SpiritFarer is a game that wasn't on my radar at all until I randomly stumbled upon a review of it on Gamespot.com. I have been recently looking for something small scale to play and the art style and premise of a management game seemed like something I could do while listening to podcasts or audio books. The review even said that this was a great game for that. So why not?
SpiritFarer is a management game in which you are in charge of escorting spirits around the world to what I guess is heaven. But before you can do that, you have to make these spirits comfortable in their final moments before passing the golden gates so to speak. The concept itself is really sad and kind of dark, but the art style and moment to moment gameplay is really warming. It's a game that is at war with it's core concepts in a way, because while the tasks you are completing are rather wholesome and pretty fun, each task is leading you closer and closer to the final moments of one of your animal companion's lives. Frankly the game pulls this off brilliantly, acting as a blanketing metaphor in an attempt to make death not so scary.
Themes aside what do you do in the game? Well I will flat out say that Spiritfarer is out to make you relax, to make you feel comfortable with something that shouldn't be comfortable. Death. You play a little cartoon girl with a pet cat, and together you are given the power over what I guess is the mythical River Styx. You are given a boat and the game leads you by the hand on a journey in which you travel around the waters looking for spirits on the island to take back to the boat, where you then do quests for them until they are satisfied finally leaving life behind.
The management part comes in as the boat itself. It's like a barge in which you can build different buildings that all provide you with different tasks to do. A kitchen to cook, a garden to grow veggies, a greenhouse to grow different seeds like coffee beans and fennel which you then use in a loom for cloth crafting. Each building seems to provide you with a different mini game to play. The Garden for example opens up a Guitar Hero style mini game in which you play a song to speed up the growing crops (or you can water and wait for them to grow naturally).
What makes Spiritfarer different than most other management games, is that there is no pressure here. You can leave food in the oven and ignore it for as long as you want and it'll never burn. You animal companions will ask for food, hugs, or other missions usually involving the various buildings you can unlock on your boat, but ignoring these needs will never have them too upset with you outside of some snarky dialog. The game goes out of it's way to NOT pressure you at all, do everything and anything you want at your own pace and complete things as you like.
Which means there is absolutely no challenge in the game, but somehow it makes sense with how the game presents itself and it's kind of nice. Each animal companion has a different enough personality that they never feel samey and they are all funny enough to not be boring either.
Additionally you can hug them in a beautifully animated scene which all have them hugging you back with a warm smile and that feels really good. Sometimes you just need a hug you know.
The ease of the game doesn't mean there isn't complexity either. Each companion has favorite foods, and needs that ultimately fill a mood meter. As youcraft more and more things, you then earn more and more parts and pieces to craft more and more things. There are lots of little things to do all over the place that all end up serving the bigger purpose, and because you are never under any time limits or pressures it never feels overwhelming which is nice for a change.
All in all, I'm pretty happy I picked this up. If I had any negatives to say, I'd say it is a bit expensive for what it is, though I have heard it is about a 40 hour journey to end of the story depending on how much dicking about you do. But because it's a very simple game in the end, I still think it shouldn't be $30 US. $20 would have been better I think, but I'm happy enough that I dont regret that $30.
SpiritFarer is a management game in which you are in charge of escorting spirits around the world to what I guess is heaven. But before you can do that, you have to make these spirits comfortable in their final moments before passing the golden gates so to speak. The concept itself is really sad and kind of dark, but the art style and moment to moment gameplay is really warming. It's a game that is at war with it's core concepts in a way, because while the tasks you are completing are rather wholesome and pretty fun, each task is leading you closer and closer to the final moments of one of your animal companion's lives. Frankly the game pulls this off brilliantly, acting as a blanketing metaphor in an attempt to make death not so scary.
Themes aside what do you do in the game? Well I will flat out say that Spiritfarer is out to make you relax, to make you feel comfortable with something that shouldn't be comfortable. Death. You play a little cartoon girl with a pet cat, and together you are given the power over what I guess is the mythical River Styx. You are given a boat and the game leads you by the hand on a journey in which you travel around the waters looking for spirits on the island to take back to the boat, where you then do quests for them until they are satisfied finally leaving life behind.
The management part comes in as the boat itself. It's like a barge in which you can build different buildings that all provide you with different tasks to do. A kitchen to cook, a garden to grow veggies, a greenhouse to grow different seeds like coffee beans and fennel which you then use in a loom for cloth crafting. Each building seems to provide you with a different mini game to play. The Garden for example opens up a Guitar Hero style mini game in which you play a song to speed up the growing crops (or you can water and wait for them to grow naturally).
What makes Spiritfarer different than most other management games, is that there is no pressure here. You can leave food in the oven and ignore it for as long as you want and it'll never burn. You animal companions will ask for food, hugs, or other missions usually involving the various buildings you can unlock on your boat, but ignoring these needs will never have them too upset with you outside of some snarky dialog. The game goes out of it's way to NOT pressure you at all, do everything and anything you want at your own pace and complete things as you like.
Which means there is absolutely no challenge in the game, but somehow it makes sense with how the game presents itself and it's kind of nice. Each animal companion has a different enough personality that they never feel samey and they are all funny enough to not be boring either.
Additionally you can hug them in a beautifully animated scene which all have them hugging you back with a warm smile and that feels really good. Sometimes you just need a hug you know.
The ease of the game doesn't mean there isn't complexity either. Each companion has favorite foods, and needs that ultimately fill a mood meter. As youcraft more and more things, you then earn more and more parts and pieces to craft more and more things. There are lots of little things to do all over the place that all end up serving the bigger purpose, and because you are never under any time limits or pressures it never feels overwhelming which is nice for a change.
All in all, I'm pretty happy I picked this up. If I had any negatives to say, I'd say it is a bit expensive for what it is, though I have heard it is about a 40 hour journey to end of the story depending on how much dicking about you do. But because it's a very simple game in the end, I still think it shouldn't be $30 US. $20 would have been better I think, but I'm happy enough that I dont regret that $30.
