Spirit City: Lofi Sessions is a gamified focus tool for working/studying. MoonCube Games are the people behind this game and they also published it themselves. The release date of this game was quite recent, being April 8th 2024.
When looking into Spirit City: Lofi sessions, I thought I would put it on a few times and forget about. However, upon playing, it pleasantly surprised me with what it offered. I can see myself using it as a tool for many more hours to come. I will say, there are several areas that left me wanting a little more, especially knowing what I do now about it. These only translate to minor changes really though.
The fundamentals
First and foremost this game is a tool. There are a variety of things you can do in this game for productivity. This includes, setting timers with intervals, creating to-do lists, making a habit chart, recording journal entries and playing music/sounds. These all function quite well, I especially like the pointers for the journal entries. A stopwatch is something I wish was in the game though, as I use those a lot.
Customisation is another aspect to the gameplay. You can customise certain parts of the room and your character. There is quite a good range of things you can customise with. You can also buy more items in the shop too using currency you get from playing the game. The lighting and pose of your character are changeable as well, with quite few options. Though, with regards to buying things, it would have been nice to be able to demo how the bought stuff will look in the 3d space rather than just an image of it.
Lure those spirits!
There is more to the game than it being about customising and being a tool. Spirits inhabit the area and you are able to lure them and befriend them. This adds a monster collector aspect to the game, with more being available as you play the game. Each spirit requires you to be doing certain tasks, have it be a certain time of day, play certain sounds or a mix of multiple of these. You can begin luring a spirit by meeting certain conditions. Make sure to look at the spiritdex, as that tells you the conditions required. A red notification will pop up with a successful lure. Clicking on this will then allow the spirit to join you and you will add them to your spiritdex.
Being able to capture spirits adds some depth to the game making it more than just a tool. I do wish there was more of a guide as to how close you are to luring the spirit. As you may be luring but then need to turn the game off soon. With a meter or something you would know how much more you would need to leave the game on. With the game being something you leave on in the background, this doesn’t matter too much though.
Altogether it’s a fun and well functioning game, despite the few nit-picks I have and additions I want.
Lots of charm
I wasn’t expecting anything with this game’s narrative, with the type of game it is. It was great to be wrong about this though. Now while there is no epic tale here or deep message, the writing that is there is full of charm. You get all the game’s narrative from the spiritdex. In there you can find all your spirits that you have collected and alongside them is some information. Each dex entry gives you a good idea of the spirits personality. There is some great humour in here too with the names of some of the spirits and some of the comments about them.
The writing of the game perfectly reflects the type of game it is, chill and simple.
Perfect vibes
One of the best things about this game is the presentation. The UI/HUD is simple yet effective, the stylized look works really well for the cosy vibes and the music is exactly what you would want to here from this type of game. On top of this, the animation is really smooth and there is a lot of attention to detail. When the wind sound is on, you can see the trees blow in the wind. This is just one example of the attention to detail. Speaking of sound, the selection is really good. There is pretty much everything you would want there, from bird song to a crackling fire.
A really cool thing I want to mention with the music is, you not only have access to four great lofi playlists in the game but you can also use the in game web browser to select your own music from YouTube. I did notice some videos were not able to play through the browser the game uses. Though there are so many alternative uploads to music on YouTube it didn’t really matter much to me.
The presentation of this game was something that had to be good. I can happily say it looks and sounds great.
Get workin’
Spirit City: Lofi Sessions is a great gamified focus tool for when you are working from home or studying. I have been using it myself while I have been working on university work. I found it to be helpful and better allowed me to focus. It also doesn’t use up too much memory or CPU. This allows you to do quite a few other things while it’s running.
This game isn’t offering too much to people outside of this demographic though. The other things it does like room/character customisation and monster collecting you can find done better in other dedicated games. However, what needs to be in the game, is in the game. It’s a game that achieves what it should without lots of unnecessary extras and complications. The spirits and customisation are welcome though and give it more originality for sure. Adding small things and changing some stuff, could really elevate this game to the next level. I have no doubt that with the planned updates they can achieve this. I can’t wait to see what comes from this game in the future.
If you have any interest for this game after reading this review, go here to purchase it for yourself.
