I believe this is the first game I've ever written a review for during all my years on Steam which should be a statement in itself but if you need convincing, well~
For context, I'm a person who has struggled to get things done for as long as I can remember, tried every piece of productivity advice I could find and while nothing stuck it did serve to teach me what does work for me.
Which, to boil it down, comes to being at peace - pure and simple.
I can knuckle down and lock in for hours if I don't feel like I have the weight of the world barring down on me and while the stresses in my life are here to stay, this game has helped me manage it and create a peace state in between the chaos.
A big problem I've had is I felt that my progress towards my own personal goals had to be big and grand to make up for time I was losing and I'm a visual learner so for me to stay on track I need to *see* it, need to see that I accomplished something and so I would end doing nothing because I just would never have enough time to sit down long enough to make those big leaps, I would wait for time slots that would never come and so time just passed me by.
Which is where this game comes in, while I make significantly smaller steps, I've done more than I ever have before because I don't stress about the time, I don't burn myself out either.
The various graphs and the to do lists and level up bar serve as that visual marker for me - not only that but with us who struggle with productvity, I find a lot of it comes down to the little micro frictions you encounter on the way to do something like for example, I would try to find music, video essays, etc on youtube and even after finding some, it would continously break my flow between ads playing every five seconds seemingly, the auto play moving to random unrelated things, etc - I tried to do that at first rather than play the in game music but out of curiosity I used the timer to see how much time this was actually costing me to do and it was HOURS so I decided that time would be better spent elsewhere.
With this game, I can simply just boot it up, pick a playlist and go.
I don't have to worry about what sounds are going on as I work which brings me on to my next point - the sounds, in addition to calming music it also has ambient sounds which also allow you to build an atmopshere too which is one of my favourite features.
For me, my most productive times are rainy days and night time because it feels like life slows down and this game not only allows me to minic that with sound but with visuals too so even on a bright sunny day, if I need to get something done I can still minic that peaceful atmopshere I love so much.
The customization in this game is a little limited when it comes to your avatar and your room but there's enough to make something wonderful and while I'm busy doing that and luring spirits, I'm not booting up my browser and falling down a rabbit hole.
Speaking of which, the luring of spirits has got to be my favourite part of the whole game.
I love attracting all these little creatures and reading their lore is lovely too.
I'm sure there's things I missed out but those are the main things I use and I will say, I think this game is worth every cent and would recommend it. It's easy and great to create the space your brain will feel happy working in.
The only thing I have to say if I had to is I wish the spirits had more animations (like I could be wrong but I noticed that all the spirits I've lured so far don't do anything if you select the drawing at your tablet activity which is kind of sad), I wish the DLC spirits had achievements too but most of all, I hope there will be even more DLCs in future.
