Written by. Nick Mosier based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: JST)

It looks like a lo-fi idle game called Chill Corner has been garnering popularity on Steam. Chill Corner is a simple, relaxing game that launched for free on December 17. The game displays a little cube-like living space with a character going about their day and a pet that lounges around inside. Gaze upon their lives while listening to some chill tracks to put your mind at ease.

When it’s sunny outside, you can hear the birds chirping, and if you change the weather to rain, you can hear the pitter patter as it falls. You can also imagine the bite of cold winter air by changing the weather to snow. There are even different rooms to choose from such as living rooms and bedrooms.

As time passes, an in-game currency called “Chill Time” accumulates. Chill Time can be exchanged for items you can place in your room such as plants, aquariums, and furniture. There are also interactive elements depending on the item, like being able to click to water a plant. Players seem able to decorate their room as they please.

As for the music in the game, the default album contains 22 tracks. On top of that, other albums can be purchased via paid DLC.

While it’s a minimalistic style of game, it’s already received over 1,000 reviews on Steam over the 3 weeks it’s been available and sits at a rating of “Very Positive.” The game being free is also likely contributing to players picking it up. As for what players are saying in their reviews, it looks like many are using it as background music while they do other activities. The game also has an alarm, so many are likely using it as a work or study tool.

However, when the game released, there were many complaints about GPU usage. The game doesn’t look like one that would be very taxing on most computer hardware, but some Steam users were reporting cases of GPU usage over 50%. From this, some users started to question if the game was actually a cryptocurrency mining tool.

The developer responded to those concerns as follows.

“Before version 1.0.5, the game always ran in ultra graphical mode and unlimited FPS cap, so it may take much usage of your GPU (especially on high end VGA). This is the default setting for any Unity game if the developer has not controlled it.

Now in 1.0.5 I added features that allow players to choose graphic quality and fps cap to reduce hardware usage and match user demand. If you use this game as just your music player and not really care about the graphic quality or frame rate, just choose the lowest setting and your GPU will be free.”

Chill Corner can be found here on Steam.