Spirit City: Lofi Sessions

I've been listening to lo-fi music for some years now, picking up the occasional album on vinyl and finding music channels on Youtube. The chill vibes are certainly a boon when creating art , writing or coding. I have a water-feature in the office that makes a nice accompaniment as well, making the "toy shed" I work in quite the relaxing environment most afternoons (so pretty much once my Korean clients are safely in bed and I'm left to my own devices!)

How you could effectively translate that vibe into a video game feels like a challenge though. Spirit City is less a game and more of an experience, a sort of graphical mind-palace that provides the beats you may be craving plus some creative outlets that allow you to craft that perfect environment. 

What makes it work is variety. Firstly, you can craft your avatar with a wide variety of skin-tones, facial features and wardrobe. I rarely create myself for games like this, I prefer a female avatar to relax with as opposed to watching myself sit around - generally I just find you can add more interesting design elements to a female avatar anyway. 

Creation tools are a doddle to use - lots of anime standards are available!

Once you have your cosy companion, you can craft an environment to settle them in. You can change pretty much everything within your room, from window types to wall decorations, and I spent hours just mixing and matching furniture to create a semi-industrial vibe with thick natural wood mixed with soft lighting. If you have an eye for interior design, you'll have fun with this - the more you play, the more points you'll earn, allowing you to unlock more options and colours with which to surround yourself with. You can also change the view from the windows and the time of day, not to mention the weather and soundscapes, so if like me you're a night owl with a fondness for rain, you can add these elements too.

Once you have your room to your liking, you can move your character to the Fireplace, Desk, Bed or Bay Window, or even pull back to a full view of the room so you can admire your loft in its entirety.

All the tools are snappy and intuitive, so you'll find your way around pretty easily. Generally the interface has lots of lovely animated touches - for example, your chosen room-mood might attract a new friendly spirit, which you can capture in your Spiritdex. Once a spirit wanders in, the icon will gently alert you and you can add a photo to your book, which also comes with a description of said spirit. It's worth experimenting to see what you can lure out of the woodwork.

The Spiritdex catalogues the spirits you lure out of hiding with your relaxing atmosphere

The game also offers some utilities - you can create a task list (handy for organising my UKA content creation) and setting timers, which come in handy if you find yourself losing time as you potter. You get points for using these too, so you're encouraged to take advantage.

Of course, the music is the main draw. The game uses playlists cultivated from Homework Radio and comprises a non-stop treasure trove of chilled sounds aimed to provide a creative atmosphere - you can find the channel on Youtube too.

Moving from the bed to the beanbag. I had to add a record player to the cabinet, it just felt wrong without one!

Spirit City: Lofi Sessions is less a game and more a digital zen-garden with a few light productivity tools and oodles of charm. It's been made available for the Mac as of May, so whatever your platform of creative choice, the two main options are covered. 

My only gripe, and it's not really aimed at the game, is that this isn't available for Android or iPadOS. Unless you're using multiple monitors (which I do) the game takes up one screen, so if you do plan to get some work done then it can be more hindrance than help. I also found that my Surface Pro would start to struggle after about 20 minutes, typing becoming a bit jumpy and the animations jittery. What I really want to do is have the game work on a companion device and leave my creative hardware to do what it does best. I have my fingers crossed - if it can jump from PC to Mac, it can cross other boundaries too.

I've taken a lot of enjoyment from Spirit City, it's a great little time-sink with a wonderful character. As I say, it's not a "game" per se, but as a fun environment to move into and make your own, it's delightful.