The December update landed on December 23, 2025, and it's the biggest expansion of what a Zoi can do since Early Access began. Your Zois can now run their own businesses, take up a life of crime, and — if caught — stand trial. On top of that: multitasking, group interactions, three new skills, and a limited-time Holiday Festival.

Build versions

• Windows PC (Steam): 20251222.9464.W
• Mac (Steam): 20251222.9465.M
• Mac App Store: 5.4.25 (0.221) / 20251222.9466.M — updated December 24

Holiday Festival (limited time)

A limited-time event running from the update until midnight on January 31, 2026 (local time), centred on each city's main park.

• Choir performances — carols at Central Park (Dowon), Liberty Square (Bliss Bay), and Barat Beach (Cahaya), from 12:15 PM to 10:00 PM.
• Festival gifts — accept the festival announcement text and 5 Holiday Festival Gift Boxes arrive at home, containing up to 19 build items. A Special Gift Box with up to 3 more arrives at midnight on the first and second nights.
• Festival booths — a Snack Booth (candy canes, hot chocolate, gingerbread), a Gift Booth selling boxes with up to 32 limited-edition build items, and an Ingredients Booth with crafting kits including the Cookie Man Crafting Kit.

Two things worth knowing: the weather won't change automatically during the festival (the effects are designed for snow, which you can force via City Appearance in the City Map), and on existing saves you'll need to run Refresh Property Manually under Game Options → Gameplay → Other.

Business gameplay: "Boss From Now On"

Zois can now open and run their own businesses.

• Business presets set the type — cafe, bakery, restaurant, bar — and automatically configure customer activities to match. A second layer of presets picks the services on offer.
• Franchises — one household can own multiple businesses, in the same industry or across several. Businesses are managed separately from property, so they can be moved or inherited.
• Employees — hire acquaintances or household members (Young Adult or older). Check their skills and assign them accordingly, kitchen duties for cooks, service roles for the rhetorically gifted. Salaries depend on business level, rank, and hours; employees can negotiate, and overwork damages your relationship with them. Hiring someone with an existing job makes them resign from it.
• Customers and satisfaction — set your target age group and prices. Satisfaction is driven by furniture quality, pricing, employee responsiveness, and your relationship with them, and shows in real time through thought bubbles plus end-of-day reviews.
• Profit — settled automatically at the end of each business day, with income, expenses, and net profit in the Profit Summary menu.
• Growth — higher business value attracts more customers and lets you hire more staff, but also raises customer expectations.

Businesses block City Travel

If you own a business property, have a registered business, or are employed by one, you cannot use City Trips. You'd have to sell everything or resign first.

Crime

Zois can now steal and scam. This is flagged as early in development, and only Young Adults and older can commit crimes.

• Thieves — "Pick Door Lock", "Break Down Door", "Open Safe", "Sabotage Surveillance Camera". Success depends on Handiwork, Programming, and Fitness. Some properties have cameras and alarms.
• Scammers — "Attempt Voice Phishing", "Scam In-Game Items", "Impersonate Charity Worker", "Hold Fake Seminar". Success depends on Rhetoric and Critical Thinking.
• Getting started — the first crime interaction unlocks at Crime Skill Lv.0 for Zois who own 2,000 Mew or less or are drowning in debt, are under heavy stress from family conflict or lack of support, or have the Rulebreaker trait or Malicious characteristic.
• Suspicious Job Agency — a new location offering shady jobs and a Bulletin Board where you can buy crime information.
• Getting caught — witnesses report crimes to the police, who may fine you or take you into custody. Thieves who escape can be wanted for up to one day and are arrested on sight.

Trials

Crime now has a legal process attached.

• Arrest — low crime score means a fine; above the threshold means immediate arrest. You can post bail to prepare, or wait in a detention centre.
• Lawyers — appoint one by selecting your Zoi. Free lawyers do the bare minimum; elite lawyers substantially improve your odds. Appointing one triggers a trial preparation mission whose result shapes the opportunity cards you get in court.
• The trial — runs automatically, but picking the right opportunity cards reduces your sentence. Guilty is the usual outcome; acquittal is hard and a failed attempt can make the sentence worse.
• Courts are new properties you must visit on your trial date.

Traffic accident trials aren't included yet — those Zois still go straight to jail.

Multitasking and group interactions

Two long-requested simulation features:

• Group interactions — group Zois together and they prioritise conversations and interactions involving other members. Some cooperative interactions are group-only, and members can applaud and cheer each other.
• Multitasking — Zois can talk while eating, using computers, or reading, and eat while watching TV. Pathfinding in conversations improved too, so Zois choose positions that let them face each other.

The team is candid that multitasking is early: it currently only covers autonomous talking and smartphone use, animations can look odd, held items can briefly vanish, and readers may flick a book open and shut repeatedly.

New skills and characteristics

• Baking — split out from Cooking, covering cookies through cake.
• Drink Mixing — juices and cocktails, with availability depending on the Zoi's age and nearby objects.
• Crime — currently capped at Level 5 while in development.
• Workaholic characteristic — driven, diligent, anxious when out of work. Can't be combined with the Recluse trait or Slacker characteristic.

Skill balance was also improved across the board: experience gained from interactions and activities has been increased, so skills that dragged now level faster.

Other gameplay additions

• New properties — a Flower Shop in every city (buy bouquets from the counter basket), and a Theater in Dowon and Bliss Bay that's still under construction and inaccessible for now.
• New ambitions — including Collecting and Crafting, Business Success, and Lifehacker, plus reworked ambition rewards and a UI that finally shows what you'll get.
• New urges — special urges around relationship changes and forbidden relationships, fear-based urges tied to career anxiety, life events, and adolescent worries, and 77 new situation-based urges.
• Vehicles — jet skis and hovercrafts.
• Family-size recipes — cook multiple servings at once, plus a "Set Table for End-of-the-Year Event" interaction.
• Family trees now show images of immediate family, via the Zoi Card.
• Property prices cut for middle-class-and-above residential properties — 7 locations each in Dowon and Bliss Bay.
• Donut changes — the Lucky Donut's effect drops from 1 day to 1 hour, while skill donuts jump from 130% to 200%.
• Zois left in the rain over an hour now catch a cold.
• Overhead player icons were reverted to the original design after feedback.

Halloween has ended

The Halloween Happenings event from v0.4.0 is over and Halloween Candy is no longer sold. The Trick or Treat event still runs if you place a Candy Basket on your property. Separately, YouTube streaming on Edit City billboards has been discontinued due to web viewer version issues.

Interactions

• 10 new rejection interactions that can shift relationship status — including "Confess Love Jokingly", "Borrow/Repay Money", "Demand Repayment", "Talk Behind Spouse's Back", "Say You Want a Divorce Jokingly", and "Extort".
• New parenting interactions for newborn, toddler, and child Zois — "Comfort", "Bully", "Wipe Nose", "Give Medicine", "Throw a Fit to Be Tucked In", "Hug Teddy Bear", "Act Unreasonably", "Demand Food" and more, with improved animations.
• "Dance as a Couple" added to Romance; "Practice Layups" works on basketball hoops.
• Death notifications — when a Zoi dies, everyone in any relationship with them gets an obituary message and an emotion naming the deceased. A meaningful addition alongside funerals.
• "Display" — select a collectible and choose Display, and your Zoi will stop arbitrarily putting away minerals, gems, and sculptures.
• Conversations are less repetitive and now vary with characteristics, relationship points, and emotions.

Character customization

55 new winter items — outerwear, sets, shoes, accessories in ivory, beige, and baby blue — plus 7 unlockable Holiday Festival items from Canvas events. See the full item breakdown.

• Style Presets — a new category saving outfit, hair, and makeup together, with 295 presets included. They change only cosmetics, preserving the Zoi's face shape.
• Zoi Presets now carry traits, characteristics, ambitions, and desired life.
• Makeup Presets now include lenses, eyebrows, eyelashes, and face paints.
• Gloves and scarves added to Fashion Accessories; 16 new studio emotes and poses.

Building

80 new items, 39 business-property-exclusive items (display showcases and models), and 54 unlockable Holiday Festival items from signing in during the event.

• Modular windows — freely rescalable, under Building → Home.
• Roof decorations — a new category with 11 items.
• Dining tables for 6 and 8 — 10 new large tables.
• Build costs rebalanced — walls, handrails, rooms, platforms and roofs are now free to place, and doors, windows and stairs were substantially reduced and standardised. This was a real barrier to early-game building.
• Furniture performance now scales with price — expensive furniture genuinely works better.
• AI Build updated to use the latest assets.

Cheats, Canvas, and ModKit

New cheat IDs cover the Workaholic characteristic, the three new skills, 81 new object IDs, and 25 new region IDs across the three cities. See our cheats guide.

Canvas gained Style Preset upload and download, richer preset metadata, pinned and threaded comments with stickers and mentions, social sharing with link previews, TikTok/Patreon/CurseForge/Reddit/Threads profile links, an Events archive page, and a 2025 RECAP page. The Palet Limited Edition Halloween Outfit Set is now available permanently rather than October-only.

ModKit added an Outfit Wizard (socks, stockings, underwear, shoes, jackets, tops, bottoms) and a Stairs Wizard. Note that the outfit expansion was the December roadmap item — script mods remain postponed to 2026.

Read the full patch notes: Official inZOI Website