Imagine the perfect Sunday, time-to-relax-afternoon scenario. Stay in bed, a cup of tea and calmly rolling lofi-beats in the background. The bedroom turns into the ultimate shelter. All stress and tomorrow’s necessities are dull and filtered out from the here and now. Well, sounds great. But sometimes it seems a bit too less action for a nice afternoon. So instead of feeling it in reality, why not take the atmosphere to the virtual world and take your part in it?
The game Lofi Room by Bearmask is available as a download as well as directly playable online. However, currently, it is still under development. But what can be seen right now already gives you an interesting introduction to what it might become. The basic concept follows musical video games like Guitar Hero or Beatmania. You have to press button combinations according to a rhythm as shown on the screen. For that purpose, the represented buttons move downwards towards a line. When they meet the line you are supposed to press the corresponding buttons. But, and that is the important part here, the concept differs significantly in some places from the common Guitar Hero gameplay. The target of each level is to complete a beat with all its instruments. So the first thing you have to figure out is where the instruments are hidden in the room. Clicking on them starts the rhythm challenge. When you complete the pattern correctly, the instrument is added to the repeating beat. But no worries, you have as many tries as it takes. However, this is the point where the relaxing atmosphere is fading away slightly but constantly. Since the pattern is repeated steadily it adds some pressure to the gameplay, depending on the complexity and speed of the melody. The instruments range from drums over keyboards to a bass guitar and even very subtle ones like a flute or a xylophone are at hand. The patterns are quite short but get more and more challenging.
Whenever you mastered a level (or room in that perspective) you can enter beat-making mode and create your own beats. You can use all the instruments from that level in order to jam the hell out of your creativity. A few restrictions should be mentioned, e.g. short patterns and low note variation. But in the end, it is a game. And it doesn’t even try to act like a real beat-making app or even DAW (digital audio workstation). It is fun anyway, although kinda short-termed. Although I’m making music myself to some extent, I guess this mode gives a very nice opportunity to people without previous experience. This type of game option gives the player a certain insight into how a beat can be produced. For sure the way represented here is only very narrow and specifically focused. But still. It is in fact a serious approach. And besides the technical part, it also teaches and trains some sense of rhythm. Nobody will get his or her full musical education here, but at least some idea of what it’s all about rhythm-wise.
The game is wrapped cozily in pale colors and all animations are basically consisting of two frames. Which, in this case, is not a bad thing at all. It fits the concept pretty well. High resolution, 120 fps slick visuals would kill the whole atmosphere of the game and definitely not comply with the sizzling lofi beats. The room is drawn pretty nicely. Cute characters and cats wherever possible. I’m not really a cat person, but for this occasion, I actually appreciate it. A stylishly round-up graphical representation in any matter.
Unfortunately, the game isn’t completely ready yet. And it looks like it will still take some time. But from what I could see till now, it holds up quite big expectations for its genre and style. I’m looking forward to jammin’ on some new beats in new levels of the oh-so-cozy Lofi Room.

Give it a try on itch.io: https://bearmask.itch.io/lofi-room