Charon, the ferryman of the dead, has reached the end of his time as the current Spiritfarer and is now passing his duties to us, a girl named Stella. The Spiritfarer's duty is to take care of spirits who have died, look after their needs and fulfill their final requests before they can come to terms with their own lives until finally being able to move on to the afterlife.
The game starts off as a small, cosy, and surprisingly peaceful experience. You take control of your boat, bring aboard a couple spirits, provide them with a place to stay and help them through their quests. At some point, they will be ready to move on and you will escort them to the Everdoor where they can pass on with a final warm hug. It’s a simple and cosy setup that makes the game feel warm and inviting from the start, while quietly establishing that saying goodbye is going to be a big part of the journey.
As you keep welcoming more spirits to your ship, you will realize that these spirits all share a past with Stella and have known her in their previous lives. By progressing their storylines you will understand your own connection to them, their struggles and their regrets and what is keeping them from moving on. Eventually, you realise this is as much as their journey as it is Stella's.
These characters are not voiced-over, but they are, for the most part, remarkably well written and with distinctive stories. The game doesn't make these long, focusing on making them more memorable and emotional. While they stay in your ship you will have to progress their storyline, complete their quests, build and upgrade their individual rooms and make sure they remain happy an fed.
Mid game, with your ship becoming more crowded, it gradually turns into something closer to a harvesting, crafting, and mining game. You’ll grow crops, gather resources, explore islands, upgrade your ship, and keep busy with all the usual management tasks. There’s a lot to do, and the constant progression makes the game easy to sink hours into, especially since you will be sailing a lot between places, and that is quite slow before you get better upgrades. Resources need to be cooked, fished, mined, harvested, transformed or processed, each with their own dedicated building, and that will keep you entertained while sailing.
But that progression also ties into the game's main theme. One by one, the spirits you got to know eventually leave the ship, and as your once-busy and mighty ship becomes emptier, the experience noticeably transitions from cosiness for loneliness. It’s a clever way of making the gameplay itself reinforce the story, as the ship at this point is quite large and full of empty buildings once occupied by spirits you've grown used to see walking around the ship.
Stella is accompanied by her cat, Daffodil, who follows her around in every way. Daffodil can be controlled by another player during co-op, which the game supports, but since Stella does all the action I'm not sure what the other player can actually do.
The game is colourful and cheerful. Soundtrack is light, and could have been more impactful, with some good sound effects. Besides just going for resources and quests, there is some mechanical and cosmetic growth for both your ship and Stella, gaining new abilities that will allow progression on early blocked paths. There is little to no grinding, resources are accessible, and it's overall quite forgiving on you. The game seems more interested in telling you these stories wrapped with a cosy management game on top.
I'm not a fan of the "cosy game" genre and came into the game a bit blind, pulled in by the great reviews. I'm glad I undured the early realization and did not give up so I could enjoy these stories for most of the 20 hours the game gave me. I still acknowledge that despite this, it's not a game or genre for everyone, but it also does well what it proposes to do.
Overall, Spiritfarer is a beautiful and thoughtful game that mixes management mechanics with surprisingly emotional storytelling. Sharing a ship with memorable characters only to inevitably have to give them a final farewell gives the whole experience a bittersweet feeling that sticks with you. The game incentivizes this attachment as hugging is an actual action to perform whenever you want with these spirits. A hug that is the last gesture you do with each of them before you finally have to let them go.
