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***THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS***
While there are some sappy sweet characters on your boat—Alice, an aging hedgehog, Atul, a boisterous frog who will eat anything (and I mean anything) you give him, and Stanly, a young child who encourages you to experiment and play—you also act as a guide to less than savory characters. This was jarring to me at first, especially with the game’s cartoon style, but I found that it resonated with me in the end. Death takes jerks as well as saints.
This is one of the saddest games I’ve ever played, and well, I loved it despite the fact I cried about fifty times. At least one of those was an ugly cry.
SpiritFarer begins with Stella and Daffodil in a boat with Charon. Upon awakening, you learn that you, Stella, are the new ferry master for the dead. You accept this news with an odd certainty and then take to the job straight away as though you’d always been a caretaker for spirits. Later, it’s revealed that Stella was indeed a nurse.
Your first spirit is Gwen, a friend from your childhood who now takes the form of a deer. I’m not sure why this cussing, bitter, cynical, and broken woman takes the form of a deer, which I always thought of as a gentle creature, but the form, as well as the character, did grow on me.
From there, you learn the ins and outs of boat management—how to gather food and other useful resources, how to use buildings to craft materials to advance your game, and how to help and comfort your passenger on their way to the Everdoor. Each character has a different quest line and different needs. And each character is broken in their own way. As you play, you learn how to soothe your passengers while attending to their wants and needs. Sometimes, this takes the form of helping them confront their past. Other times, you help them achieve the goals they had in life.
While there are some sappy sweet characters on your boat—Alice, an aging hedgehog, Atul, a boisterous frog who will eat anything (and I mean anything) you give him, and Stanly, a young child who encourages you to experiment and play—you also act as a guide to less than savory characters. This was jarring to me at first, especially with the game’s cartoon style of art, but I found that it resonated with me in the end. Death takes jerks as well as saints.
The mechanics are grindy (as with most management games), but it never really felt that way until the end of the game, when there doesn’t seem to be a point to any of it anymore unless you want all the achievements. Otherwise, the game flies. I found myself losing hours in the vast world.
My favorite character ended up being the gossiping Astrid, who needs your help finding her estranged husband but later realizes that the relationship was always toxic. Her gruffness, combined with her spunk, never failed to make me smile. After I hugged her, she’d often ask if I felt better. The answer was yes.
The game’s controls are pretty intuitive. However, I would suggest a controller if you bought the game on a PC. I struggled with PC controls, but maybe that’s just me.
A lot of the characters became quite philosophical in their final moments. I will say these speeches often dragged on and felt unnatural and pedantic. I thought the themes in those speeches were better summed up in the actual game play. As a player, I FELT the loss of my passengers. There were days I swore I heard Summer’s song, and I'd go to my garden expecting to see her there tending the plants. It was in those moments that the game touched my heart, not in long, drawn-out reflections about death.
In the end, I think Stanly had the most poignant line, which was simply, “Sometimes, it’s okay to lose.”