inZOI devs rebuild autonomy system so ZOIs actually know where to sit and eat

inZOI lead developer Kjun posted this week's Friday update detailing a ground-up redesign of the game's autonomy system — the logic that drives how ZOIs make decisions on their own without player input.

The biggest concrete change is how ZOIs handle something as basic as sitting down to eat. The new system runs a step-by-step location search: first checking the same room for a dining table, then expanding outward if nothing is found. On a residential or business lot, the search covers the whole property, prioritizing indoor dining before outdoor. In public spaces, it scans a 40-meter radius. If no table turns up at all, the ZOI finds a nearby chair and eats while holding the food. The system also tries to seat family members and friends close together so shared meals happen naturally rather than everyone wandering off alone. To keep all this from tanking performance when dozens of ZOIs run the same logic simultaneously, the team optimized search order, capped search scope, and cut unnecessary calculations.

inZOI launched into Early Access in March 2025 from Krafton — the South Korean publisher behind PUBG — and positioned itself as a direct competitor to The Sims. The game drew massive attention at launch but quickly ran into criticism over shallow simulation depth, with autonomous behavior being one of the most-cited weak points. Kjun's update acknowledges this directly, saying the team is going back to fundamentals and reviewing every system piece by piece, and that some of these basics "should have been better from the beginning."

Kjun says the autonomy redesign is ongoing and is asking players to flag any situations where ZOI behavior still feels awkward or unnatural. The team plans to keep working through systems one at a time — no specific timeline or patch number was given for when these autonomy changes go live.