I have a complicated relationship with death.
For one thing, it's been too big a part of my life to ignore, ever since I can remember. When I was a little girl, I almost died after getting very sick and spending months in the hospital, relearning how to walk. My uncle died of AIDS, my stepfathers parents were murdered when I was in elementary school, and the list goes on and on. For as long as I can remember, death has been a bigger part of my life than life itself it seems, and as such, I've spent a good majority of my life obsessed with the concept of death. I write about death endlessly. I love film and television based around death. Hell, I've tried to die, though perhaps that's not really a good example. That had more to do with genuine depression than a fascination with the afterlife. Ghosts, graveyards, horror movies; I have loved all of these things ever since I was small, and that love has never diminished.
But something has changed in the way I view death over the years, and that something is how now I look into the alternate side of the equation, of what comes along with the act of dying, and that would be grief. A lot of my work is based on the concept of grief. For god sakes, I myself have been in mourning for my grandparents for almost 15 years now. Grief makes up as big a part of me as my interest in death does. So, when I found out about the game Spiritfarer, I was immediately drawn to it. Not just because of its cute art style, or its seemingly wholesome attitude in light of a horrifying concept, but simply because it had to do with death and, more importantly, grief. That being said, I managed to temper my interest with hesitancy, thanks to my less than stellar track record with the games developer, Thunder Lotus, with whom I've had not a good relationship with.
I've tried their previous games, Jotun and Sundered, and while they also boast beautiful art styles and play well, Jotun was so intensely boring and impossible to navigate that I couldn't be bothered to continue, while Sundered was even worse in the sense that it wasn't boring but it gave you absolutely no ideas about where to go to progress. Both games, in the end, were considered some of the worst things I've played in recent years, simply because they couldn't be played. But the more I heard about Spiritfarer, the more enticed I became. It was a fairly linear, story driven pseudo platformer with a clear progression and a plot that actually interacts with you? That sounds like an actual game. And I'm happy to report, after 52 hours, that it was an actual game.
A lot of people have called the game moving. A lot of people have said it made them cry. That's the difference between me and everyone else though. I don't get emotionally wound up by these sorts of things. Instead, they give me a sense of relief. TV series like "Dead Like Me" and films like "A Ghost Story" don't make me emotional simply because it's about dying, they give me a sense of relief from the dread of the possibility of there not being anything afterwards. Spiritfarer is in the same vein. It's cute, it's wholesome, it has its darker moments but on the whole its a very relaxing and easy going experience, because that's what death itself is. Life is over. Nothing matters now. Though I'd be hard pressed to argue that anything matters during life itself, but that's just me. Why would death be needlessly complicated and frustrating? And it isn't. At least not in Spiritfarer's world. It's about taking time to contemplate what it all meant to you, what you meant to others, and making peace with that, whether you like it or not.
Did you guys know I write suicide notes for fun?
Yeah, maybe a bit of a twist to take here, but it's true. I have written hundreds of suicide notes over the course of my life, a few genuine, but most simply because the act of writing one helps me put my life into perspective in the moment. What matters. What doesn't. How I feel about it all. How people might feel about what I'm going to do. I've only ever tried to die 2 times in my life, and those attempts were when I was much much younger, but I keep writing notes nevertheless. They give me a sense of calm in a world of urgency. A moment to reflect. That's actually part of the dangerous thing about Spiritfarer for me. It made death look...good? It made me envious, jealous, and interested in following through to see if it was really as great as it was being made out to be. But therein lies the issue. I don't believe in anything, so I can be tricked into thinking anything is possible. I'm not religious in the slightest. I'm Jewish by nature, but otherwise I don't actually genuinely believe in anything at all in terms of afterlife.
The game, while great, does sort of hit a grind wall about 34 hours in. Once you've progressed enough that it's required that you grind to progress further, the fun starts to slow down a bit, and you're left with an almost Stardew Valley type of repetitiveness, which I don't personally mind, but is definitely not for everyone. And I think some of the dialogue can be heavy handed or even outright painfully awkward at times, but what can you do. The one thing I do find interested in their decisions with story is how you never get full context for things. You never find out what happened to Stella, why she died, how she died, and for a lot of these spirits, you're just left to wonder how she even knows them to begin with. Some are made crystal clear, like Atul, and some are made further clear by her sisters statements later on down the road towards the end in regards to Stella's previous job, but otherwise there's just a lot you don't get to know, and I think that's great because life is rarely full of answers or closure. Closure itself is a man made idea. Something we invented to make it seem like life has order amidst the chaos. It doesn't. So I liked that aspect.
I will also say that the end is...fairly...anticlimactic, but that that's not necessarily a bad thing. Towards the end of the game, when you're finally given some insight into Stella and how she came to be here, you are given a quest that asks you to take her to the Everdoor so she can move on just like everyone else. When you finally do this quest, it's a very somber, quiet moment. Just Stella and her cat taking their little boat to the door, hugging and then vanishing into that good night. There's no epilogue. There's no dialogue. There's absolutely nothing. At first, I was surprised. I expected some kind of further wrap up for all the time you invested into the game. But...when I started thinking about it...this is actually perfect. I mean, life itself is anticlimactic. We do all these things, lead these lives, have these experiences, all for it to just...stop. So maybe, just maybe, this was the right artistic decision after all.
Each spirit has their own personality, and there wasn't a single one in the bunch I didn't love. Some I loved more than others, sure, but I loved every one of them just the same. It made me wish I had family or people in my life that meant anything to me, because I have to admit, I got a little jealous of this adorable seafaring death commune you're forced to create. Either way, everything about the game is phenomenal, and I cannot recommend it enough, even if it does tend to drag on just a smidge too long. I also never encountered a single bug, which is tremendous considering this is an independent studio, meanwhile I'm encountering nothing but bugs in triple a titles from established studios with decades of tenure. Thunder Lotus, with this game, finally validated their existence to me, and I am happy to see what they do next.
...when I was 17, my grandmother died of a rare cancer. My grandmother was the closest thing I ever had to a mom, since my real mother was so abusive and distant. Her death devastated me beyond belief and continues to do so even today. I have never really recovered from it. I can remember sitting in a hospital hallway, looking out the window at the library across the street, and texting my friend Colton at the time. It was the weekend. I asked if I could come hang out overnight, and he said yes. I asked my mother for a ride. She asked me if I wanted to see my grandma before I left, and I said no. I always said no. My grandmother was always there when I needed her, and I was never there when I should've been. She was dying. On the precipice of nonexistence, and instead I went to a friends house for the evening. You always, when you're young, assume there'll be more time. There isn't. There's never more time. There's only the time you have in the moment.
I still regret this to this day, and likely will until the moment I myself finally face the inevitable void of nothingness.
I wish I'd been strong like Stella. I wish I could've helped. I wish I could've managed to get past my fear and discomfort surrounding the situation. Alas, I couldn't. I still cry for my grandma every day. I wish she could know me now. She can't. We only have the time we have, and we only have some people for a brief amount of time. I was lucky that I got 17 years with her, but even then it wasn't enough. It's never enough. And when the moment finally came down to it, I didn't see her off. I failed to give her comfort. I consider myself a fundamentally bad person because of this, and I will never forgive myself, even if I tell myself she would forgive me for it. Maybe she wasn't scared. Maybe she didn't need me. But none of those maybes matter, because I'll never know, and I can never convince myself otherwise.
But...
...if there is something else on the other side, if by some strange whim of the universe, there does exist something beyond what we know and what we see, a place where we can meet our loved ones once again - call it whatever you like - then maybe I'll believe just enough for the hope to see her and apologize. I'll tell her that I wrote suicide notes. I'll tell her that I tried to die too soon. I'll tell her that I stuck it out, despite not wanting to. I'll apologize for not coming in and saying goodbye. Apologize for not being strong enough. For not being brave enough to help shepard her out of this world as she had sheparded me into it. Apologize for, not literally, leaving her dead in the water.
And I can only hope she'll forgive me then.
My name is Maggie. I write & make art for a living. If you like this review, you might also like my newest novel here, reading my media blog here and you can tip me for my work at Ko-Fi.
