Spiritfarer

Genre: Management Sim / Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

Spiritfarer is a game that combines Management Sim and Platformer elements in a game that has players managing a boat to placate the souls of the dead and prepare them for the journey to the great beyond. This game was released on multiple platforms in 2020, including Nintendo Switch.

The presentation in Spiritfarer is absolutely phenomenal. This game uses wonderfully-animated hand-drawn 2D artwork with some really nice lighting and water effects, and the game’s various odd characters have some wonderful animations that truly brings them to life. This is paired with a lovely peaceful soundtrack that helps to underline the placid nature of the game.

As for the gameplay… okay, look… I know this game is going for a peaceful and serene pace and tone, but that absolutely doesn’t have to translate to boring. It’s one thing to have a game focused on cultivating and managing your little part of a world a la Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing. However, this turns to tedium when you’re constantly faced with barriers you either have no way of knowing how to break through or that will inevitably involve waiting for no good reason.

I have one character who is demanding a room that requires oak planks to build… but I don’t have oak and don’t know where to get it. If I want to explore to see if any of my available locations has oak, I have to wait agonizingly long for my ship to get to its destination, likely only to find that what I’m looking for isn’t there, or not in enough supply.

What’s worse, this problem is particularly bad early in the game, when you don’t really have much you can do to fill the time while you’re waiting. Yes, you can always kill time by fishing, but fishing is a monotonous activity and it gets old quick.

On top of that, we have the platforming, which is good, but not especially noteworthy. I can’t help but feel like I’d find the management stuff more enjoyable if I could simply select things from menus or move to them with a bird’s eye view rather than shifting to platforming gameplay whenever I want to get from one point to another.

And then there’s my biggest complaint here. With all of the building and management, I never really got a feeling of ownership of my work in this game like I get in so many games in the genre. I’m so limited in what I can build at any given time and where I can place it, it hardly feels like I’m making choices so much as working with what limited options I have available to me.

In the end, it’s probably pretty clear that I do not like Spiritfarer. However, I also recognize that this is partly a personal preference thing. I can see that this game is doing much of what it’s aiming for – this game aims to be a slow-paced, peaceful, relaxed experience, and it succeeds brilliantly at this. But the thing is, there are other games on the Nintendo Switch that also succeed at this without leaving me bored to tears and frustrated at my inability to do anything. If you’re looking for something relaxing and above all slow-paced with a great presentation, Spiritfarer may very well be just what you’re looking for, but understand that this is a game not everyone is going to love, and I’m a part of that “not everyone”.

tl;dr – Spiritfarer is a game that combines Management Sim and Platforming elements in a game about preparing the souls of the dead for their journey to the other side. The presentation here is absolutely gorgeous, but the gameplay itself is tedious, frustrating, and slow-paced. For some, this will be absolutely perfect, and blend right in with the game’s easygoing tone, but I suspect most will find this game to be far too slow-paced to be worthwhile.

Grade: C+

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2020 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Most Overrated, Most Disappointing

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