All throughout my relapse, I haven’t been able to play video games. My brain just refused to let me get fully immersed. When your body’s in survival mode – shutting down systems just to keep you alive – it doesn’t care about entertainment. It doesn’t even notice it.

But now that I’m in recovery, I started thinking, “One day soon, I might be able to play again. I’d better update all my games so they’re ready.”
Cue the horror of realising I haven’t opened Steam or turned on my Xbox in months.

While my poor Welsh internet battled with the download queues, I started browsing Steam – and that’s when it recommended Spirit City : LoFi Sessions to me.

To say this game changed my life would be an exaggeration of Rhio proportions, but also… it’s kind of true. And everything in this post is exactly why.

About Spirit City

Spirit City is absolutely perfect for this stage in recovery, because it’s not really a game in the traditional sense. It’s more like a self-care meditation and motivation app meets video game. There are no corporations to blow up with Keanu Reeves, no cyberware making me wish for bionic joints in real life, and absolutely no “insanity mode”– you’ve got to bring your own, and sit with it.

You start by creating your character, with a genuinely lovely and diverse range of customisation options ready and waiting. I especially loved that most of it isn’t locked behind some in-game progression wall – you can make a very you character as soon as you load in. Some clothing and accessories even come with a colour wheel, so you can personalise things right down to the shade. A self-expression win.

In the game, you collect Spirits by completing various activities and listening to different sounds. These Spirits become your familiars – your pets, your sidekicks, the absolute loves of your life (Trashnuki is my soulmate). You start with a default spirit cat you can bond with while you go looking for others. Honestly, the game had me at “here’s your emotional support ghost raccoon.”

Once your Spirit City self is set up, the game introduces you to its features: a journal, to-do list, habit tracker, and timer. It encourages you to do real-world activities, and rewards you with in-game XP and currency when you complete them. That currency can be used to buy more clothes, furniture, or even customisation options for your pet.

Speaking of personalisation – your space is customisable too. There are furniture sets, lighting options, decorative items, and yes, the glorious colour wheel returns, meaning all your wood tones can match. The Sims could NEVER.

Where the game really shines, though, is the music and ambient soundscape. Spirit City includes a whole library of relaxing lo-fi tracks via Homework Radio – and if somehow that isn’t enough for your brain, it also has a built-in YouTube browser, so you can play anything you want: music, podcasts, ambient nerdcore, whatever works for your recovery zone.

As for the built-in sound options, there’s birdsong, streams, rain, thunder, dishwashers, keyboard typing, and more. You can even layer the sounds with the music, and there’s sliders so you can control which one is loudest for optimum zen.

I’ve tried my fair share of self-care apps, and the soundscape alone would justify the price. A high-end wellness app would charge me so much money for this feature set – and it would definitely be subscription-based. Because that’s exactly what you want when you feel terrible enough to download a self-care app: a bank account that screams at you.

Body Doubling

Spirit City includes activities your character can do, like sitting at a desk typing, relaxing in bed, drinking hot chocolate by the fire, gaming, writing, knitting, cleaning, and more. These aren’t just cute animations – they allow you to body double with your in-game character.

Body doubling is a technique that’s especially helpful for neurodivergent folk like me. It means having someone – or in this case, a video game character – doing a task alongside you. It can lessen distraction and increase motivation, and it’s particularly effective for ADHD brains that struggle with task initiation or staying focused when things feel boring.

And let’s be real: monotonous tasks are draining. They’re under-stimulating, thankless, and often weirdly overwhelming. I’ve written on this blog about having meltdowns just from putting laundry away – pretty sure I’ve written about it more than once. My brain will try to focus on LITERALLY anything else, and if there’s unresolved trauma hanging around? Oh, it’ll latch onto that instead. Laundry becomes a time machine to stuff from the 90s I still haven’t processed.

I don’t get to choose what my brain focuses on. But Spirit City helps. It gives me a simple visual to focus on, and a quiet companion who’s doing the dishes with me. Suddenly, I’m not alone with the noise. I’m not trying to “be productive.” I’m just existing, with a digital version of myself and a ghost raccoon tidying up alongside me.

And this is the part where I tell you: this game didn’t just help – it became life-changing. It works. It more than works.

Achievement Unlocked – Mindful Moment.

I’ve never been able to do traditional mindfulness. The exact same trauma spiral happens as when I’m folding laundry. My brain gets understimulated incredibly quickly – or worse, overstimulated by the mechanics of breathing. With my rib deformity, breathing often causes pain, which makes “focus on your breath” feel like being told to meditate through your rib muscles making you feel like you’re wearing a tight belt around your rib cage.

But I’ve always been able to be mindful in video games – much to the horror of my treatment team, who all insisted it didn’t count. But it did, and it does. Through my various characters, I’ve had moments of real stillness.

I used to have V in Cyberpunk 2077 sit on the metro and watch Night City go by, or sit in her car, watching raindrops run down the windows, hearing the ambient soundscape of rain and distant dystopia. Sometimes, the sounds of corporate colonialism can still be relaxing.

But Cyberpunk requires full immersion, and right now, because of my ED, I can’t reach that headspace. And that’s where Spirit City gently stepped in and said, “I got you, fam”.

I loaded the game and, after Rhio-fying my character and her space into my favourite millennial grey, I played with the music and sound settings. Then I had a brilliant idea: I used the in-game YouTube player to load the Mass Effect Emotional Suite (Video game music is real music), and layered it with the soundscapes of rain, thunderstorms, and a cosy fireplace.

I had my character sit by a window and just exist. Mindfulness: achieved.
Relaxation: downloaded directly into my nervous system.
I sat there with the game for ages, just being. Just focusing on the sounds and music. Just being still.

I never do this. I always feel like I have to be doing something. I melt down from just sitting. I have to be creating something, fixing something, proving something. I can’t just watch Netflix – I have to be creating while watching Netflix.

But this game gave me something that was both doing and not doing.
I was gaming and sitting, but the game is passive – so really, I was just sitting.
But it gave my brain enough structure to let me be still.

And then it came time to eat.
And I had another brilliant idea:
Maybe this can help me in recovery, too.

Dinner Date With My Game Self

In recovery, I’ve been avoiding focusing entirely on my meals. I usually put on EastEnders to count how many sighs Phil Mitchell can exhale in 22 minutes, or I scroll TikTok. But I thought – What if I eat with my character? What if I had a dinner date with my digital self and her pet Trashnuki, who I’ve coloured to look like Biscoff the bear?

The Cosy Kitchen DLC added a kitchen to your character’s room, with new activities like chopping, cooking, simmering, and – most importantly – eating.

I was a little apprehensive, but the game had already worked all day: Helping me get laundry done, putting it away, and washing every single Macchiato mug I own –
Thanks to the to-do list, and my own obsession with decorating my in-game kitchen (which required more Spirit Credits, obviously).

So I made my character chop cucumbers while I chopped cucumbers for my salad. Then I sat her at the table with Trashnuki Biscoff. And instead of dissociating from my plate, I ate my food.

I had Interstellar’s soundtrack playing through the game’s YouTube feature, along with rain, thunder, and a cosy fireplace. I focused on the flavours and textures. I imagined my character doing the same. And… I enjoyed it more.

There was still fear. Clippy – my ED – was still shouting its dismay and awful commentary. But I enjoyed it anyway. I thought: Even my digital character needs to eat. So do I. I watched Trashnuki Biscoff nibble his little apple. And it made me smile.

It’s also worked at times where things were rough. The night before the digital dinner date was all kinds of recovery TERRIBLE.

I was depressed and teary, overwhelmed, I honestly wanted to just retreat into my ED and give up. So I sat in the game with that, too. I had my character stare out of the rainy window. I kept the Mass Effect Emotional Suite playing, and I just… sat. I watched the rain in the game, and the real rain outside my window. My character was still. And so was I. I cried. I cried A LOT.

She stared out of her rainy window. I stared out of mine – at the trees, the wind, the wet leaves clinging to the glass. It didn’t stop me from crying. Or spiralling. But that’s not what mindfulness is for. Mindfulness doesn’t erase pain. It reveals it. It won’t make you happy when you’re depressed – but it gives you space to feel it. To sit with it. To not run. To just… exist in it.

And that’s exactly what Spirit City gave me:
A safe space to feel.
To cry.
To eat.
To be.
Even though, in the entirety of my life, I have never felt safe.
Given how life changing it had been, I had to recruit my son into this magnificent game. Convincing him, was going to be really very easy though.

A Squadmate Has Joined Your Obsession

Spirit City is a single-player game, but that doesn’t stop my son and me – we parallel play all the time. (That said, if the devs are reading: PLEASE let our characters do tasks together in a future update. That would be adorable and I would cry. Thank you.)

I knew exactly how to recruit him.

He’s trans, and this game is full of little trans joy details – flag clothing items, decor, even mugs. Every time I found one, I’d yell over to him like a one-person hype squad:

“OMG THEY HAVE A TRANS FLAG JACKET, LOOK AT THAT!”
“THE GAME DOESN’T HAVE MALE OR FEMALE, IT HAS SQUARE OR OVAL. IT DOESN’T EVEN SAY MALE OR FEMALE”.
“I JUST UNLOCKED TRASHNUKI, OMG I CAN COLOUR HIM LIKE BISCOFF.”
“THERE’S A FISH SPIRIT. YOU LOVE FISH”.
“MOONPAW IS SO CUTE. LOOK AT THIS DOGGO”.
“THEY HAVE TRANS FLAG DECOR TOO, LOOK!”

He did, in fact, get the game. He’s been using it all day. At one point he said,

“I don’t want to say it’s life-changing… BUT IT IS.”
And yeah – he’s definitely my son. Because I feel the same way.

He had his character sit and read a book while he read his own book this morning.
Just… peace. Softness. Parallel play between my son and his digital self. It’s not just a game. It’s representation, connection, and safety – all baked into something gentle enough for both of us to exist inside. It really warms my heart looking over at him, reading his book, with his little cute character – who looks JUST LIKE HIM by the way – doing the same.

JOIN US IN OUR LOVE FOR SPIRIT CITY

If you’ve read this far, then obviously we both HIGHLY recommend this game – especially if you’re neurodivergent or living with mental health challenges. Spirit City is newly released for MacBook and is also available on Windows via Steam. We actually got it on sale, but it’s worth every penny at full price.

A quick note: the Cosy Kitchen DLC says “Windows only” on Steam, but it works perfectly on my MacBook Pro. Everything functions exactly as expected.

Right now, as I write this post, my character is writing too by the fire. Biscoff (Trashnuki) is still munching his golden apple. I’ve got the 8D Interstellar soundtrack playing in-game, layered with rain, thunder, and wind. I’m also trying to lure a new cute spirit – because apparently, this game is brilliant for writing blog posts too.

Recovery is about grabbing onto anything that helps, even just a little.
Spirit City turned out to help more than I ever expected.
I can’t thank Mooncube Games enough.

10/10. Perfect amount of water… sounds.

Homework Radio has a YouTube channel if you want to experience the music artist from the game :-