I have been wanting to write little reviews for the video games I play, so might as well start here! Spirit Swap (lo-fi beats to match 3-to) was exactly the kind of game I needed to wind down after work: simple, fun, colorful, queer and cozy. The world felt lived-in, the cast of characters had a history about things that happened before the events in the game. I like that majority of the characters were people of color (there was black albino representation, which is not too common, it was cool to see) and obviously queer (pretty much everyone used they/them or a variation of that). The artstyle was beautiful, character designs were diverse and stunning and the lofi music was great. Gameplay was simple, but addictive.
Next more specific (and possibly spoiler-y) things I want to bring up.
First, the gameplay: it was fun and simple, match 3 or more of the same type of spirit blorbos together. Get additional spells to do some cool flashy moves, which you get from your friends. After that and a bit more...It gets stale. Yes, I can add difficulty to the gameplay, but it just makes the already familiar gameplay just...harder, like it does not add anything. It might have been more fun, if there were additional spells or upgrades, challenges (like, a time or move-limit, new types of spirits that can be matched specifically) etc. I do understand that this would add more stuff to make and when this game’s main point is to be chill it’s good to keep things simple. Sadly, especially, when doing the concert event, which is stacked to the brim with these matching games, after maybe seeing and playing it three times (out of the six characters, which you can invite in), I just ended skipping the rest of them. There seemingly is additional gameplay regarding the dating sim/visual novel aspects: you can call to chat with your friends (and invite them to hang out in your apartment? It never worked for me, but the additional fluff dialogue was fun). Also some item collecting and decorating, which you get by progressing the story and winning matched against your friends (also post-game stuff, like after all the story you can just battle your friends and get the rest of the items). There is a bit of randomizing, who is available and when and what items you get.
Now, the colorful and queer cast of characters, which was the other big draw for me to pick up this game: they were lovely. It was really cool to see world and characters inspired by East/South Asia. I think the game had only one white/white-passing character (Citrine), which is so refreshing. As a white person I learned a lot, I especially googled many of the foods and now I really want to try manoush. I do kind of wish that the game would have been more clear, that you can romance all of your friends at the same playthrough without any consequences. Which, is nice, but too many dating sims punish you for that. Or if I wanted to monogamously date just one person, I would have appreciated manual saving or copying your save to a new save slot, in order to load your pervious save and go back to choosing who you romance. I also think the “dating sim/visual novel” element falls a bit flat, since there really is only one choice: to date a person or not. It is still fair, since this is a small game and mainly a puzzle one at that. I do wish all of the dating events would have been completely different from the platonic friend events, but again, a small game and narratively plausible that you do same things with a person regardless, if you date them or not. I do wish the friendship routes also would have had special illustrations, because in a sense it felt like the romantic route was the “better one”, because you get a nice illustration out of it. I know, that’s often the idea behind dating sims, but this game seemingly wanted both options and choices to be equal (which is a nice sentiment and true, friendships and romantic relationships should be seen as equally important!).
All of the characters’ arcs were relatable and solved in a nice and grounded way, I really related to Kedsi’s struggles of navigating work-free time balance, Lulu’s, Pookie’s and Kanon’s (and to an extent, Samar’s as well) issue of people-pleasing/putting others’ needs before your own, etc. I really appreciated the way, how communication was the most important piece in each relationship (even though, yes, sometimes the dialogue felt more or less cringe and/or like “therapy talk”, but it still had heart and an important message to it). I loved the polycule (Dio, Theo and Cleo) and how it was such a positive and realistic portrayal of polyamory and poly relationships, communication is key and no poly relationship is the same. I also appreciated the realism of Mo’s and Ishk’s break up, especially when you have been friends for a long time. I am glad it went well, way too often people treat romantic break ups as be all end all. I also enjoyed the subtle trans representation (at least Iskandar has top surgery scars, he also talks about their given name in that one event, etc. Also Kedsi, since in the illustration, her skateboard has a trans pride flag heart sticker.). Although most of the characters were pretty gender-nonconforming with their pronouns, some with clothing/their presentation (like, how most of the “guys” wore colorful clothing, etc). I do like it, though, not everything, especially between close friends, need to be strictly labelled or addressed. The queerness was normalized and present in a soft and all-compassing way, like a big blanket.
The artstyle and music were nice. I do wish we could get an artbook dlc or something, because I would have loved to collect and see all of the beautiful illustrations. We already have the ost dlcs, so why not? I’m sorry I don’t have much else to say about them? I loved the bright colours and their usage, made this game really distinct. I liked the writing, even though, the dialoguesometimes felt a little cringe, it was genuinely funny and entertaining overall and the character and their relationships made me feel many warm and fuzzy feelings. All in all a nice, sweet and short-ish (took me around 13 hours, because I wanted to get all the decorations and see all the character routes. I also spend some time on the endless mode) little game. Thank you, Soft not weak LLC for making this, the world needs more games like these<3
