Hygge. Cottagecore. Comfy. No matter what you call the vibes, the rise of the "cozy game" has practically established it as its own category. And one of the best genre matches is the idler, home to the reinvigorated "desktop companion" subgenre! Spirit City: Lofi Sessions is a best-in-class entry in this niche and, at the time of writing, actively expanding to boot!
Structure of Sincere Flattery
Spirit City: Lofi Sessions by Mooncube Games should look familiar to ChilledCow connoisseurs, the iconic left-facing girl with headphones working at her desk, instantly-recognizable. Let me reassure the skeptical: Spirit City is far from a soulless cash-in on the lofi wave. It's simply a cute "companion" game for the busy, productive gamer.
Right at the outset Spirit City gives you an avatar and a room to call your own. You can customize them with a variety of clothes, accessories, and room decorations, and the selection widens as you earn and spend the in-game currency. This and the unlockable Spirits discussed later are the core of Spirit City's progression, and serve as the guiding structure for your activities in the game. Let's talk about those activities, which I consider the "killer feature" of the whole package.
Plenty of Room for Activities
By clicking around your room your avatar will perform tasks like desk work or writing by the fireplace. Your room has several areas that offer up a selection of activities to engage in, zooming to let you admire your personalized avatar and room decor but also giving an option to zoom out into a diorama-like view as well.
Your options get pretty granular too, giving you the choice of certain activities in different areas (e.g. do you want to write by the baywindow or at the fireplace? Enjoy gaming at your desk on PC, or with a handheld in bed?), as well as plentiful options that change the time of day and weather outside, with matching soundscapes that you can toggle if you do or don't like the extra distraction.
These activities tie into the relaxed metagame (if that's even the right word for something so chill) when you're trying to coax out Spirits that resonate with a certain kind of activity, time of day, or weather. But mostly, you might find yourself using them to match what you're doing in real life. Whether it's knitting gaming, listening to music, reading, or even napping, there's a cute comfort in treating Spirit City like a personal status screen where your virtual double works alongside the real you.
A Desktop Companion
As a desktop companion style game, Spirit City boasts a range of handy features:
- Music player with your requisite dose of those "chill lofi beats" you kids like
- Customization toggles that come with visual and audio changes, like a toggleable fireplace with crackling sounds, crickets and other nocturnal fauna when you switch to nighttime, and storms with wind, rain and thunder that rustle leaves and shake the trees outside your window
- A built-in task checklist, Pomodoro timer, habit tracker, and daily journal
The glue that holds this all together is the game's excellent performance. It's relatively light on resources and runs impressively well under multitasking load, especially for a full 3D game. Built on the Unreal Engine, Spirit City offers plentiful graphical and performance options such as an alternate lower framerate when the game is not in focus, letting you run it in the background for extended sessions relatively guilt-free! The stylized visuals and focus on your one room keeps the experience aesthetically appealing and smooth-running.
Next, I think it's time we address the Spirits of Spirit City.
Spirits
The spirits aren't just in the city, they're in your room too! These are collectible Pokemon-like creatures. Think "animal plus visual gimmick" as a starting point, like a monkey plus a game console, or an axolotl plus a candle. Okay, you sort of have to see them for yourself to really get on board. Just trust me, they're cute little being that pop out after matching their preferred activity and vibe (time of day, weather conditions, in-room environment) that, once you meet and befriend, can be summoned to hang out at any time afterward.
Spirit are like pets without any of the maintenance or feeding that real (or some digital) pets need. You can pet them, but not much else as of writing. For a titular feature, the spirits are relatively tame in terms of what you can do with them for now. You'll fill out your Spiritdex (yes it's called the Spiritdex, these little critters are Pokemon in all but name) and have 20+ spirits to swap out as you prefer, customizing their color from a couple of presets and clicking on them to give them a little pat. They spirits are more like progression landmarks, where you have to reach a certain player level (EXP incremented by daily activities and minutes-in-game) for each spirit to be eligible to appear in the first place.
Personally, I found a couple of spirits I liked to hang out with and stuck with them throughout my (ongoing) time in Spirit City, but those who jive with the cute Pokemon will find some more lovable creatures here. Just don't expect any expansive creature-collecting sysems here, Spirit City isn't quite that kind of game!
Exemplary Representation by Customization
The customization of Spirit City is one more major factor in my strong recommendation. It has a very clear emphasis on diversity, and one of the first things you'll notice is the span of all the avatar options. A wide range of body types are represented here, with clothing and accessories all fit to them. This goes beyond glasses, hats, and dresses. We have sliders for a spectrum of feminine and masculine builds and body sizes, wheelchair options (found as free seat options in your room customization), and the mercy of allowing any body type to wear any clothing item (a significant undertaking by the devs and one that's much appreciated!). For those venturing outside of the realm of mundane reality, you have a variety of alternate skin tones like blue and purple, as well as monster horns and ears to match your persona of choice.
The customization's virtue is its breadth. It doesn't get granular enough to make a perfect 1:1 recreation of your IRL self, and you'll likely have to make a few compromises of "close enough" when picking things like hairstyle or accessories when trying to match your real-life look. But in terms of the variety on offer, it's certainly enough to make a cartoony version of yourself or your character of choice, all with satisfyingly recognizable results.
Closing
Spirit City is a relatively new title, with its full release in April of 2024 and still receiving both free and paid updates into 2025 (at the time of writing, the next up is a cooking DLC that includes a brand-new kitchen area!). For those who want to support an actively-developed title and have a say in some of the new content that's coming in the future, now is the time!
Spirit City: Lofi Sessions is pretty close to my "platonic ideal" of a desktop companion game. The limitations in scope let it excel in the one room where it takes place, and I find myself with far over a hundred hours of game time in it even after 100% achievements since the game in itself is such a joy. If the title piques your interest at all, check Spirit City out on Steam.