Gentle sim game Shroomchitect is a little bit The Sims, a little bit lofi beats and a whole lotta mushrooms

Some games just give you that lovely warm feeling inside when you see them for the first time. For me, that was Shroomchitect, a very gentle sim game where you care for a bunch of sentient mushrooms. Mmmmm.

Shroomchitect’s sim-ness comes through as a very, very light take on the likes of the micromanagement in The Sims or even Dwarf Fortress. Here, your mushrooms have just four status bars you’ll need to keep balanced: Hunger, Energy, Social and Purpose, which presumably triggers an existential crisis upon hitting zero.

Beyond that, it’s a very forgiving experience as you build your shroomies’ mushroom home out of voxels by commanding the Kirby-like forest spirits to collect resources before adding blocks or knocking down others to make doors and whatnot.

It’s all an extremely chill and laidback affair, encapsulated in a photo mode that lets you frame up your cute-looking creations - basked in the warm glowing light of the mushroom abode during the in-game night - and save pictures to your desktop.

While your little shrooms are working away, there’s a comfortable lofi soundtrack to listen to, interpreted with natural sounds (cicadas, I think), which makes the whole thing feel like a Headspace sleepcast turned into a light sim game. I only mean that with utmost praise - the whole thing just has immaculate vibes all the way through.

The laidback approach extends to Shroomitect’s system requirements, which note of a processor “you need one, yes”, advise “you'll need a screen” under ‘Graphics’, “if your computer can play sound, you should be good” under sound and sums up its forgiving specs as “in theory, if your computer can run Windows, it can run Shroomchitect”.

The whole thing can be had for less than a fiver over on Steam. Gosh, it's just lovely.