3/15/2023 0 Comments Elena spiritfarer![]() ![]() ![]() My personal favourite interaction is when you hug a particular passenger, who looks visibly surprised for a split second as Stella squeezes her around the middle, before completely melting into it, her massive arms swallowing Stella in a comforting embrace. Stella and her anthropomorphic passengers exude personality in every frame, from the way they eat their food to their unique hugging animations (because yes, there is a dedicated hug button!). None of these emotional moments would have landed if it weren’t for the game’s gorgeous animation and art style. And of course, when you finally come to know a passenger, when they finally come to terms with their life, it’s time for them to move on. Despite the game’s cheerful demeanour, your passengers aren’t afraid to throw complicated issues your way, like depression, abuse, and being raised in poverty. They are genuine, thought-out people, with a life beyond your own, and needs you don’t necessarily have to understand. Meeting them, listening to their stories, learning their favourite foods, watching them face their fears all of this makes Spiritfarer worth playing. What makes the grind all worth it is the characters you look after. So, as hard as it is to say goodbye, it has to happen eventually. Ingeniously, too, is the fact that despite being helpful, each passenger requires a lot of work and attention, and when your ship gets too crowded, your time becomes noticeably spread thin. The small tasks like farming, cooking and building feed directly into the bigger task of making your passengers happy, and vice versa. The happier they are, the more helpful they are, eventually teaching you how to create new buildings to make more specialised material (for example, your second passenger shows you how to build a sawmill, which turns wooden logs into planks, which are needed to upgrade your ship). Exploring will net you new materials and food, which allows you to build houses for your passengers, cook for them, and keep them content while they travel with you. You’ll start with a barebones ship and one passenger, who’ll help you find the materials you need to build a kitchen and a guesthouse, so any spirits you find along the way will at least have food and shelter. The most impressive, and honestly beautiful, thing about the game is how all of its moving parts link together. You’re less like the Grim Reaper and more like the manager of a seaborne hotel. It’s a much more positive, affirming experience than most games about death. Guiding these spirits doesn’t just require listening to their concerns and helping them solve their problems, but also creating a home for them on your boat, feeding them their favourite food, giving them attention and intimacy on a regular basis. In Spiritfarer, you play as Stella, a recently deceased woman tasked with finding lost spirits and helping them come to terms with the lives they’ve lost and move on from this plane of existence. Part 2D platformer, part farming simulator, and part story-driven character study, it exhibits all these genres not to create an experimental, genre-defying experience, but simply to bring a singular, unique vision to life. One of the reasons I love indie games is the sheer devotion to a singular idea, and Spiritfarer is no exception it takes a unique concept and runs all the way with it. However, our Game Of The Year comes from indie team Thunder Lotus, with Spiritfarer: A Cosy Management Game About Dying! We saw the release of hundreds of fantastic titles, like the blood-pumping Doom Eternal, the adorable Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the atmospheric Ghost of Tsushima, the revolutionary Half-Life: Alyx, and the surprising first episode of Final Fantasy VII: Remake. 2020, despite everything, ended up being a pretty good year for games.
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