Lofi Hip Hop Worlds To Study In
A downloadable toy for Windows and macOS
"Something brilliant that I didn’t know I needed after over a year of pandemic life"-
Welcome to a bunch of chill 3D worlds full of unique study spots with Lofi Hip Hop music and ASMR sounds.
You can explore them to relax while you take a break from studying.
When it's time to study again, you can set a timer and put these worlds in the background. To help you focus, they will continue to provide relaxing sounds and beats with no ads.
In these worlds, nothing is trying to hurt you. You don't need to fight anything to win. You set your own goals, and you can customize your own soundscape to help you meet them.
We are providing this version of the software on a pay-what-you can basis to support students and teachers engaged in remote learning during the pandemic. Some players have compared it to the "fidget toys" they have on their desks to provide sensory breaks during long work sessions.
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Credits
This project was designed and developed by Israel Jones and Matthew Hamilton, students at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts and Rossier School of Education. Sound design is by Kaley Markes at the Berklee School of Music. Music curation is by Israel Jones and Noah Brown from Berklee.
Our design is based on research about player experiences with mindfulness in Walden, A Game and the Headspace app that will be presented at HCI International.
Special thanks to our professor Richard Lemarchand and our classmates in the Interactive Media and Games MFA class of 2022 cohort.
Thanks also to Lofi Geek, who provided much of the game's music, and to Michael Clark for providing songs written by him and his colleagues. A full list of music is included in the in-game credits, and the song title and artist pop up in the lower left corner as music plays.
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Contact us
You can email us at LoFiHipHopWorlds@gmail.com
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Tips and suggestions:
- If you want to listen to different music while still hearing the soundscape of these worlds, just press "C" and go to the Customize Audio menu. You can turn down the music volume while keeping the effects volume at your desired level, and can open your own musical selection in a different window.
- The software should be windowed, not fullscreen by default. If this is not the case on your computer, you can set it to windowed by pressing "C" and going to the Customize Graphics menu and checking the "windowed" checkbox. This might also fix bugs with buttons that show up on some older Macs.
- To avoid eye strain, remember to stretch your eyes every 20 minutes by looking at something at least 20 feet away for at least 20 seconds. The software will remind you to stretch. You might also want to use your computer's settings to adjust the screen brightness.
- If you are playing on an older computer and you experience a lag in the navigation controls, try pressing "C" to open the Customize Graphics menu, and then lower the resolution and graphics quality.
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
Comments
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Amazing
This is such an absolutely great idea. When listening to a lecture I often find myself browsing social media or doodling. My mind needs to be doing some low effort task in order to focus on something, well boring frankly, in order to concentrate and so I've been enjoying wandering around the world in a small window listening to background noises. Any other game wouldn't allow me to switch between tasks quickly (such as wandering around then taking notes) because there would be enemies attacking or something, but this 'game' is more like a study-aid then it is a game!
The one comment I would make is that it can be tough making the screen small. I found pressing the window key on my keyboard enables me to see my cursor so I can make the game window smaller, then when I need to switch back to my notes I press the window key and minimize the window.
Thank you for making this game! :D
Thanks, I'm glad you like it, and I'm so happy to hear it's helping you study! Thanks for sharing the tip about minimizing the screen.
Question to the developers,
I was exploring the library and managed to climb up onto the indoor balcony in the room with the bookshelves. I noticed that the door up there had no collision so I walked through it and saw a room that looked sort of like a tavern off into the void. I'm wondering what this room is and if it's possible to get inside of it, though I don't see anything that actually connects to it. I took a snapshot of it and was hoping you could tell me about it.
That's totally a glitch! It's another space we had included in the Unity project for prototyping purposes and forgot to delete. Props on finding the easter egg indoor balcony space though :)
Working perfectly, its so relaxing and cool I hope this website release more games like this
Thanks for the feedback. I'm glad you like it! - M
Why are there no comments? I love it, it's absolutely brilliant. It's so relaxing to pick a spot and chill.
I have only two complains:
1) it takes quite a long time/it's quite confusing to reach a specific "biome". I wish there was a main hub, or a map that you can open with a keyboard shortcut (maybe assign to M?) that allows you to fast-travel to a certain biome. Sometimes I already know from the start the spot I want to choose, and it gets bothersome to reach certain biomes. Also more often than not I get straight up lost...
2) I wish that on the customization menu there was a "keyboard controls" tab, with a recap of which keyboard buttons are used to do stuff.
Aside from those issues, I think this is such a cool concept and execution, it even has a sort of "pomodoro technique-like" timer, meaning that you can choose for how long you want to study and how long you want to rest: while studying you cannot move around, and when resting you can do whatever you want and interact with stuff.
Really great job, very original and useful. I'm extremely picky about stuff that I use/listen while studying, and this is certainly one of my favorites.
Hi KiraV,
Thanks for your interesting feedback, and congrats on being our first commenter! I'm glad you're enjoying it and that you're finding it useful for studying.
You can press H at any point to pull up a list of keyboard controls - you're right, that might have made more sense as a tab in the customization menu.
I hear you about wanting a way to fast travel. The island world where you spawn is meant to be a hub, but it is quite big so it can take a minute to find all the book-portals to the other worlds.
Here are some tips that might help if you haven't figured them out already: you can press shift to run, and can also click on far away study spots (e.g. chairs) to teleport directly to them.
In terms of getting lost, locations of all of the portals are indicated by little books on the map near the spawn point. I've attached a screenshot if you want to keep it open in another window.
have fun exploring,
M
Thank you so much for all the useful info, like an idiot I completely missed the map and forgot the keyboard binding that pulls up the controls 💜
Again congrats for the great job you did, looking forward to seeing more from you in the future! (And also maybe a fully underwater biome DLC? Right now when going underwater it's a bit empty, with no deep water, no music and faded colors.)
You're welcome, I'm glad that was helpful and I imagine you aren't the only player looking for that info. Thanks!
Have you found the submarine? It has a distinct deepwater color palette and soundscape. There also are a few coral reef and lagoon study spots with music. They're a bit hard to find but if you walk along certain beaches and listen carefully you might hear some clues ;) You also might be able to see them from certain viewpoints.
We had begun to prototype a deep water minigame linking the island to the city, but we ran out of time. We wanted to get this out asap so that it could support students during the pandemic. I agree it would be fun to make and play though. We'll have to think over if we have capacity to create upgrades in the future. Right now we're both working on other projects ( I'm working with another team on https://www.kaiunearthed.com/)
best,
M
Oooh wow, I haven't found the submarine yet, nor those study spots I think. I'll try to explore more, thanks!
EDIT: Ok wow, HOW did I not see the gigantic Nautilus teleport book. I'm guessing that thanks to my bad sense of direction/memory I thought it was another teleport. Thanks again and sorry for my silly questions
No worries! I'm glad you found it :)