Spiritfarer®: Farewell Edition

Everyone deserves a hug (╥﹏╥)

I tried very hard to like [i]Spiritfarer[/i], and I would recommend it for a certain kind of player. It certainly does not lack for charm, and the art style is excellent. It also has what I usually call a unifying artistic vision, and that's something I generally make sure to mention and praise. But it didn't work for me. To start, there was not enough challenge and too much inventory management. I do not think every game must be a soulslike slog, but games that feel like slow-paced movies where you are simply there to turn the wheel of the projector just don't work for me. I like lose at least some of the time, or to feel like it's possible to lose. The furries you share the boat with are cute, but I didn't find them personally all that personally compelling, and their animal forms are part of that. It's easier to see them as animated stuffed animals than [i]people[/i]. I was never sure how to feel about the psychopomp part of the job. On the surface, this is a mature theme - the guiding of souls to the afterlife provides lessons about our real lives. The problem I have with it is that the game bills itself as a sort of touching way of coping with death. But like every mytholo…

Super easy to get into, the controls and mechanics are very simple and easy to learn! Love a low stakes resource management game that still has a story throughout and interesting characters to meet. Fishing and cooking is always fun and I love that that is included! Has really pretty visuals and the perfect colour palette and music to make the game truly relaxing.

-The art direction, music, pictures, etc. are great. -Although the story is probably objectively good, I had issues with it. In particular, some characters' personalities are just too archetypal for me to be able or willing to relate to them. (Giovanni, Elena, Buck...). The fun trivia in the archive room was a nice touch. -The gameplay is frustrating. 90% of it is a relentless loop of farming, cooking, crafting, money-making, more farming, backtracking, and waiting out the weird 5-second-cooldown punishment after each action, failed or not. Even more discouraging is the fact that one of the last characters to pass away unironically wants us to believe that this is all some kind of necessasy evil. -The pacing is what prevented me from enjoying the story even though the story was good. The fear of starving my crew and the steep upgrade prices kept me farming forever. Being on board a constantly moving ship encouraged me to farm between destinations, which did not allow for natural pauses to occur, or for priorities to switch. There was always something more urgent to do than advancing the plot. So even though I had hoped the storytelling would be a fun compensatory reprieve from a…

Spiritfarer is a cute game that surprised me with how serious and dark it got at times. It's an emotional ride that relies on themes of grief and loss, which is the highlight of the game. If you love character stories, you'll enjoy the characterizations here. I felt many emotional connections with some characters, some stories hitting harder than others. Thematically, it gets heavy and certain storylines can hit a little too close to home. The biggest negative to me though is the gameplay. Unfortunately it detracts too much from the emotional beats; a little too much to the point where I didn't feel as emotionally invested in some characters that I wanted to. The reason is because the game really pushes you to have perfect relationships with all the characters all while managing resources and building stuff on a boat. The gameplay itself isn't bad. Sure it isn't intuitive, but the way it works just took a bit away from something that should have been relaxing. I still recommend this one though because the emotional moments are great. It's on the slower side which means that you may struggle with some of the mechanics, but halfway through is when it clicked for me. It took me a …

A very well done game with gorgeous art and music and a story that teaches you how to process grief and letting go. You can really tell the devs put a lot of love into the characters and into the game as a whole. Bring some tissue with you when you play this game, it's a tearjerker for sure. I really loved that each character was unique and had their own personality. Some characters were even annoying or unlikable, but it was very clear to me that they were intentionally designed that way to emphasize that everyone deserves to be remembered despite their past transgressions. The game does have some farming sim/resource management elements, and that's typically not my thing, but I didn't mind it since it was integrated into each character's quest line. Solid game with beautiful moments, overall I would recommend!