Game: Spirit City: Lofi Sessions
Genre: Productivity App
System: Steam (Windows)
Developers | Publishers: Mooncube Games
Controller: No
Price: US $11.99 | UK £9.99 | EU € 11,99
Release Date: April 8th, 2024
No review code was used; I purchased the game myself.
Spirit City: Lofi Sessions is a 2024 productivity app that uses gamification to help you concentrate and get work done. It was developed and released by Mooncube Games.
Gameplay
I have been a long-time fan of apps like Spirit City: Lofi Sessions. Here is a brief overview of some of the apps I’ve used. Needless to say, I was excited to see what Spirit City: Lofi Sessions would be like, and I was not disappointed. While there’s no storyline here, we have a cozy room to decorate and a character to create. We also have a cute spirit guide – Lenny, a cat, to show us around at the beginning. Controls are restricted to the left mouse button. It’s not a game after all.
Productivity Tools
Let’s start with the main event: the productivity part of Spirit City: Lofi Sessions. Everything can be found on the right-hand side of the screen, in the productivity corner. We have a To-Do list where we can add, delete, and check tasks. Seeing a long list of tasks crossed out as completed is quite satisfying.
We also have a Timer, set to 15 minutes by default. Adding more time to the timer means adding more sections of 15 minutes with 5-minute- breaks in between. Clicking on Time allows us to change it to a different amount, say 30 minutes. In the same way, we can also change the duration of the breaks. We can also skip a session or pause it. At the very bottom of the screen, we can see how many sessions- chunks of time we’ve done since launching Spirit City: Lofi Sessions.
Next to the timer, we have a Habit Tracker, something I have not seen in other apps I’ve tried on Steam. We can add as many habits as we want and then put a check on the days we complete them. We can edit the habits, delete them, or even uncheck/clear them all day.
Next up is yet another new feature for me – the Journal. We can add, read, and delete journal entries. A fun idea is the inclusion of prompts. We can either choose Free Writing and write whatever is on our mind or choose one of the prompts, ranging from things we look forward to today to steps for mental and physical health. It’s a great idea, reminiscent of the gratitude and self-care journals that have become popular recently.
The Music of Spirit City: Lofi Sessions
In the middle of the screen, we have the Audio section, where by clicking on Music, we can choose from 4 playlists or find something else to listen to on YouTube while still in the app. The music selection is, of course, lo-fi, and I really liked it. I’ve quit using productivity apps before because I was not fond of the music, but this is not the case here. Next to Music, we have the main audio menu, where we can change, pause, and shuffle tracks.
Next to it is Sounds, the audio menu for ambient sounds. We have 12 options for now – classics like rain, wind, thunder, fire, birds singing, nighttime forest, and some I haven’t seen before, like soft vinyl noise and tasty sizzling. We also have a selection of white, pink, and brown noise. All of these are supposed to help with improving work performance and concentration. Pink and brown noise helps with falling asleep and uninterrupted sleep. Some studies show that pink and white noise potentially help counteract symptoms of ADHD. White noise is frequently used to help with soothing crying in infants. Brown noise is said to help with conditions like tinnitus, which is ringing in the ears for some people.
Some of these ambient sounds have accompanying visual effects. A little sparkle icon lets us turn off the visual effect and leave the sound or vice versa. The slider beneath each ambient noise controls the volume and intensity of the visual effect where there is one.
Customizations
After Audio, we move to the customizations on the left side of the screen. And let’s be honest—this is Spirit City: Lofi Sessions’ main draw.
Starting from the bottom, we have Activity – where we choose where to place our avatars in the room and what to have them do. We have several options – a cozy fireplace for writing or knitting, a gorgeous bay window seat for reading or knitting, a desk for drawing, writing, or using a laptop, and a bed for relaxing or browsing the internet. Besides placing our avatars in these activities, each activity gives us a closer look and a snapshot of that activity. We can also choose Full View, which zooms us out and shows us the whole room without interrupting whatever our avatar is doing.
Next, we have lighting, which allows us to choose the time of day within the app: morning, afternoon, evening, or night. Be in Full View while selecting a time of day. That way, you can see the gorgeous effect of the sun moving across the room’s floor. One thing to note is that the visual effects don’t change automatically with the change in the time of day. For example, if you have activated Night Forest with its mystical fireflies out of the window, they will continue to glow even if you change Night to Morning.
We are skipping the following menu for now and returning to it later.
Next up, we have Wardrobe, which is character creation. It’s not gender-locked so that we can have female, male, or gender-neutral characters. We can choose body type with sliders, skin, hair, and eye color from preset options or create a new option using a color wheel. We can also select the shape of eyebrows, lips, eyes, hairstyle, facial hair, and, if we want to, glasses. Then, we get to clothe our character in various tops, bottoms, hats, socks, and shoes. Some options are accessible from the beginning, and some are locked and can be purchased with in-game credits later in the game.
In Wardrobe, we can also choose our Spirit pet, who shows up in the room. We start with Lenny, the cat. Clicking on him shows us various colors for him, all locked at first. The other Spirit pets also need to be unlocked, but all of them are also customizable. Also, while in the room, we can pet the Spirit we’ve chosen.
Next is Furniture – what does our cozy virtual room look like? As with Wardrobe, we have some basic options that are free from the beginning and some available to purchase whenever we have enough credits. And this is part of the gamification process- an added incentive to get stuff done and earn credits. With Furniture, we can change walls and floors in various colors, including wooden flooring, wallpapers, paint, and panelling. The furniture options are mostly cosmetics – different color variations of the default furniture pieces – different colors for the desk, the bed, the pillows on the bay window seat, and so on. All the clutter options for the desk are unlocked from the very beginning.
At the bottom of Wardrobe and Furniture, we can see how many current credits we have. Prices for each item are in the left corner of the item.
And now we go back to that submenu we skipped – Spiritdex. This is a catalogue of all the spirits we’ve unlocked. As we progress in the levels, we unlock the option to unlock some Spirits and are also given hints on how to unlock them. We need to do a particular combination of Activities, Sounds, and Lighting to lure a Spirit.
The Spiritdex glows if a spirit is being lured- if you’ve guessed the correct combination. A red dot appears when a Spirit is successfully lured. Clicking on the Spiritdex then unlocks a cute animation showing the Spirit. Then, we can see all its history and quirks in the Spiritdex.
For some Spirits, you need to knit; crank up the fireplace for others. One thing to note is that this process takes time to complete. Once you’ve done the correct combination of Activity, Sound, and Lighting, you must wait before the Spirit appears. Mind you, you might need just one of these options for some Spirits.
At the very top of the screen, we can see which level we are at. Hovering over the level shows a mini to-do list with daily in-app goals like Daily login, Daily task done, and Daily timer done. Each of these awards has 100 Exp, which goes towards unlocking the next level.
On the other side of the screen, again at the top, we can see an eye icon, the UI Visibility. Clicking on it toggles off or on almost all menus besides the timer. Next to it, we have settings—language support for several languages besides English, keyboard shortcuts, and, for now, just the UI Visibility. It’s set to F1 without remapping.
Next, we have graphics settings. We can choose between windowed mode and windowed fullscreen. Both allow seamless minimizing, resizing, or exiting of the app. Next, we have resolution and sync. We can also choose the frame rate.
My laptop, on paper, had more than enough for the maximum requirements of Spirit City: Lofi Sessions, but since I was running the app in the background while doing other stuff on my laptop, it was running hot for my taste. Lowering the frame rate significantly improved things, so I suggest trying that. Lowering the frame rate doesn’t in any way affect the performance of the app while running it in the background. I didn’t experience any lagging or stuttering of the music, and even when I was changing stuff in the app, I hardly saw any lagging.
Next, we have Credits—a lovely nod to everyone who took part in creating the app. Thank you!
The World of Spirit City
Spirit City: Lofi Sessions is obviously heavily visually anime-inspired, but that’s good. It looks great. I tried the demo a few months back and was especially impressed with the lighting effect. The final product is only an improvement on the demo.
Some Other Things
Spirit City: Lofi Sessions has Steam Achievements but no Trading Cards as of yet. The app’s developers have released a road map for what we can expect in the next few months: new spirits and skins, new room decor items, new avatar customizations, and game performance and QOL improvements.
Conclusion
Since discovering productivity apps, I’ve spent quite a while testing some of them. My daily app is Virtual Cottage, but now, with Spirit City: Lofi Sessions, a worthy opponent has arrived. Between its cozy esthetics, the potential for more customizations, and the integration of other YouTube playlists, I can spend time with Spirit City: Lofi Sessions.
Final Verdict: Two Thumbs Up: 
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