Spiritfarer — Caring for the Lost
Lost in the world of the spirits, spiritfarer is a soulful game about appreciating life. It is charming and heart-warming with a strong message about death set forth in a beautiful way. It is developed and published by the Canadian studio Thunder Lotus Games who have been dabbling in platforming games since 2015 with games such as Jotun and Sundered.
The game starts off with Charon passing off his duties to Stella as the spiritfarer (The person who ferries the lost spirits). As Stella, you have to manage the ship and it’s resources, find wandering spirits and keep them happy till they feel ready to finally leave the physical realm. At that point, you need to take them to the Everdoor which is this fascinating idea of an eternal rest for all the spirits. Throughout the game, you will create emotional bonds with all the different spirits as their story will be relatable to Stella given they were real people who used to know her. For example: The first spirit you pick up is Stella’s best friend. The core motivation of the game comes from keeping them happy, which I found tremendously fulfilling.
Out of a Children’s Book
The 2D platformer has a unique art style which is predominantly inspired from children’s books. It reminds you of the simple stories with morals to be learned at the end. It makes you feel uplifted and excited about what is about to come. The visual is whimsical with most of the colour palette consisting of pastel shades which has a soothing impression.
The art style tends to put the story in a fantasy world. It resembles a lot with the animated movies made by Disney. So subconsciously the player categorizes the game amongst one of the enchanting animated fantasies. This reminiscence of playfulness helps give the serious message of the spiritfarer a cheerful essence.
Character Design
The characters in the game are fun and quirky with few of them sure to leave a lasting impression on your mind. They are beautifully designed with subtle features that reinforce their personalities. These can be seen from Stella’s overgrown hat to uncle Atul’s (represented by a toad) way of eating the popcorn. The personalities are probably the most important part of the game, as it is purely driven by the intriguing interactions with these characters. With such personification, one might forget that they are spirits in the form of animals. The most fascinating aspect of it is even the shape of the creature seem to accentuate the personalities.
Interacting with them is so much fun. All the characters have different personas with some likable ones and some not so likable. However all of them feel real and keeps you playing to find more about them. Soon these interactions teach you about the game and also narrate stories that are personal and quite touching. For instance, while on the boat, Gwen was working through her complicated relationship with her father and dysfunctional family life. This involved visiting her parent’s house before she was ready to move on. I felt these stories are quite relatable, given if I ever landed up in that world. So finally when they depart, you can’t help but feel a little sad . It leaves a void in the game, a strange sensation for a character whose stories had started to sink in.
This teaches us the most important lesson about life, that all good things come to an end.
Environment Design
The environment is all hand-drawn and painted with gorgeous colours and details. The game feels mostly inspired from folk-lore written or told in different cultures who talk about spirits in their traditions. One can see certain settings or omens which different cultures associate with the presence of spirits. However, for most part of the game, you’ll be seeing the ship that the spiritfarer travels in. The ship is modular and customizable making it a fun task to upgrade and build your own home as you progress. Throughout, you’ll have to deploy various rooms, gardens and shops to yield resources. These resources will help in upgrade the conditions of living for the spirits. As you ride along with the ship, you will also come across other floating objects and animals in the sea. But mainly you will come across the islands filled with vast amounts of foliage.
The islands are filled throughout with subtle elements that fill up the screen with ample information for you to be struck with amazement. Everything on these islands seem to be organic with most of the houses made of wood or stone. The different settings make you feel comforted in the vastly spread wilderness. The different houses that you come across also resonate to the different stories that entail their existence. Amongst these delightful architecture and embracing nature, there are various platforming challenges too, which can lead to hidden secrets revealing stories about the life of the spirits.
Prop Design
The surrounding is skillfully crafted in the game. The interactable objects stand out in a subtle manner from the background. These objects have are really well designed with interesting and well defined silhouettes. However the one object that surely stood out in the game was the everlight. It was Stella’s tool passed down by Charon to help her carry out the duties of being the spiritfarer. It was a glowing bubble that hung around Stella’s waist.
The concept of the everlight is ingenious as it could transform into any different tool. Throughout the game, Stella would just convert the everlight into the tool she needed instead of carrying everything. Tools such as a saw to cut the trees with or a fishing hook that she could catch fishes with on the boat. This object certainly kept reminding me of the fantastical nature of the game.
Animation
The part where this game truly comes to life is when the seamless hand-drawn animations world take place. The animations are smooth and adds a certain level of fluidity to the controls. The character motion feels just right with every jump made remarkably responsive. All their animations feel consistent to their respective personalities and adds a layer of depth to the stories. Some animations like Atul rubbing his belly after a meal or some other cloaked spirit making weird hand gestures all add up to the experience of living in the spirit world. They all are fun and quirky gestures filled with mischief. However the most satisfying among all of these actions was watching Stella hug the characters. It was the moment when I felt the most love in the game.
Another cool animation was the glowing ball of everlight turned into a necessary tool like mittens for handling the food or a watering can to water the plants. The action of watering plants or cooking in itself might get monotonous after a certain point, but they seemed important to balance the pace of the game.
However, the most stunning animations were the ones where you would capture resources for building something or getting something in exchange. This is where the great game design meets the gorgeous art. The whole act of standing under the thunder or breaking rocks on the head of a dragon left me bedazzled. They are carefully crafted experiences by people who definitely know how to make beautiful games.
Sound
The music is created by Maxime Lacoste-Lebuis, who is a Canadian film composer and multi-instrumentalist and has been crafting evocative musical works for nearly a decade. So he was perfect to make the sound track for the game as it’s core intention is to evoke emotions in players.
The soundtrack is soothing and comfortable yet a little melancholic and haunting.
The music track playing depends on the event happening in the game but it always makes you feel cozy and enthusiastic. The music is what makes all the chores relevant and fresh.
The sound design of spiritfarer is on point. It is perfectly timed and makes the world much more believable. Chopping down a tree or setting your destination for the ship all sound remarkably real. However, I feel that the most smart and impactful sound design in the game is the voices from the characters when they talk. They don’t really talk but make noises with dialogue boxes for their speeches. This technique is so effective and really saves a lot of resources without really cutting on much believability. I connected with their words more because of the way they sounded. Also each character had more than one sound that it made which depended on what they were saying at the moment.
Game Design
Spiritfarer is a management simulation at it’s core with some platforming challenges entailed with exploration. It starts off a little slow paced in terms of gameplay with not much to do. However, soon enough when there are more than 3 spirits on board, you feel the rush to get everything in order. Cooking food, growing and farming resources to cook them, catching flying jellyfishes and much more to keep you occupied till you reach the next island for exploration and resource gathering.
It’s much like any other management sim, a loop of gathering resources and upgrading for more accommodation.
The part where spritfarer does stand out from any other management sim is empathy.
Empathy drives a lot of the decisions in this game. Sometimes I found myself giving food to the spirits I liked first, although I don’t think it matters. You sometimes even tend to get certain resources because you remembered that a certain character liked it more. It is fun and emotionally satisfying to manage the ship as the spiritfarer.
Conclusion
Spiritfarer is a emotional journey with a satisfying gameplay. One can really lose sense of time just managing everything. However the most heart-breaking part of the game has to be when you have to take the characters to the everdoor and let their souls depart forever. That is when the game really hits you, when real emotions are felt because your bond with the character was so deep. It is a beautiful game, one which comes with a lot of quirkiness and comfort but also in turn helps you grasp the concept of death and moving on.
Thanks for reading! I have always been inspired by games with a creative approach to gameplay and designers who tell a story that transcends the art in a glorious fashion. If you know any games like such, let me know in the comments.
Also if you have played spiritfarer tell me in the comments which character did you find the most fascinating.
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