Spirit City: Lofi Sessions is a video game released for Steam on 8 April 2024 by the developer Mooncube Games. The game is described as follows on its Steam page:
Spirit City: Lofi Sessions is a gamified focus tool, set to a soothing lofi soundtrack. Discover and collect Spirits, customize your cozy virtual space, and facilitate your real-life tasks with a collection of handy features designed to improve concentration and ease stress.
Spirit City employs the social and psychological productivity technique known as body doubling, as a way to facilitate the player accomplishing their chores, finishing their homework, or making progress in their writing projects. Body doubling simply entails doing a task at the same time as another person, who you are able to observe at their task as they work. The player avatar within the game can be shown typing on their computer, playing a video game, drawing in a sketchbook, writing in a notebook, browsing the internet on a laptop, reading a book, relaxing on their bed, meditating beside a bay window, knitting, gazing out the window, or sipping hot cocoa or a similar drink from a mug. As the player avatar performs these tasks, the player is facilitated at their own real-world tasks by observing the avatar as their body double, appearing to "share" or "collaborate" at the task, resulting in greater overall productivity and motivation. This body doubling effect is enhanced further by the presence of "Spirits," little companion creatures who sit next to the avatar looking cute, friendly, and supportive. The soothing background music contains no lyrics or sudden changes in its loudness or instrumentation, so it aids focus rather than being distracting.
Spirit City is a single-player game, but it is optimised for streaming on Twitch or other parasocial game streaming platforms. The music soundtrack provided by the developers is permitted for background audio in streams, and this usage is treated as fair use for copyright purposes, without any requirement to purchase a license from the composer.
The game does not assign explicit tasks for the player to perform, but instead rewards the player with in-game currency, when the player checks items off their to-do list, documents completion of a habit in the in-game habit tracker, writes in their digital journal in the game's journaling interface, or uses the in-game Pomodoro method timer to spend a regimented block of time completing a task or making progress on one. This in-game currency cannot be purchased with real-world money, and the game does not feature microtransactions or any other exploitative or unethical means of extracting more money from the players, beyond the initial purchase price. In-game currency, called Spirit Credits, are used to unlock in-game decorative items, more clothing options for the player avatar, and cosmetic skins for the Spirits (companions, familiars, or pets within the game), such as more fur coat patterns for a cat-like spirit, or sparkly colour gradients for a slime blob spirit. The game at first login furnishes the player with a generous starting budgetof Spirit Credits, allowing some of the fussier details of the room design to be unlocked early, if the player wishes, without needing to wait to accumulate enough Spirit Credits to make their room look more pleasing to their tastes.
Spirits are gradually unlocked by the player tinkering with the audio settings (both background music and add-on acoustic effects, such as the crackle of a fireplace or the sound of rainfall) and the lighting settings (such as different times of day, viewed through the windows of the player's room). The player is able to situate their avatar at several locations in the room, such as by their woodfired heating stove, sprawled on their bed, or seated at their desk. Each of these locations allows unique spirits to be unlocked, differing from every other location. Spirits are documented in a "Spiritdex," a magical tome which gives descriptive flavour text about each spirit's personality, habits, and favourite things. At the start of the game, the player is provided one spirit already, a three-eyed magical black cat. An adorable hedgehog-like creature named Hedgelog is obtainable by having your avatar sit beside their fireplace for a time, and it appears that the Spiritdex still has slots for another couple dozen spirits, beyond what I have found so far.
In addition to the provided playlist of low fidelity relaxing music, the game also allows the player to access non-monetised YouTube videos, to use the audio of those videos as an aid to focus or study, or to listen to educational or entertaining content while focusing on one's own homework, projects, and chores. The ambient background sounds which can be added onto the music, and manually mixed to one's exact tastes for how loud each ambient sound is, are as follows at the time of this writeup:
- Smooth Rain - a steady rainfall, not driving and intense, but sounding heavy enough that you would need an umbrella if you stepped out into it
- Cozy Fireplace - the warm lively snap and crack of hardwood logs burning in the fireplace
- Soft Vinyl Noise - the crackle and pop of a vinyl record, highly compatible with the lo-fi music of the game
- Rumbling Thunders - thunderstorm noises, both low rumbles and powerful bangs, though the intensity can be manually adjusted
- Soothing Wind - wind blowing through trees with their leaves still on, and between tall buildings
- Night Forest - sounds of crickets, spring peeper frogs, and night birds
- Gentle Snowstorm - wind rushing swiftly with a low howl through trees that are bare of all their leaves
- Tasty Sizzling - the sound of food being grilled or fried on a skillet in a kitchen nearby
- Keyboard Typing - helpful for body doubling, the clacking of energetic typing on a keyboard creates the impression that someone else alongside you is also working on a project at the same time
- Birds Singing - birdsong consistent with the springtime mating calls of species native to the upper midwest, mostly east of the Mississippi River
- White Noise
- Pink Noise
- Brown Noise
- Comforting Purring - a most contented cat
- Whispering Creek - a bubbling and rushing sound of water moving quickly over uneven stones in a brook
- Ocean Serenade - Gulls, lapping and surging waves
- Distant Cityscape - Faint rumbling sounds of traffic and underground rail transit systems, as well as just-barely-audible sounds of human voices, as though heard on the street outside one's residence, and the occasional splashing sound of a car's wheels driving through a puddle of rainwater
- Holiday Melodies - A music box playing traditional Christmas carols such as "The First Noel"
When the intensity level for a specific sound is raised, it activates a unique environmental animation effect for that sound, such as a snowstorm being visible out the window when "Gentle Snowstorm" is activated. The snowstorm is depicted visually as a powerful blizzard with sudden intense gusts, when the setting is dialed to maximum. Similarly, the fireplace sound activates a flame animation inside the woodburning stove in the player's room, and the height of the flames corresponds to the intensity of the sound setting.
Spirit City was actively running as I was writing this entry for this year's Iron Noder Challenge. I was curious about the game and decided to give it a try, partly out of the hope that it might serve me well, but chiefly because I wanted to determine if it might be worth recommending to close friends of mine, many of whom are neurodivergent in ways which derive great benefit from body doubling. I am pleased to say that this game is absolutely delightful. Not even one feature of it has displeased me; every aspect of it is clearly a labour of love on the part of the developers.
Iron Noder 2024, 27/30