Inzoi’s wild karma system can turn cities into literal ghost towns that you have to cleanse, game director says: ‘If too many ghosts appear in the city, new Zois cannot be born’

Beautifully realistic life sim Inzoi is nearly here and we’re learning more every week about features as its game director Hyungjun Kim shares plans with fans. In a recent interview from the newest issue of the PC Gamer magazine, Kim goes even deeper into one of its less realistic elements, the karma system, where things can get really out of hand if your Zois are too evil.

“Each time a Zoi performs an action, karma points are accumulated,” Kim explained. “Upon death, a karma evaluation determines the state of the soul. If the score is too low, the Zoi becomes a ghost and must redeem their karma points before they can transition into a new life.”

This is essentially what Kim revealed to fans in Discord a few weeks ago about how Inzoi’s ghosts and karma system work. What he didn’t divulge until now is just how out of hand things can get if more and more Zois die with poor karma.

“If too many ghosts appear in the city, new Zois cannot be born, nor can families be created, placing the responsibility on players to manage the karma of the Zois within the city.”

Basically, it sounds like you can develop a literal ghost town. You could wind up with a city haunted by Zois who spent too much of their lives farting in the vicinity of others—a real action in the game that, yes, affects your karma—as I learned from gameplay videos last summer.

“This system is not intended to enforce only ‘good’ actions and restrict ‘bad’ ones,” Kim adds. “Life cannot be divided simply into good and bad; every life has its own meaning and value.

“From a developer’s perspective, it would be immensely rewarding if players could use Inzoi’s karma system to create diverse events and stories, while exploring the many meanings of life.”

Is a city full of farting ghosts one of the meanings of life? Maybe. I plan to try it when Inzoi hits early access on March 28.

You can read the full interview with Hyungjun Kim in the next issue of PC Gamer magazine, hitting shelves in the UK on February 27 and in the US on March 18.