SPIRITFARER REVIEW

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**SPOILER ALERT: Spoilers for Spiritfarer follow.

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After finishing Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and a few games that had been recommended to me by friends, I found myself without a new game to play. I decided to return to Xbox Game Pass and see if anything in their catalogue caught my eye. Right away, Spiritfarer stood out to me, so I downloaded it and started playing immediately. The game did not disappoint.

In Spiritfarer, the player takes on the role of Stella, a young woman who becomes the next — you guessed it — spiritfarer after Charon. Her job is to help spirits of the deceased fulfill final tasks before bringing them to the afterlife. It’s a management game, so many of the tasks revolve around building and managing various houses and buildings on Stella’s boat. The player also has the opportunity to explore the beautiful world of the game, which consists of many different island locations that Stella can visit, each featuring different materials and characters to interact with.

The game itself is gorgeous; beautiful world and character design, a stunning soundtrack, and thoughtful and emotional dialogue. However, I didn’t necessarily expect the game to be so emotional or introspective. I really enjoyed the contrast between the soft, feel-good atmosphere, with cute and colourful characters, and the exploration of themes of life, death, love, suffering, and purpose. It’s not just a management game where you explore and complete tasks. It asks the player to work to understand the lives and struggles of the characters. 

Usually, I’m not a fan of management games. I find them to be boring, tedious, and repetitive. In some moments, Spiritfarer does fall into that trap. There were a few tasks that became annoying because of the number of materials I needed or the trek I needed to make across the map. However, the interactions with the characters make many of the tasks feel much more worthwhile. One of the game’s biggest successes is its ability to make the player care about the spirits. I felt a sense of duty to each of the characters, and for some of them, I was so invested in their stories that I felt an even greater fondness for them. 

By building up the relationships between Stella and the spirits she is caring for, Spiritfarer accomplished their goal of making it difficult for the player to say goodbye and release the spirits into the afterlife. It asks the player to care, which then makes letting go so much harder. When you bring spirits to the Everdoor on their final voyage, the conversations are often emotionally charged and touching. I definitely cried a few times. You say goodbye, and here’s the thing: there’s nothing that comes afterward. Once you release a spirit, you feel their absence. You remember them when you pass by their room on the boat or the facility that they taught you to use. 

Throughout the game, after releasing key spirits into the afterlife, the player is brought to a level where they must navigate a series of platforms and discover a series of vague photos from Stella’s own life. At the end of the level, you have a conversation with Hades. These encounters were arguably my favourite part of the game, because they turn the focus back onto Stella and the player. Near the end of the game, the player begins to discover more about Stella and her life. In the final encounter with Hades, he comments that Stella had surrounded herself with suffering in her life. He asks whether she is doing it all for them — the spirits, the people in her life — or whether she is doing it for entirely selfish reasons. I absolutely adore moments like this, because it asks the player to take a step back as well. Who am I doing this for? What is my true goal here? When I complete tasks in this game, am I doing it because I care for the characters, or because I want to beat the game?

Finally, I really enjoyed the vagueness of the nature of Stella’s role as the spiritfarer, as well as the true nature of the afterlife and the spirit world the game is set in. This might not appeal to everyone, but the fact that things were left unexplained and became up to individual player interpretation was exciting to me. When Stella is finally visited by her living sister’s spirit and it is revealed that Stella is also approaching her final voyage to the Everdoor, it genuinely surprised and delighted me. Again, the ending doesn’t quite feel like a true ending; it relies on the player’s ability to choose if and when to let go. Spiritfarer asks you to exist amongst other characters in a world that is only temporary, and it asks you to be the one who dictates the moment you and other characters leave that world. Generally, I prefer games with concrete, satisfying narrative conclusions, but that wouldn’t work with a game like this. It goes against the very purpose of the game.

Spiritfarer is different from the games I usually play, and contains a lot of elements that I’m not used to or often dislike. However, the game is beautifully crafted and extremely effective in its delivery of thought-provoking themes and messages. I highly recommend Spiritfarer for anyone who is looking for a peaceful, relaxing game about compassion and learning how to say goodbye.