Spiritfarer (2020)

At periods in your life when you just need time to heal some wounds, there is one excellent thing you can do to fill that time: game.

During my burn-out, it was my partner who said “You need to game, Jules. Try this game called Stardew Valley”. I did, and the next three months passed like a wonderful dream of gigantic watermelons and mining adventures. After that, I went back to work.

This time around, I’m selling a house and de-nesting from that partner, moving into LAT. Knowing the process would take months, and would probably be very painful, I was keenly aware I needed to get myself a game. I wanted cozy management, looked around for something that would fit the bill and found Spiritfarer. Three months later, my house is sold, we are moving into our own apartments, and Stella has finished her journey.

Spiritfarer is a lovely little management crafter where you accompany lost souls into the afterlife, by hosting them on your barge for a while and fulfilling their requests, until they’re ready to go. It’s both relentlessly positive and wonderful, while also being quite sad. Those feelings go pretty well together, I can tell you.

The game activities consist of sailing and discovering islands on a map, exploring locations to gather resources and pick up lost spirits, and the gameplay on the boat, which consists of crafting your way up the tech chain, and taking care of your passengers, by feeding, hugging and talking to them. You also build all of them their own house, which leads to a hilariousy chaotic barge.

I love the sailing, discovery and crafting mechanics, it’s only the dialogue that left me a little cold. The spirits could have been real tearjerkers, but their writing was too stereotypical and random and it never really grabbed me. To be fair, I played it in French and game translations are usually not stellar.

I ended up playing it twice. Spiritfarer has a two-player option and my partner was quite charmed by playing the Daffodil to my Stella, with him doing all the management, and me talking to people and reading their dialogues out loud. It was pretty sweet that we could weather this change together.

I played this game on my Switch and was incredibly moved the whole time. Not only did the characters move me but the things I would begin thinking about because of this game and the dialogues it started between myself and loved ones really helped me get through some things.

It sounds intense but so is the game. As the developers have put it, aptly, this is a management game about death. If you don't enjoy emotional games (which I do, but do not seek out. Not usually in a headspace to want to do this, personally - but I went into this game blind), platformer layouts, or for some reason hate anthropomorphic spirits asking you to do favors you would not like this game.

Although I do not think it is for everyone, I have heard fascinating testimonials from some who have played. For some, this game is a life-changing experience - particularly if they've experienced loss. All that being said, the game doesn't just hit you with cheap attempts at emotional gut punches, it's a slow effect over time as you grow to care for spirits and get to know what they were like in life. Your ultimate goal is to take these spirits to the Everdoor, which is why I do not think I will ever truly complete this game because I honestly don't want to say goodbye to everyone. Maybe someday.

I've had my eye on this game well before it came out. Didn't buy it on release as I had no real time to play it, but finally got around to it.

Narrative

This game is about dealing with loss mostly. You are the Spiritfarer, you find lost souls and help them deal with the fact that they are deceased. You give them their final wishes and you say goodbye to them. You really get to know the characters you are guiding and it gets pretty hard to say goodbye to some of them. Especially Atul, that dude just left :(. During this journey you also learn about your own backstory. There is little character development, mostly just learning about your backstory and coming to terms with that. You get to know the lost souls, their flaws, their reasons to "hang on". I thought it was mostly a beautifully crafted story. The only flaw for me , was at the end. Where you learn about the fact that you are denying your own death and you come to terms with that and you have to let yourself go. This however happens at a point in the story before you have found all the lost spirits. Aka you can "end the game early" and leave, but then you let those other spirits hanging. I didn't like that. It took away from the impact of the ending.

Gameplay

You as spiritfarer own a big-ass boat with which you charter the spirits to and from places, and eventually the "everdoor" the place where to leave this realm. On this boat you build housing for the spirits, several crafting places, like sawmills, refineries, smithys etc. You also have a little farm, orchard, coop and other places to keep animals.

The spirits you have to feed daily, they all have their own favourite dishes. You can make this with ingredients you grow, or buy. You can also fish from the side of your boat. The extend of the gameplay is: Find spirit, do their quests by going places on the map, build a house for them, do other fetch quests for them, until they are satisfied and want to go to the everdoor.

The game also has several minigames, like catching lightning (by standing in it) catching meteors (by standing in it), and various other stuff. Every crafting thing is also it's own minigame, like getting planks by sawing on the dotted line by moving your stick (probably mouse on PC). You can upgrade various aspects of your boat, making it bigger, faster, being able to get more buildings, and being able to traverse certain areas(like ice).

The gameplay was pretty fun to me. I do really like farming games, sim games and management games so it was completely my cup of tea. It did get slightly repetitive at the end but not enough to take away from my enjoyment of the game.

Setting

I absolutely adored the cartoonish art style of this game. It has sharp lines, light pastel colours and just very soothing to the eyes. Completely fitted the game. Most thing were highly detailed, how the buildings looked, both outside and inside. Just these nice little details, like woodwork on the side of the orchard I really enjoyed. The islands you visit were not as detailed, they looked pretty much similar to eachother. Yes there were different areas, like a Japanese looking area, a more northern Europe looking area, but within there they all looked similar. Still pretty, but not as detailed as the boat. Which is not the worst as that is where you spent most time anyway.

I was pretty impressed by the detail of the animation as well. Everything was very fluid. The jump animation when jumping of a slanted roof was very good. When you go swimming your companion cat goes with you but he runs around on the water on a little ball. Just details like that, I really loved it.

Music fitted the game. Areas had there own songs, some events had their own songs and they all fitted very well. No real stand-outs but I really liked to music. I may put it on when I want to relax, or have to work. Especially liked the everdoor music.

Other

I had one random crash when I played the game. Luckily it autosaves pretty often so I didn't really lose any progress. Other than that the savemenu randomly opened several times, but I'm not sure if that wasn't my controller. No other bugs or anything encountered.

The game has a sort of collectathon going on as well. I'm not a great fan of these but it also didn't really get in the way. Especially on switch where there are no achievements (I sincerely hope that stays that way). You can collect fish, fishes, metal, weird dolls you find in treasure chests and gems.

Conclusion

I absolutely loved this game, just as I thought I would. The story is strong, most characters likeable, and pretty emotional at times. Gameplay can get a bit repetitive, and if the game was any longer (I think I took about 30h, the switch isn't specific in this), it may have become annoying. I did like the minigames instead of the boring wait-times for crafting. For it's length, for me the gameplay was fine. I loved the art, animation and whole feeling of the game. The only thing wrong was the story bit at the end. It did took away from the impact, but not enough to warrant a lower score for my part. I still loved 99% of my time with the game anyway.

Recommend for people who love good stories, and the sort of grindy management/farming/crafting gameplay you could find in stardew valley/harvest moon/ etc.