Inzoi's delay into 2025 has officially dashed all hope of this being the year of the Sims killers… what the hell happened?

GamesLife SimInzoi’s delay into 2025 has officially dashed all hope of this being the year of the Sims killers… what the hell happened?When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Krafton)

Inzoi - A Zoi with blonde hair and blue eyes wears a cardigan and smiles in a gaming room

The barren landscape persists in spite of the fact that there’s clearly a hunger for competition—I’ve mademy own frustrations with EA’s handling of The Sims 4very well known at this point, fellow Sims sicko Lauren Mortonechoes a ton of my feelingson where the series is at and where its heading, and half the community seems to be exasperated with the state of things at this point.

So, how are we even here and is it still worth pinning our hopes on the remaining upcomers lurking on the sidelines?

A gargantuan task

(Image credit: Paradox)

People gaze outwards toward a sunset.

Inzoi director Hyungjun Kim had a similar sentiment when I spoke to him at Gamescom, pointing out to me just how many moving parts go into every simple action. A simple tweak here can break a whole multitude of code there. Sure, that’s true for all games, but I feel like it’s even more noticeable and damaging in the life sim space where so many elements are interconnected.

Hell, keeping all the wheels turning smoothly is an issue that continues to plague The Sims, which has almost three decades of knowledge attached to it. It’s no wonder that it appears to be a struggle for developers trying to enter that space, even when you’ve got folk like Humble with first-hand experience at the helm.

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(Image credit: Paradox Tectonic)

Life By You - a character with long dark hair, glasses, and a green shirt stands on a suburban street

It’s still difficult to piece together exactly why. Paradox deputy CEO Mattias Lilja had said the publisher “felt that the game was lacking in some key areas,” before concluding that “the road leading to a release that we felt confident about was far too long and uncertain.” It was a strange, almost backhanded statement, going out of its way to praise Paradox Tectonic for its work and innovation while also essentially saying that what they had produced simply wasn’t good enough.

(Image credit: Chris Lewis)

Unreleased Life By You screenshot

It’s not dag dag just yet

Throw in a slightly bizarre morality system where Zois apparently can’t go to heaven if they lead a bad life, and it’s just different enough to keep me interested while reeling me in with all that life sim familiarity. We’ve heard surprisingly little about it so far, though. There’ve been a handful of interviews, a character creator demo, and a gameplay booth at Gamescom back in August, but I still don’t fully understand what Inzoi is as a complete concept.

Despite a Krafton representativetelling PC Gamer that the game was still on trackfor its 2024 early access release in late October, it did a cheeky 180 two weeks later to announceits delay into March 2025with a strange statement I can only attribute to the whimsy of machine translation: “It is said that among primates, raising a human child to adulthood takes the longest time because humans must be prepared to endure and adapt to their ever-changing surroundings. The extra love and care that is required to properly nurture a child is how I see our journey with Inzoi—a game that we will be nurturing together from its Early Access birth.”

Inzoi character studio - A Zoi designed to look like Billie Eilish

I mean, hey, it’s not the Paradox rug pull yet, but from the bits and pieces I know about Inzoi I can only assume development is proving to be mighty demanding. I wouldn’t be surprised if the early access build ends up releasing without some of its touted features, like the “3D printer” mode which uses AI to transform images into in-game furniture items.

To be fair to Inzoi, this is the first time Krafton has actually announced any kind of delay for it, though admittedly it was stuck in “2024” obscurity before then. It was our last bastion for any real Sims competition this year, and to see the goalpost moved does sting a little bit.

I do have my reservations after playing it at Gamescom, though. It seemed to share many of the same behavioural issues that The Sims does—issues with pathing, stacking actions and simply getting two people to interact with each other in a timely manner. It’s pretty, sure, but I was feeling a lack of substance in any meaningful gameplay. I did also only get to play the thing for about 45 minutes which any life sim enjoyer will know is barely enough time to even get out of the character creator.

Life (sim) will change

It does look pretty damn solid from the sprinkling of gameplay videos I’ve seen. I’m yet to cough up for Patreon to get a peek behind the curtain, but it’s done a bang-up job of maintaining the positive momentum it’s had since its initial reveal. The Paralives team also committed to free expansions and no paid DLC for its entire duration earlier this year, so we’ll see how that holds up once the game is out of the gate.

(Image credit: Paralives Studio)

Paralives

So 2024 may not have been the year for breakout life sims shaking up the genre. Am I sad about that? Well, yeah, especially when it looks like EA is ending The Sims as we know it, with no Sims 5 and a somewhat muddied idea of howProject Renewill act as the next generation of the series. It feels bizarre to continue to be trapped in this cycle of unsuccessful usurpers, given how feral half of us seem to be just to have something goddamn different. Something to kick EA up its understandably-yet-frustratingly comfy arse and say “Hey! You’re not the only one anymore!” Something to make meexcitedabout this genre again, and all the ridiculous ways it can be spun and moulded.

Now, two contenders threaten the lone behemoth in 2025. Will one of them finally emerge to fight? I sure hope so, victorious or otherwise.

TOPICSKraftonParadox Interactive

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A gargantuan task#

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals#

It’s not dag dag just yet#

Life (sim) will change#

A gargantuan task

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals

It’s not dag dag just yet

Life (sim) will change