There's 'sort of' sex in Inzoi, its developers explain, as terminally horny life sim players ask about getting freaky and watching their Zois shower

I may be a Build Mode woman in my life sims but I know the adult situations you Live Mode players concoct and what extra spicy stuff you have in your mods folders. The adults-only inclination of some life sim enjoyers was on display as the developers of up-and-comer Sims competitor Inzoi answered fan questions about how much sex and nudity Inzoi will have.

As part of a pretty impressive commitment to constantly sharing information with players ahead of launch—aside from pricing and DLC and thoughts on multiplayer which the devs plan to share during an Inzoi global showcase at the end of the month—three of Inzoi's team leads sat down in a live 'Ask Me (almost) Anything' through Discord to answer questions as translated by assistant director Joel Lee.

Players wanted to know a lot about the realism they can expect from elements like caring for infants, body sizes, and driving cars, but another recurring theme was explicit content.

"In Inzoi will you be able to have interactions for the purpose of creating babies?" was the work-friendly translation Lee gave for the question. Setting aside that creating babies is not always the goal, we're talking about sex.

Lee somehow made it through an entire safe-for-work explanation that did not include the word "sex" or "intercourse" or even "procreation." Sex is normal and natural, of course, but Lee's answer seemed geared towards players curious about how much they'd actually get to see of the act.

"Our answer is: sort of," Lee said. "There is a feature in the game that you obviously know what's happening, the male Zoi and the female Zoi are together, likely in bed, with the intention of creating babies. How visually apparent is that? That's where you have to go to your imagination. What you're seeing is not what you're seeing; you have to assume that's what's happening. Is that clear enough for everyone? It's there. Sort of. Maybe not to the level that everyone would have been expecting."

Frankly it was pretty unclear, but what I'm hearing is that you should expect sex in Inzoi to be abstracted in some fashion. It may not be the rumbling under the covers that The Sims series goes for in its "woohoo" animations, given Inzoi's less goofy tone. Maybe Zois will hold hands in bed and gaze longingly into each other's eyes and then fall asleep. We'll see.

Oh, and Inzoi has said in the past that it will support same-sex marriage and relationships. I'd expect that to extend to sex, so don't take the "creating babies" bit too literally.

Later on the developers took a question about why Zois shower with their towels on and why they can't just be naked but with blurring or pixelated effects (like in the Sims). I take the point that wearing a towel into the shower isn't very realistic but man some of you really want to see your digital dolls in the buff.

According to the developers, the pixelated blurring effects work well with the more cartoony style of other games (The Sims), but when they attempted it with Inzoi's more realistic character models blurring out nakedness actually felt more sexually suggestive than just wearing a towel.

There was also a bug during testing, the developers said, that if you happened to glimpse the reflection of a naked Zoi in the mirror—a prominent bathroom feature, you know—then they'd just be on full display without the visual effects. So that wouldn't fly.

All the dancing around sex and nudity is really just down to ratings. Players may be expecting a very adult game to go with its realistic visuals, but it's been given a T for Teen rating by the ESRB—same as The Sims 4—and is expecting a PEGI 12 rating in the EU, also like The Sims 4.

"We wanted to provide a game that was widely available to as many age groups as possible," Lee said.

So for Sims 4 players who have the Wicked Whims mod on speed dial, you're not going to find realistic genital smashing in the vanilla Inzoi experience either. That will still be the realm of mods. Given the prevalence of nudity mods in all sorts of unexpected games, I'm sure the newest life sim is going to have plenty of player-made solutions for that.

Players have collected their own summaries of the topics covered during the AMA for you to browse for little details.