Spiritstead

[h3]Cute, charming, but a little overwhelming [/h3] I picked this up largely because the art immediately reminded me of the old Asterix & Obelix books. It has that lovely, colourful, hand-drawn charm that brought back some very fond memories. The game itself has nothing to do with Asterix, of course, but that visual style was enough to pull me in. And there is a lot to like here. Discovering spirits, exploring new areas, unlocking tower bonuses and gradually watching the village grow are all genuinely satisfying. There’s something very nice about seeing everything slowly come together. However, I have to admit that the game has also frustrated me quite a bit. Early on, there is a lot of gathering and micromanagement. Getting your villagers to do the things they need to do can feel more like managing chores than building a magical little village. At one point, having to manually drag villagers to the outhouse nearly made me ask for a refund! Things do improve as you unlock more options and gathering resources like eggs, wool and... well... poop becomes easier. However, I often found myself wishing this was a little more of an idle/management game where I could make the important decisions and then mostly watch my village get on with things. I've also found some of the systems surprisingly difficult to understand. The pet/spirit system in particular left me scratching my head and I've spent coins trying to figure out things that I felt the game could have explained more clearly. So, despite all that, I'm still playing. There's something charming underneath the frustration and I want to see where the village, spirits and exploration eventually lead. I'm not very far into the game yet, so perhaps some of my confusion will disappear as I unlock more. [b]Cute, charming and full of potential, but be prepared for a fair bit of micromanagement and some head-scratching along the way. [/b]

truth be told this game is extremely dull and micro-managey. I like life sims and I like management sims. The problem is that this game is bad at both. The little villagers will never do ANYTHING unless you tell them to. they won't even use the bathroom unless you physically drag them to the bathroom yourself. They won't engage in hobbies or talk to each other, they just work or do whatever you drag them to do. It doesn't feel like I am building a town, just a very cute and pretty factory. I am sure someone here likes this game, but it just isn't for me.

very short .... can be finished in 5-6 hours ...

Finished the game. Didn't take long, and the game isn't in any way complex or complicated. You really only need to get to the snow biome to be able to self-sustain resources required through the end of the game. Unlocking spirits is generally fun, and some of them are pretty annoying, specially the ones that require you to do RNG minigames. Otherwise, fun, chill game. A lot of room for development.

The worst incremental/city builder that I have played. A number of unlockables are bugged and cannot be unlocked. Gameplay gets boring after 30 minutes. Story is awful and sparse.

Very cute and beautiful but a really bad game. Systems are horrible. Nothing helpfull will be explained to you, you spend lots of time trying to do something in hope it will be usefull to no avail. Really bad managements of people, you constantly have to wonder why workers aren't working. The spirits thing is a good idea but overall it's a constant bother, the worker management is bad, spirit management is worse. Go play forage wizard or suncraft and if you're really deseperate, come back to this.

Fun game! I beat the demo now starting over. I would say I wish they would add a pause button. It be nice to decorate and not worry about the people. I also agree with some of the comments I wish the npc would take themselves to the bathroom/hospital etc. I have notice they fixed how much they need to go as well they walk back to work on their own which is nice now! Overall cute game!!

It's fine but I don't know if I fully enjoyed it. Some of the mechanics weren't explained very well so there were times where I was just sitting there wondering what to do. Then when I fully figured out the spirit mechanic everything was pretty inconsequential. I think if it was a little deeper it's something I would enjoy. I feel like this would work great as a phone app and doesn't work well for someone looking for a cool cozy city builder.