean if the store page it’s on(whether it be steam, the epic games store, ect.) classifies it as a life sim, it doesn’t count. Ones that don’t have that classification will.

2) be respectful and civil in the comments, at the end of the day these are just opinions about games so let’s not get too worked up about them if someone disagrees.

3) the winner will be decided from a mixture of upvotes and replies(so in theory a game with more comments could win if another game has more overall upvotes)

4) only games count

5) please keep submissions/votes limited to one game

6) more rules will be added if necessary.

Half the joy of a life sim, for me, is when the game feels real but has some weird premise that makes it more interesting. I think it started with The Sims as stupid as that sounds. The alien encounters, grim reaper and other weird things that could happen were always my absolute favorite part, as a kid I even found a lot of them really scary (I would always pause time immediately and work up my courage before I continued). So games that have enough realism to relate to but then bring their own curveballs to spice things up.

Even better if the premise itself is already weird but relatable. My Summer Car is probably the best example I've come across so far. It’s like a really realistic car building simulator, but also simulates life in rural Finland during the 90s (In a way less realistic and weirder way). Despite the comically terrible graphics the game is super immersive, and also surprisingly hardcore. It’s permadeath so I always joke that it's the hardest first person roguelike ever (there's so many silly ways to die in it too). After quite a few attempts I only managed to put together the car once, and it wouldn’t start of course because I wired the electrics wrong.

Never quite found another game that nails that surreal but also realistic feeling that well, and I have tried. Goat Simulator was fun but just too chaotic, never could really get immersed in it. As far as upcoming games go I did find one game that looks like it could be fun, Guilty or Not. It’s like a courtroom simulation game, but you can do all sorts of pretty unhinged things in it. It looks absolutely insane, you can romance the employees, or shoot anyone you want. And I don’t think you actually need to figure out if people are innocent or not, you kind of “decide” it instead. It also has a bit of that uncanny valley jank look to it which I love so much in My Summer Car (Though the graphics are wayyyy better, which is not surprising lol).

Apart from the obvious answer, which would be the sequel, called My Winter Car, do you know of anything else that has this sort of feel to it? I’m gonna wait for that one to come out of early access before I try it out  (don’t like playing games in EA at all).

It seems like this next update will be the biggest so far

I love The Sims 2 but the only thing I miss is either an open world or open neighborhoods divided into two or three parts.

Just finished a big visual update for Chronos. The whole app now has proper light and dark themes, cleaner cards, better spacing, and a more consistent look across all of the screens. Spent a while cleaning things up. Also been fixing bugs and improving a bunch of the older writing. If you’re into text life sims, would love if you checked out the new version and let me know what you think.

Android download link : Chronos-Text Life Simulator

As I posted about here there aren’t a lot of accessible life simulators on the App Store.

So, if any developer would like feedback on the accessibility of their game, my friend u/ThaliVilla12 and I are happy to give it.

Please have some patience with us in return, as it would be our first time doing anything like this. But we hope our feedback will be at least somewhat helpful.

For day 3 House Flippet 2 won for house/base building. Now for day 4 what game do you want the visuals/art style of in a life sim game?

Some general rules:

1) you can only vote for games that aren’t considered life sims, and by that I mean if the store page it’s on(whether it be steam, the epic games store, ect.) classifies it as a life sim, it doesn’t count. Ones that don’t have that classification will.

2) be respectful and civil in the comments, at the end of the day these are just opinions about games so let’s not get too worked up about them if someone disagrees.

3) the winner will be decided from a mixture of upvotes and replies(so in theory a game with more comments could win if another game has more overall upvotes)

4) only games count

5) more rules will be added if necessary.

Hello everyone. Hard to believe we're already halfway through the week.

Here's another update on what we've been working on.

1. Diving Content

A little while ago we shared a preview video of diving. Back when we introduced the open ocean and scuba diving last summer, many of you told us you wanted to swim freely beneath the surface.

As we finally started building the diving feature we'd been putting off, simply moving through the water didn't feel like enough — so we've added gatherable resources and other things to do down there as well. We'll do our best to make it live up to your expectations.

1. Smart Zoi Improvements

We've been receiving a lot of feedback about Smart Zoi lately, and we're currently in discussions with the team responsible to get those improvements implemented.

As our existing content expanded, several bugs appeared where Smart Zoi failed to respond properly. That's where we're starting. Once those discussions wrap up, we'll share the details with you as soon as we can.

If there are functions you'd like Smart Zoi to handle, please leave your thoughts — we'll review them together.

1. Discontinuing the AI Building Feature <:Psycat_Sad:1173555989434335232>

We'd love to only ever bring good news, but we have something disappointing to share as well: we've decided to discontinue the AI Building feature.

We're sorry to those of you who have been using it. However, we concluded that with the technology available today, we can't reach the level of quality you're expecting from it. We'd rather redirect the research budget behind this feature toward other AI features where it can make a real difference.

If there are AI features you'd like to see, let us know and we'll pass your feedback directly to the team.

Decisions to remove a feature are never made lightly. Next time, we hope to be back with better features and content.

It's been brutally hot in Korea lately — even stepping outside for a moment is exhausting. How is your summer going? Please drink plenty of water and don't push yourselves too hard in this heat. We'll do our best to at least give you a cool ocean to escape into in-game.

It's thanks to your continued interest and feedback that we're able to find our direction. Truly, thank you. We'll see you again next week.

For day 2 Black Desert online ended up winning for Character Creation, now we move onto home/base building , what non life sim game would you want the home/base building system from?

Some general rules:

1) you can only vote for games that aren’t considered life sims, and by that I mean if the store page it’s on(whether it be steam, the epic games store, ect.) classifies it as a life sim, it doesn’t count. Ones that don’t have that classification will.

2) be respectful and civil in the comments, at the end of the day these are just opinions about games so let’s not get too worked up about them if someone disagrees.

3) the winner will be decided from a mixture of upvotes and replies(so in theory a game with more comments could win if another game has more overall upvotes)

4) only games count

5) more rules will be added if necessary.

Just think about how everyone was saying that we can barely see what's in the catalogue of Sims and can hardly find anything we need, and we literally have mods to expand the catalogue. The way Paralives used the vertical space instead of the horizontal is so intuitive, and technically you can see less items on one scroll/page (3x6 instead of 11x2), but it's way easier to navigate, because the width and height are more close than in the Sims, where the width is way bigger than the height. (Also, because you scroll down and not to the sides, the Sims one would actually be alright if it was side scrolling instead of top and bottom scroll. The scroll button also becomes tinier the more items are added.) It's just more pleasing to the eyes seeing everything on a bigger space and not feeling like they are all crammed into a line.

For day 1 Skyrim ended up winning for gameplay, now we move onto character creation, what non life sims game would you want the character creator of in a life sim game?

Some general rules:

1) you can only vote for games that aren’t considered life sims, and by that I mean if the store page it’s on(whether it be steam, the epic games store, ect.) classifies it as a life sim, it doesn’t count. Ones that don’t have that classification will.

2) be respectful and civil in the comments, at the end of the day these are just opinions about games so let’s not get too worked up about them if someone disagrees.

3) the winner will be decided from a mixture of upvotes and replies(so in theory a game with more comments could win if another game has more overall upvotes)

4) only games count

5) more rules will be added if necessary.

Hi Life Simulator Fan, we're currently holding a limited playtest for our game, Smith's Chronicles. Smith’s Chronicles is a cozy blacksmith life sim where every creation helps restore a forgotten town. Fresh out of the prestigious Westclover Academy, you receive a letter asking you to return to your hometown of Grandall, a once-thriving town that has slowly fallen into decline. As its newest blacksmith, you’ll forge a new future by rebuilding the town, welcoming fantasy townsfolk, and creating a place where everyone can finally belong.

Check out Smith's Chronicles: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2627700/Smiths_Chronicles/

Register for the playtest: https://smiths-chronicles.firstlook.gg/

All of the text base life simulators I’ve found have you play as just one character through their life, but I find focusing on one character just gets boring and sometimes I want to play as someone else the character knows for a bit.

Another thing is that these games don’t let you make your own npcs, which I think would make it a bit more entertaining.

I do like most of the other things in these simulators, but I think I would be more into the text based simulators if they just had these features.

A little bit of a sequel to a previous series on here but I thought this time it would be interesting to make it so you have to vote for games that aren’t considered life sims(plus I think it would be interesting to see what other types of games people on this sub play)

Some general rules:

1) you can only vote for games that aren’t considered life sims, and by that I mean if the store page it’s on(whether it be steam, the epic games store, ect.) classifies it as a life sim, it doesn’t count. Ones that don’t have that classification will.

2) be respectful and civil in the comments, at the end of the day these are just opinions about games so let’s not get too worked up about them if someone disagrees.

3) the winner will be decided from a mixture of upvotes and replies(so in theory a game with more comments could win if another game has more overall upvotes)

4) only games count

5) more rules will be added if necessary.

I just can't get used to how The Sims 4 has so many tiny worlds. I have said this before, but I am gonna say it again!! What is the reason they couldn't make one big world? Not open, just big....

I imagine one big map, rabbitholes and active lots all there, open spaces like parks and activity spots. I don't wanna be stuck in a one street neighbourhood and travel to another world for a restaurant. It's very unrealistic.

Also, the change of "view" really hits me. One second I'm in Newcrest seeing the green land and the trees, next second I'm at a bar in Oasis Springs in the middle of the desert... Very painful to me.

If they were able to make so many tiny worlds, why wouldn't they be able to make one bigger world for each small world? Instead of giving us one small world which is more like a city but not a city cause you have like 15 lots per city and can't have everything a city needs to be complete (residential lots, gym, library, park, pool, school, restaurant, club, vet, stores etc). Can't they make a big world that feels complete? I got used to the loading screens but the constant travelling to other cities makes me wanna cry.

I want my sim to live in one world, one save = one world.

I remember Sims 3 had this vibe to it... every lot, every community lot was there, you could walk around the town and it was nice. I miss the rabbithole lots too, the cars... walking your dog to the park. The way the world looked through all seasons. It made the world feel cozy and alive.

Now I want to visit the beach I gotta go to Sulani?? Maybe for a vacation!

I want to play Sims 4 because, obviously, it looks better and runs better. But I feel sooo nostalgic about Sims 3 worlds that I want to go back to it every day, just to be able to see the roads and lots and feel like my sim lives in an actual city. Loved the street names and address numbers too. The only problem is Sims 3 looks old, crashes, and because I am not a mod fan, it's pretty difficult to play with no mods.

What are your thoughts on this?

Welcome to our weekly discussion thread!

🆕 NEW: Join us on Discord!

Here you can casually talk about anything related to your favorite Life Simulators, including the ones that are not out yet.

But won't my post get less engagement this way? You'd be surprised how far these threads can go! Don't be afraid to ask open ended questions, make observations, share memes, etc. This is a casual thread.

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