Death is the year of life and it is the inevitable fate for all of us. Portraying death in the entertainment and artistic milieu has always been gloomy and dark because the death of loved ones brings pain and heartbreak. But is it possible to view death in a positive light? Is it possible to find a kind of comfort and peace in death? This is what Spiritfarer is trying to answer in another beautiful experience presented to us by the Thunder Lotus Games development team, which we knew for its beautiful and elaborate hand graphics.
The game puts us in the role of Stella and her cat Daffodil, who have been assigned the task of taking care of the souls of the dead and bringing them when they are ready to the door that leads to the afterlife of Everdoor, the game does not have an explicit story about Stella and her cute companion and is primarily about the characters you will host on board your ship and the special story In every one of those characters.
The characters that you will meet are very different in character, but in one way or another they will remind you of some of the people you know due to the many and diversity of these personalities, some are funny and funny, others are deceitful and cannot be trusted while others are peaceful and calm. The process will make the relationship between you stronger, and they will share with you their past, including the joys, sorrows, or mistakes they regret, as each personality has a unique view and philosophy towards life and death, which adds more depth to these characters.
The arrival of any character to the stage in which she seeks to cross into the other world means that she has reconciled with her person and her past and is ready for what comes next, this process is usually strangely happy. This journey is with you, the message the game is trying to deliver is not related to those characters only, but to your ability to bid them farewell and your preparation for that painful moment.
Spiritfarer is no less impressive than its predecessors from Thunder Lotus Games with its beautiful artistic direction and the elaborate hand-drawing of the characters with all their movements and behaviors. The clouds and islands pass by while you fish, offer a relaxing scenery enhanced by the soothing game melodies that give a more beautiful backdrop to those scenes.
Speaking of playing style, Stella is able to move and jump while acquiring a few abilities during the trip. These abilities can be obtained by collecting a specific currency that you receive from your passengers and then using that currency in one of the shrines spread throughout the game world to obtain abilities such as double jumping and other simple abilities That will enable you to reach more areas.
There are many activities that you will do, which include cooking, farming, fishing, weaving and many other activities aimed at collecting resources. Ultimately, the game is a “management” experience in which you are keen on the happiness of your passengers and to achieve this you need resources, will be required. You have to feed the characters during the day and take their taste into account, some may accept any food while others may object to eating meat or suffer from an allergy to sea food, others will not accept eating the same meal twice in a row and therefore you must make sure to cook a variety of meals with different The components, some personalities may ask you to build their own house or add more furniture to that house, and some may want to go with you on a short trip to an island and there is no harm in hugging the passengers from time to time to express your love for them.
Your passengers are not just lazy guests. They help you complete the daily tasks, some fishing and agriculture, while others will go to collect resources when you stop at an island. The more happiness a particular person becomes, the more useful their contribution to the boat becomes, as some may start cooking food and others will make sure to The happiness of the rest of the passengers in the event that he is very happy, the frog frog Atul, for example, will play happy melodies that will please other passengers and prefer to keep your passengers happy, the opposite may happen when some become sad and cause the annoyance of others.
Many resources are acquired through a set of different challenges, for example there is a challenge in which you collect lightning in a bottle when you pass thunderstorms, and you can also break some blocks accumulated on the dragons that roam the world to relieve those dragons from the pain caused by those blocks, which will return to you with resources At the same time, the beauty of Spiritfarer is the comfort it gives you in doing everything, as all daily activities do not require much effort or time, fishing or knitting, for example, requires you to press only two buttons, the challenges that you find on the map also will not require you to have high skill But it changes the routine and offers some fun at the same time and with the role of the riders. Gathering resources is a simple process and part of the beautiful and quiet life on your boat rather than a bunch of tedious continuous tasks that lack diversification or require many hours of gathering resources to finish one task.
There are many things that you can do with taking care of your passengers, so you can search for treasures and sell them to merchants such as the traveling merchant Francis, who you can provide some resources to him in exchange for a generous amount of Glimes, which is the currency used in the game, there are also many collectible resources that you will receive prizes at Collecting them as there are maps that will lead you on a journey to search for hidden treasures and as we mentioned, all of these things can be done whenever you want and will not require much time from you, as your passengers are not the type of urgency that will remind you every minute of his request and the game in general encourages you to take your time to do what You like it from activities at a time that suits you, the experience can be played with one of your friends through the network or locally where the other player will control the cat Daffodil, which will help you collect resources faster with the first player farming for example while the second player may carpentry or hug The passengers and make sure of their happiness.
The experience is rich in content and it will require tens of hours from you to finish it, as we have spent 30 hours of playing the experience and despite that we still have some optional tasks to finish and we estimate the full life of the experience between 35 to 40 hours in case you want to do everything as it is worth noting that we have not faced Any troublesome technical problems during these hours, the experience was beautiful and fun, and it cannot be said that it has many flaws, but one of the things that could have been improved is to give clear instructions about some of the important resources that are obtained by collecting raw materials and then processing them and as a result of our lack of guidance For some of these resources, we found ourselves confused about how to obtain them, and we traveled to the island after another looking for an indication of how these resources were acquired, something that happened with us a few times, but it is not a shame that will spoil the experience in the end.
Spiritfarer takes us on a journey whose significance is freedom from the shackles of the past and the ability to say goodbye to your loved ones, the message is touching and full of feelings and may be painful, but it arrives to the player in a beautiful and calm setting that encourages the player to take the next step whenever he is ready to do so, it is a beautiful experience that we like You will love those looking for such deep and simple experiences.
