Beautiful game with enjoyable and satisfying gameplay, gorgeous visuals, and individualistic, interesting characters that make you excited to find out who you're going to meet next. Unfortunately I think I encountered a few bugs that stopped the ending feeling as emotional as it could be, as I was unable to finish Buck, Jackie and Moth Girl's quests. It just irked my inner completionist as I ultimately had to complete the main storyline without them. Some characters felt they had more put into them than others, but I think that's sometimes to be expected with a large cast. Without those little things stalling some of my enjoyment, this would have probably been 5 stars, but otherwise an absolutely heartfelt, wonderous game that feels like an experience, not just an entertainment media.

Enjoyment - 8/10
Difficulty - 3/10

I'M NOT CRYING, YOU ARE!
🏆

Really beautiful and fun management -type game. I managed to finish 90% of the game. Played it on game pass. So I didnt have the time and patience to reach 100% even thought I wanted to. Anyway I had completed the main storyline

It's a lovely game with a good story, cute visuals, beautiful music and characters that have a lot of personality.

Sometimes it can get frustrating as this game takes up quite a lot of time. There aren't really any game mechanics. It's just clicking buttons and you've got to wait quite a lot as well.

It's a game meant to relax your mind, meant to be played when u don't rly wanna put too much effort into the game

4.25★

Here is the review:

(+ +) The characters. The way they were designed, the way their stories were told, their personalities: everything is just perfect. The characters are all so different from each other with beautiful and at times tragic backgrounds. I loved finding out about each of them and their thoughts and lives.
My favorite was Stanley!

( + + ) The way of narrating the game. Everything in this game is told to you in such a subtle way that you have to think about it for a moment, and once you puzzled it together it really hits you.

( + ) The music and soundtracks created such a beautiful atmosphere, especially with each character having their own tune that fit them so perfectly.

( + - ) Farming materials and improving your stuff. Now I put this as a positive and negative at the same time because of the following: The game offers a huge variety of materials, fish, recipes, etc you can collect and it's huge fun for I would say most of the game, however...at some point it becomes noticeable that the game is trying to just kind of waste your time. At some point, all of the farming becomes tedious and exhausting, especially regarding certain quests.

( - - ) This might be just me, but it was something that pissed me off quite a lot of times while playing. The game loves making you confused about whether you can't do something because you are bad, or because you have not progressed far enough in the game. I'll name three specific examples to make it more clear, with the last one being a slight spoiler:

1. I spent ages trying to fish a really difficult fish in the fog area, only to figure out eventually that I needed an upgrade for it. The area was already unlocked for a while, but the game did not have the thought of maybe popping up a dialogue of "mhm maybe i need better equipment before fishing this first"

2. On the other hand, at other parts, I gave up trying on something quickly, because I thought it was the same situation and I need to unlock something first, only to find out later that it was just a difficult section and I had to try a little harder to solve it.

3. SPOILER: Sometimes, there were small islands on the far right or left of the screen that could only be reached with an additional ability: When using gliding, I always just barely missed the paltform, making me think that I just hadn't timed the jump right, so after trying multiple times, I left it be. Turns out I had to learn the dash ability first to reach it. All fair n square but why not place the platform a few meters more to the right so that I notice the first time that the gliding is not enough to reach it. Why make the players confused about whether they should keep trying or not. I could rant about this much longer, but it'll make this review too long.

I just finished this game not even an hour ago but I just loved it so much and wanted an excuse to talk about it a lot so... here goes!

Very quickly before I gush about this game, I do want to get some negatives out of the way. The game isn't "bulletproof" when it comes to bugs- The biggest instance I had for this was chopping a tree down, where you basically wave at your cat Daffodil to come over and help you saw it. It's really cute, but it DOES rely on Daffodil actually walking over to you, and when there's a bug in the game where Daffodil just fucking... disappears....... you're basically stuck at that tree (Save & Quit didn't fix it but closing the game and reopening it did!). Without getting spoilery, I had a slight immersion break earlier on when I found a character somewhere where I shouldn't have, and my boat got stuck in a rocking animation once while I got called over by Atul to start the lightning event, only for said lightning to strike exactly once before my boat continued sailing and the rocking stopped. Other than that, I think I had a pretty smooth experience.

With that out of the way... I consider this game an absolute masterpiece.

It's a slower kind of game, and that's okay! I thought the gameplay was at a right amount of simple, I think adding more complexity to it or making it "harder" would've made things get tedious after a while. (if the rest of the game was as hard as fishing up a goddamn tuna fish i would've been crying for a whole different reason). Outside of following specific character quests, you're basically just trying to keep everyone on board happy by hugging and feeding them and that never got annoying to me. Yeah, each character has two or three specific kinds of food they wont eat but like that was a non-issue for me.

The art and music for this game are fantastic. This game might have my favorite video game soundtrack ever, DEFINITELY the coziest one in any I've played. Each area in this game looks gorgeous, even the little unique patches of sea you sail across. Every character has a fun unique design and it's always exciting to have that reveal of what they look like once they step onto your ship.

Speaking of the characters, THAT'S where the game truly shines. Every spirit you come across has their own story that you learn about the more time you spend with them and you really do start to feel for them. Some are definitely more likable than others, some of these guys ARE kinda fucking assholes, but the stories behind them are all just so heartbreaking and sad and sincere that I cant help but at the very least feel bad for them. Hell, some of the stuff the characters go through resonate with me and make the game hit even harder. And the fact that you KNOW that no matter how attached you are to these characters that you HAVE to say goodbye to them eventually... this is the first game, maybe even the first bit of media ever to actually make me cry and it did it a LOT. There is a greater overarching story of course, it's not just the individual stories of each passenger... and I fucking cried at that too.

If you enjoy cozy games and are willing to just take things slowly, and dont really mind playing a game that's characters and story first over the gameplay itself, then I genuinely GENUINELY cannot recommend this game enough. It's just such a beautiful and emotional experience that will absolutely stick with me for a long time, and will probably forever stay on the higher end of my all-time favorites.

Sights & Sounds
- The art style is fantastic. Wonderful hand-drawn style with a vibrant, diverse palette.
- The animation is quite good too; actually reminds me of a well-animated 2D fighter (where some parts of the animation take multiple frames)
- Character designs are excellent. Each spirit is unique in their own way
- Although the towns feel fairly diverse, some of the forest, mine, and campground islands can feel a little samey
- Music varies a bit. Some of it is awesome (Bruce & Mickey's theme), some of it is simply nice to listen to (the main theme), and some of it is a little annoying (Alex's theme). At least they give you the option to turn off that last one

Story & Vibes
- If you're currently emotionally processing the loss of a loved one, this game is a punch to the gut. I've been dealing with the deaths in my friend groups and family over the past year, and this game definitely got to me. If you have a shred of empathy, this game will make you tear up, if not openly weep
- The story is more-or-less self-paced, but this can lead to some clunkiness in the rate the backstory is doled out. In my playthrough, it felt like I was getting nothing but loosely connected scraps until a bit of a lore dump in the last few main quests. Maybe the pacing would have been better if I had prioritized differently
- As you've probably assessed, the game deals with death-related themes and philosophies. These themes typify the quests and the final scenes of each character. Some characters' quests take a turn for the stoic (Gustav, Elena), some are more peaceful (Gwen, Astrid), some are nihilistic (Bruce & Mickey, Jackie), and some are just utterly heartbreaking (Alice, Stanley)

Playability & Replayability
- The game is about 75% crafting while traveling and 25% other activities
- Crafting typically involves combining or altering ingredients you find or buy in the world in one of the crafting stations you build on your ship. There's a pretty big variety here; you'll be planting, smelting, weaving, crushing, cooking, smithing, and raising animals (the non-sapient ones, at least)
- Some of the crafting can feel repetitive. Smelting and smithing are especially guilty of this
- The platforming is tight and responsive. It's kind of a shame that this element of the gameplay takes a distant back seat to the crafting
- There are some very light city-building elements that mostly involve trying to organize the all the buildings on your ship
- It's going to take me a while to return to this game, but mostly because it's emotionally heavy. I could see myself doing another playthrough to 100% this one in the future (there's a forced choice involving the characters Giovanni and Astrid, so either load one of your autosaves or do a second playthrough)

Overall Impressions
- Daffodil singing along when you're playing music to your crops is just about the cutest thing I've ever seen
- Alex is a good boy with bad taste in music
- The game ran extremely well the whole way through. No framiness or audio issues at all.
- I did encounter a few visual glitches like Daffodil getting stuck and flipping between two animation frames on ladders. I also saw a few characters teleport when their pathfinding screwed up. None of these affect gameplay or progress, though

Final Verdict
9/10. An excellent game, not specifically for its story or gameplay, but for its themes. I'd recommend playing it regardless of price if you like crafting, the art style, and games that make you think. If you're less enthralled by those things, I'd still recommend it if you can snag it on sale

It doesn't bring me any joy to write this. When Spiritfarer is a Work that's About Things, it's exciting and fresh, thoughtful and tender. Unfortunately, most of the time it's not about anything at all.

I will readily acknowledge that this is, in part, a 'me' problem. There's long been a disconnect between me and games like Stardew Valley and Harvest Moon. What is intended to be a gentle day-night cycle of reaping and sowing becomes a stressful exercise in efficiency. An hour is something that has value to me, and games that cannot balance a calculation against that value quickly begin to grate. And most of the time, that's just fine. I simply do not play games that are about those kinds of experiences. The trouble with Spiritfarer is that it is striving to be something else.

Spiritfarer claims to be a game about grieving, about the experience of being around for the end of someone's life. It promises to explore this from myriad angles, to allow you to genuinely grow close to characters in their brief afterlife, and to experience what it's like to farewell them. As much as a video game can, I do think it succeeds on this front. The charming, diverse character designs are immediately fun to watch, and the premise allows the writers to cut to the chase. Where other games might need to work harder to earn moments where characters reminisce on their life to the player, here it just, like, makes sense. They're dead. Why wouldn't they be preoccupied with the life they've lost?

It's that diversity of character that really drew me in. I was looking forward to seeing so many perspectives on this very real, significant experience, and the few chances I got did not disappoint. There was an initial period where the fantastical seascapes and vague allusions to the player character's history did not make sense, but after receiving a Spirit Flower - a parting gift from the passengers you ferry to the end - I was immediately on board with what the game was presenting me with. It felt genuinely exciting.

In a moment of pure tastelessness, you then immediately use up the Spirit Flower as a crafting ingredient to upgrade your boat so it can drive through ice.

Which brings me to the two biggest problems with Spiritfarer, and the things that will probably keep me from going back to play more of it; the progression, and the overabundance of 'mechanics'.

Let's start with the latter. There's a question hanging over Spiritfarer as a concept; what do you, the player, actually do? What does a Spiritfarer, one who accompanies the dead to the end of their existence, actually do? The answer that the game provides is deeply unsatisfactory. Sure, in principle, providing comfortable housing and tasty food is a wonderful thing to do in that role. What that looks like in practice, however, is primarily the accumulation of resources through extremely dull, extremely repetitive busywork. For example:

You plant a cotton seed in your garden. That seed, exactly like all the other seeds you plant, needs watering three times a day. Naturally, when you wake up in the morning, about a third of a day has passed, so your plants need water. You water them by pressing the interact button - each instance takes a few seconds of watching an animation - and do so again at about midday. You water them just before you go to bed. This cycle continues more or less as long as you're playing the game, so pretty much every night, you'll water the plants, go to sleep, wake up, and water the exact same plants again. Every single in-game day, if you want to play efficiently.

Or, let's say you need metals. To get the ore, you have to stand next to a rock and hold the interact button for the correct duration. Hold it too long, and you sit there for several seconds while an animation of your character falling over plays out. Once you have the ore, you can take it to the smelter on the ship, where you engage in a slightly different variety of busywork by running back and forth between two different interact button presses to keep a needle in the sweet spot on a dial.

You get the idea. None of these things really have anything to do with being a Spiritfarer. There's the distant idea that the fruits of your labor will make the people you're ferrying happy, but the actual act has nothing to do with them. You're tucked in a corner away from them, waiting for animations to finish. There are moments where they're arguably involved - happy passengers can provide you with small, infrequent benefits to these systems - but for the most part it's just, like, pressing the interact button and waiting for an action to finish.

This wouldn't be too much of a problem, if it weren't for the fact that the hours spent in these activities drastically outnumbers the time spent with the story. I have played for 14 hours - about halfway through the game, as I understand it - and maybe two or three hours of that have had any bearing on the characters I'm meant to be playing the game for. It's not impossible for a game to spread the story out between activities that aren't specifically related to it. Hades does an excellent job of a similar approach. The difference is that when you're playing Hades, you get to play Hades. Here, it's just pressing buttons and waiting.

And, unfortunately, you do need to engage with these mechanics. Each passenger on your ship has a questline, of sorts. They have objectives that they'll want you to complete to help them get comfortable, to help them overcome whatever's keeping them anchored to this plane of existence, to take care of their needs when they can't do it themselves. While arguably video-gamey, this is, in itself, a fine way to structure things. The problem is the tangled knot of progression that prevents you from pushing ahead with any aspect of the story. They obscure it, but there is a hard, harsh order to which you must progress the game. A character's demands will require obtaining a specific resource, which can only be obtained at specific locations, all of which are behind a specific obstacle that requires a specific upgrade, which cannot be obtained without completing the stories of two other characters, which have their own endless series of requirements, waiting periods, etc. etc.

It creates a situation where you are mostly progressing a single objective at a time, in a game where doing a single thing at a time is incredibly, insufferably boring, and means most of the people aboard your ship have nothing to do but ask you for food and remind you that they're waiting for you to finish something you can't even start yet. Sometimes the single thing you're doing is just waiting for the next story event to happen! When a story does progress, it's rewarding and interesting, but the things you have to do dig up that small piece of actual art are so insufferably, endlessly boring.

I find it frustrating, because none of this feels like an accident. It feels like this progression, these activities were deliberately crafted to be this way. Spiritfarer is described as a 'cozy' game, which puts it in a specific trend of games that, inspired by the aforementioned Stardew Valley, share many of these problems for me. Again, that's normally just a matter of taste, but in the pursuit of 'cozy', however one may feel about it, the developers have left behind the things that are actually special about what they were making. They didn't fall into it accidentally. They deliberately made a game that is deeply at odds with itself, that fills the time you give it with meaningless chaff that does nothing to further it as a work of art. Spiritfarer does not need gathering and crafting - or at least, does not need this much of it. There's something real special here, a wonderful and rich cake that I'd be all too happy to devour if it weren't for the unconscionably thick shell of fondant around it.

There is nothing wrong with a 12 hour game. If I can spend that much time with a game and enjoy even just most of it, that's time well spent. Spiritfarer could be an excellent 12 hour game. Instead, it promises twice that, and spreads what excellence it has far too thin to stomach. I'm profoundly disappointed.

Spiritfarer is an excellent game, with very few major issues. While parts of the game are a bit janky or have weird progression, generally speaking, the management mechanics are a great source of fun. But it's the story that makes Spiritfarer really shine. It's one of those games that you know you'll grow even fonder of after you complete it and get a chance to ruminate on its themes. The major characters you'll come across have such beautiful plotlines and are all so well-written. I felt genuinely moved when completing most characters' plotlines as the game succeeds at making you empathise with them all, even the ones who are huge jerks. Top that all off with a fantastic art style, great humour, and a beautiful soundtrack, and you've got yourself the brilliant Spiritfarer.

The sometimes grindy gameplay certainly isn't for everyone, but this is a great chill game to play to unwind. Getting all of the achievements can be a massive hassle, and the game overstays its welcome a tad too much if you do so, but so much of the rest of the game is good that I had no issue just powering through when that was the case.

Right, with this review done, I'm off to go watch a ton of video essays about this beautiful game. "Ozymandias beckons..."

Esse jogo seria perfeito se tivesse metade da duração dele.

É Uma ideia realmente muito boa, e até metade do jogo ele usa essa ideia de forma linda, espetacular, tão bom q nem os pontos negativos dele (gameplay extremamente repetitiva e raramente acontece algo novo e legal) conseguem estragar a experiência, mas parece q dá metade pra frente eles abaixaram muito o nível do jogo, com uns espíritos chatos e desinteressantes p krl, q ngm liga, com umas missões mais chatas ainda, tipo as do Buck, q ngm liga praquelas missões, muito menos pro personagem, o Jackie, que por mais q seja um chato da porra, ele passa uma boa mensagem no final, e apartir do momento em que ele se revela e mostra quem realmente é, ou seja: um BOSTA, eu começo a gostar um pouco mais dele, mas ele continua sendo um chato do caralho, a Daria, q por mais q seja aq eu menos odeio, eu tô CAGANDO pra ela, tive 0 interesse de entender a história dela, e chegou um momento em q eu tava só pulando todos os diálogos do jogo pra terminar logo com isso.

Esse foi o MAIOR PECADO desse jogo, do começo até a metade, TODOS os espíritos são memoráveis, todos tem uma personalidade única e q te faz gostarem deles, você cria um afeto e carinho por eles, mas da metade pra frente esse jogo se transforma em uma das coisas mais chatas q eu já joguei, e um dos únicos espíritos do final q se salvam, q é a Beverly, e a Elena, q no fundo são espíritos realmente criativos e legais e interessantes, por elas se encontrarem em uma parte tão chata do jogo, elas acabam ficando desinteressantes igual o restante dos espíritos.

Mas esse jogo está LONGE de ser ruim, ele só peca muito em alguns momentos, mas o final é lindo, e a música dos créditos tá no "top músicas de créditos em jogos pra mim" de tão boa que ela é, por mais q essa parte chata possa te fazer passar uma raivinha e te fazer gostar menos do jogo, acredite em mim, vale a pena, e ele passa uma mensagem muito boa e que vale a pena ser escutada.

On a more personal note: It was really satisfying playing this game about mourning and accepting the ending of cycles when I was mourning and accepting the ending of a cycle myself.

I don't think Spiritfarer is the perfect game, but I do think it's really brave for allowing its message to be diluted in dozens of hours of gameplay as a means to explore grief as something that is lived in manners so multiple as there are people in the world, instead of the universal (and rather sanitized) shallow approach of the five-stages-of-grief.

When I was yet to play this game, I thought as the spiritfarer we would be in charge of helping spirits in need with their unresolved aspirations. How surprised I was when, instead, the game paraded me a cast of loveable but ultimately unsatisfiable characters. The end for them, I realized soon enough, didn't come when they were finally content with their choices, or ready after some saccharine resolution. Instead, the end usually arrived when it was time. Just like that. When they were too tired to keep on. When they couldn't help themselves.

Which brings me to another point. Every action you take to make their lives more happy and meaningful ultimately brings them one step closer to the Everdoor. It's bittersweet, but also imbues even simple, kinda grindy tasks with weight. It's such a videogame thing to allow us to feel the smallest joys and sorrows of labor through labor itself. As well as the beauty of its quiet and in-betweens moments.

This is a game with a profound messega dedicated to make the player work it. The amount of waiting on the ship get stale very quickly and although i understand its for the sake of the message it does compromise my enjoyment of it by a lot. The story and aestetics of this game is astounding with great writing and messages. The scenes at the everdoor were amazing and i loved building and custumizing my boat. The maim gameplay of the game however felt very slow and grindy which made it feel bloated and slow.

Ok the first 4 hours are a blast, it's eye candy you develop the ship take care of everyone, you simply feel good.
But come one, by the end of the game I wasn't giving a single shit about any of these fucks, what they want to eat drink and shit.
Game developers needs to know that they can have the balls to make a short game and nobody will hate them on it.
It tries to play with your feelings which is ok but when you prolong this over 22 hours I stop feeling anything for the game.
For me this game is maximum 6 hours TOPS and for that time I will not develope bad taste for it.

Spiritfarer is a game that can be broken down into 2 pieces. There's the story heavy, character driven narrative with excellent writing and character design, and then there is a poorly fleshed out and implemented material grind so you can create the things to make the different characters happy. My issues with the game rest entirely on the latter.

Unlike Minecraft, Stardew, or any of the recent games with crafting shoved into the middle of it, Spiritfarer doesn't ever give you a reason to craft anything if it's not just to check some item off of a quest log. Despite having elements of a Metroidvania (meaning you can only pass certain barriers once you've gotten certain upgrades) the game leaves no room for missing something or breaking the sequence that the developers want you to follow. The islands you'll visit are all over the place, but the game clearly expects you to visit them in some linear fashion. This becomes apparent when you miss even one thing, and suddenly every quest and upgrade seems to be locked behind this one character or material you passed over. This is not the make of a good open world game where players will carve their own paths and get distracted by exploration.