I haven't cried at a videogame since I saw the end of the original Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games at 9 years old, and I didn't cry at Spiritfarer, either, but I came astoundingly close on multiple occasions. I find very few things are able to tug at my heartstrings nowadays, I've grown up on the Internet, am bombarded with tragedy and heartache almost every day and have found myself incredibly jaded as a result of it. There's a lot of media that claims to be - or attempts to be "heartfelt" or "emotional" and I feel never manages to deliver on that promise, but Spiritfarer does.
I don't want to spoil you because I truly think you need to go into this game knowing as few specifics as possible so I'll say this, it's a game about dying. Getting to know people in the last moments of their lives, and then having to let go. In doing so, you'll play around with a core gameplay loop not entirely unlike that of Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing, but not so similar that it feels derivative. Spiritfarer forges a very unique identity of its own and it genuinely takes a good few hours of playing the game before you realise what the core "loop" is, and even when you do, it won't get tired or uninteresting for a very long while.
One of the biggest problems with games like Animal Crossing or to a greater extent - Stardew Valley is that once you've maxed out whatever kind of "relationship parameters" you have with characters in those games, they stop being interesting. You know everything there is to know about them, heard everything they have to say. They stop being characters and instead become lifeless heaps of code that wander around repeating the same behaviours. This is why the fact that you eventually have to say goodbye to all the Spirits you welcome aboard your ship in Spiritfarer is so genius, as it is also heart-wrenching. You get to know these people, cater to them and enjoy life with them, and then they go away forever. It's incredibly powerful, and it's something you'll have to deal with countless times throughout the game.
Many games that attempt to be more narrative or emotional experiences are exactly that - "experiences" moreso than they are games, but Spiritfarer manages to be so artful and so evocative whilst also still having enjoyable, solid, and reasonably deep gameplay. The game largely takes place aboard your ship, which you'll upgrade in terms of size, travel speed, biomes you can navigate and other things throughout the game. The ship is where the Spirits you're escorting to the end of their lives will reside, so you'll have to build them houses aboard this ship as well as other buildings like kitchens and orchards to maintain the materials you'll need to keep them satisfied. In order to build things like this, you'll sail around a surprisingly large map to a bevy of locations gathering materials, talking to NPCs and often engaging in some quietly deep and well thought-out platforming puzzles.
There's a lot of times you'll see a faraway rock or a high ledge in Spiritfarer - realise that you can't make it there without an ability you haven't unlocked yet and have to keep it in mind for later so you can return with said ability and earn a reward. It's this kind of mindfulness of the game's mechanics, this kind of occasionally Metroidvania-like level design that makes Spiritfarer's core gameplay so fundamentally satisfying in moments like this, and gives it a huge leg up over both its life-sim game competition and its narrative game competition.
You watch your ship slowly expand over time and take all these wacky different shapes as you shift all the buildings and houses you've made around the place, the ship itself becomes a level of your own making as there'll soon be so many buildings that getting to where you want becomes it own fun, yet brisk and constantly interesting platforming challenge. It's a game you can take at your own pace, and mould in your own ways, the way any game looking to relax you should do.
Everything in this game is engineered to instil in you a feeling of serenity. From gorgeous visuals and environment design often taking inspiration from a variety of cultures like Feudal Japan, modern North America and the frozen Arctic to consistently glistening gold UI to a humble, quiet and charming soundtrack. Even its writing and dialogue is far beyond what you expect of most indie games - which often (understandably) show a disregard for writers compared to most of the game's other facets.
This is where one of my only two criticisms for Spiritfarer comes in; whilst its writing is detailed and consistent with the fleshed-out backstories for each of its characters, those specific characters' motivations and backstories themselves are often made a little bit too obtuse. Characters like Astrid & Summer's backgrounds will only really be fully understandable if you read up about them on the Wiki. Their dialogue is often vague and suggests some detail that you'll only really be able to find out if you do some extra-curricular research on the game. At many points the game will hint at its characters' backgrounds without ever really giving you the full picture even after you've seen their arcs through to the end. It has me wondering if the game perhaps respected its audience's intelligence a bit too much? Or if I'm just a monkey-brained idiot.
My other gripe with Spiritfarer is that I think it goes on for a bit too long. If it were 5 or so hours shorter, I think its length would be perfect but as it is, I think it drags a bit. Towards the latter half of the game, when you've begun to figure out what the game's loop is, you can quite accurately predict what the rest of the game will look like, and you've already been doing it for quite some time and it starts to wear a bit thin. If you're anything like me, you get a bit antsy about finally finishing the game and seeing the ending, but there's still a fair bit of trekking about the place and completing menial tasks. I do appreciate how packed full of content this game is though, as many indie games of its ilk often charge about the same price for a far less meaty package. There's no doubt in my mind that you'll get your money's worth when you buy this game, even if its soft demeanour may have you convinced otherwise.
Don't let these two minor grievances dissuade you, this is an amazing game. As I write this review it's late June 2021 and I've just seen the end credits and I can comfortably tell you that this is the best game I've played since I played Breath of the Wild for the first time in 2018. It's real. It's about something real by people who have clearly been through some harrowing experiences and made a shockingly beautiful piece of art to encapsulate what they were like, not just the bad parts, but the good parts too.
Spiritfarer is incredible, and it's hard to believe it was made by a studio considered "indie" and not a huge, triple A company considering the quality of its production value in every facet. It deserves to be held up as an indie game masterpiece alongside the likes of Hades and Undertale. It made me go upstairs and check on my Mum, who's been suffering with a litany of illnesses and conditions for the better part of a decade now. This game will stay with me for a very long time, and I'm very glad of that.
I don't want to spoil you because I truly think you need to go into this game knowing as few specifics as possible so I'll say this, it's a game about dying. Getting to know people in the last moments of their lives, and then having to let go. In doing so, you'll play around with a core gameplay loop not entirely unlike that of Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing, but not so similar that it feels derivative. Spiritfarer forges a very unique identity of its own and it genuinely takes a good few hours of playing the game before you realise what the core "loop" is, and even when you do, it won't get tired or uninteresting for a very long while.
One of the biggest problems with games like Animal Crossing or to a greater extent - Stardew Valley is that once you've maxed out whatever kind of "relationship parameters" you have with characters in those games, they stop being interesting. You know everything there is to know about them, heard everything they have to say. They stop being characters and instead become lifeless heaps of code that wander around repeating the same behaviours. This is why the fact that you eventually have to say goodbye to all the Spirits you welcome aboard your ship in Spiritfarer is so genius, as it is also heart-wrenching. You get to know these people, cater to them and enjoy life with them, and then they go away forever. It's incredibly powerful, and it's something you'll have to deal with countless times throughout the game.
Many games that attempt to be more narrative or emotional experiences are exactly that - "experiences" moreso than they are games, but Spiritfarer manages to be so artful and so evocative whilst also still having enjoyable, solid, and reasonably deep gameplay. The game largely takes place aboard your ship, which you'll upgrade in terms of size, travel speed, biomes you can navigate and other things throughout the game. The ship is where the Spirits you're escorting to the end of their lives will reside, so you'll have to build them houses aboard this ship as well as other buildings like kitchens and orchards to maintain the materials you'll need to keep them satisfied. In order to build things like this, you'll sail around a surprisingly large map to a bevy of locations gathering materials, talking to NPCs and often engaging in some quietly deep and well thought-out platforming puzzles.
There's a lot of times you'll see a faraway rock or a high ledge in Spiritfarer - realise that you can't make it there without an ability you haven't unlocked yet and have to keep it in mind for later so you can return with said ability and earn a reward. It's this kind of mindfulness of the game's mechanics, this kind of occasionally Metroidvania-like level design that makes Spiritfarer's core gameplay so fundamentally satisfying in moments like this, and gives it a huge leg up over both its life-sim game competition and its narrative game competition.
You watch your ship slowly expand over time and take all these wacky different shapes as you shift all the buildings and houses you've made around the place, the ship itself becomes a level of your own making as there'll soon be so many buildings that getting to where you want becomes it own fun, yet brisk and constantly interesting platforming challenge. It's a game you can take at your own pace, and mould in your own ways, the way any game looking to relax you should do.
Everything in this game is engineered to instil in you a feeling of serenity. From gorgeous visuals and environment design often taking inspiration from a variety of cultures like Feudal Japan, modern North America and the frozen Arctic to consistently glistening gold UI to a humble, quiet and charming soundtrack. Even its writing and dialogue is far beyond what you expect of most indie games - which often (understandably) show a disregard for writers compared to most of the game's other facets.
This is where one of my only two criticisms for Spiritfarer comes in; whilst its writing is detailed and consistent with the fleshed-out backstories for each of its characters, those specific characters' motivations and backstories themselves are often made a little bit too obtuse. Characters like Astrid & Summer's backgrounds will only really be fully understandable if you read up about them on the Wiki. Their dialogue is often vague and suggests some detail that you'll only really be able to find out if you do some extra-curricular research on the game. At many points the game will hint at its characters' backgrounds without ever really giving you the full picture even after you've seen their arcs through to the end. It has me wondering if the game perhaps respected its audience's intelligence a bit too much? Or if I'm just a monkey-brained idiot.
My other gripe with Spiritfarer is that I think it goes on for a bit too long. If it were 5 or so hours shorter, I think its length would be perfect but as it is, I think it drags a bit. Towards the latter half of the game, when you've begun to figure out what the game's loop is, you can quite accurately predict what the rest of the game will look like, and you've already been doing it for quite some time and it starts to wear a bit thin. If you're anything like me, you get a bit antsy about finally finishing the game and seeing the ending, but there's still a fair bit of trekking about the place and completing menial tasks. I do appreciate how packed full of content this game is though, as many indie games of its ilk often charge about the same price for a far less meaty package. There's no doubt in my mind that you'll get your money's worth when you buy this game, even if its soft demeanour may have you convinced otherwise.
Don't let these two minor grievances dissuade you, this is an amazing game. As I write this review it's late June 2021 and I've just seen the end credits and I can comfortably tell you that this is the best game I've played since I played Breath of the Wild for the first time in 2018. It's real. It's about something real by people who have clearly been through some harrowing experiences and made a shockingly beautiful piece of art to encapsulate what they were like, not just the bad parts, but the good parts too.
Spiritfarer is incredible, and it's hard to believe it was made by a studio considered "indie" and not a huge, triple A company considering the quality of its production value in every facet. It deserves to be held up as an indie game masterpiece alongside the likes of Hades and Undertale. It made me go upstairs and check on my Mum, who's been suffering with a litany of illnesses and conditions for the better part of a decade now. This game will stay with me for a very long time, and I'm very glad of that.