InZoi, the original true attempt ever to rival The Sims in the life simulation genre, has arrived, launching through Steam Early Access. Naturally, players will spend their initial hours in the game designing their avatars and experimenting in build mode to see what types of dollhouses they can create. There’s no reason to dive into the simulation until you’ve confirmed everything else is set up.
For those Sims enthusiasts curious to discover what InZoi offers that The Sims lacks, be cautioned that InZoi’s build mode includes a few distinct quirks that you should understand before you start, or you might inadvertently dismantle your home while attempting to enlarge it. Fortunately, we have you covered with our InZoi build mode guide.
How InZoi’s home-building gameplay varies from The Sims
If you’re transitioning to InZoi from The Sims 4, you may be accustomed to a build mode where everything is a click away. Clicking on an item allows you to lift it; clicking on a wall enables you to move it to expand or shrink the space it occupies. You simply click what you want to manipulate and then proceed to adjust it. InZoi’s build mode is somewhat more complex, primarily because it offers more customization options—however, there are some fundamental differences from The Sims that might trip you up initially.
A key difference is that you must select the appropriate mode. By default, your cursor uses the standard Selection Tool,” which allows you to click and manipulate individual objects, such as your couch. When in this mode, moving a wall will shift only the wall itself—the entire room that wall was part of won’t change except for the absence of that wall. If you want to resize a room or enlarge your home, you must select the Room Replacement Tool, which can be found in the build mode options bar near the top of the UI, directly to the right of the standard Replacement Tool.
It is in this section of Build Mode—the area where you’re dealing with furniture, appliances, and anything else you want to place in your home—that you’ll notice another quirk to keep in mind. In InZoi, you can customize your furniture just as deeply as you can customize your outfits, but you can only do so after you’ve placed the item in the desired location. So you might want to select a couch you like from the build menu, position it on your layout, and click it to bring up the option to customize it—then you’ll be presented with a variety of options for texture and color, and you can even upload your own texture images if you wish, or use InZoi’s built-in AI image generator to create one. If you want all your furniture covered in pictures of your pet dog, you can certainly achieve that.
This post-placement customization poses no issues for items like your refrigerator, but since everything you place in build mode functions the same way, there are certain situations where this can become problematic. For instance, if you wish to add a staircase that turns 180 degrees halfway up, you might initially have to place a full straight flight of stairs and then adjust it later. The reason for wanting to create this type of staircase is to save on the horizontal space it occupies, so forcing it to function this way contradicts that aim since you need to make space for the traditional staircase anyway. You’ll need to employ a bit of creativity to navigate this challenge when it arises.
Once you understand these two essential elements, most builders should be able to navigate InZoi; the build mode is largely similar to that of The Sims but with a revamped user interface. However, we would be remiss if we didn’t highlight another peculiar aspect of InZoi’s build mode that has no equivalent in The Sims.
When I created my first Zoi family, I placed them in what seemed to resemble the first floor of a small apartment building in Dowon, which you can envision above—it features a communal area with a gym on the ground floor, and three floors of living space above. My family inhabited the first of these levels, but I quickly discovered that there were no neighbors, and there was no access point to the upper floors.
The entire building belonged to my family, and I simply…