Gaming: On-together Is The First Focus Tool Videogame I've Used That...
I completed my final year of university during the pandemic and spent the last five years of my life working from home, and I gotta say… sometimes it freaking sucks butt. I'm a yapper at heart, a jester in an empty court. Days where I'm practically vibrating with pent-up energy and a desire for socialisation instead ping and ricochet off the four walls of my lonely living-room-slash-office-slash-gaming-space.
As anyone who's spent any sort of time living, studying, or working solo from home will know; those vibes can quickly contort themselves into very unproductive habits. A five-minute flick through the phone turns into a full-blown doomscroll sesh. A quick YouTube pitstop becomes an hour of scrolling through Shorts—seriously, who's actually watching those regurgitated Instagram Reels and TikToks outside of an intense procrastination sesh?
It's frustrating. I've tried the wealth of productivity tools the internet has done its best to market as the ultimate work-slash-study-from-home life hack. Some of them have kinda worked—like Spirit Swap—but never for as long as I need them to . The thing that's been missing all along? Doing them alongside other people. No other tool or gamified productivity aid has understood that the way On-Together does.
In the way folks came together in Animal Crossing to stay connected during Covid-19, or reignited their all-consuming passion for spending days on end hanging with friends in MMOs—not even raiding or dungeoneering, simply AFKing next to each other while soaking up the same town hub theme for hours on end—or even the thousands of people who tune in every single day to work or study alongside Lofi Girl. On-Together invites people to be with each other. To spend time together. Borders, distance, mileage be damned.
It's an experience that somehow toes the line between game and productivity tool to near perfection. There's a pomodoro timer, journal, task planner, and to-do list to check off all of the latter needs. But they're carried by everything else On-Together has to offer: the encouragement to explore its surprisingly packed island, non-work activities to break up the seriousness of it all, which is then even further cut by its adorable pastel charm and chibi characters with tons of customisation options.
And the task choices. Oh the task choices. There's something so whimsical about hitting up a lobby with your pals and being able to communicate exactly what you're doing through a handful of animations that
Source: PC Gamer
