I drunkenly signed up to upgrade my PS Plus membership in order to receive access to over 100 games all at once the other day and now I am faced with how the hell am I going to get through all of them. If I were to play like I normally do, there is no chance I would ever get through all of these games so I am adjusting my strategy.
I download games without looking into them at all. I just look at the picture and click download. Then, I will fire it up and give the game about an hour to capture my attention. If it hasn't managed to accomplish that in this amount of time, then I walk away from it. I remember back to my childhood and how all games would capture your attention immediately. These days we have such amazing tech advances that it seems that many games start out extremely slow and you have to put in the work in order to get to the "good part" of it. I think this is a terrible way to design games but unfortunately it is very common. It is always such a huge disappointment when this happens and you actually paid for the game.
In a roundabout way I actually DID pay for these games but it was only $8 for 2-month access. Since we are dealing with limited time, we need to get moving. Therefore I am trying a new game every day
Today's game is one that I really enjoy and despite its simplistic nature, is one of my favorite games that I have played in quite some time. I actually found myself intentionally doing some non-required side-quests and this is something that I rarely do.
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This game is a hybrid of many other games but mostly it is a simulation-game of sorts in that you build stuff and you have time-management going on that other things in your building area depend on for progress. For example: You need to build a garden in order to get crops to make food and you also have a foundry where you put collected minerals in order to make more building materials.
This is all done on a giant ship that you captain around the planet and basically just repeat these steps over and over. In a description that actually sounds boring and that is why I am happy that I didn't read anything about the game before installing it because I wouldn't have bothered with it if I had. I'm glad I just jumped in because the story that is not revealed at the start unfolds over time and it is actually quite tragic and will make you look at your own life and kind of face your own mortality and what it is that you consider important in your life.
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You wander the world as "Stella" who has just been given the job of the "Spiritfarer" by some scary looking but kind creature. Very little is told to you about what your new job actually entails but it is clear from the start that this is not an enviable position since the person who is handing you the job is very tired and kind of depressed about what they have been through. Then you sail around and meet whimsical creatures who need you to do some things for them. These task are built in a way that force you to travel to new places constantly and the world is designed to ease you into the intricacies of how your ship, and the world around you, all comes together.
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The world isn't huge, but it is big enough to stay interesting. There were times that I actually started to get a bit annoyed about how far things were from one another and once you develop a system that "dead time" where you are meant to maintain all the stuff on your ship started to become excessive. I can tell they did extensive testing about this very subject because right around that time is when they introduce the "bus stop" system that warps you instantly to any place on the map that you have already visited.
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There are enemies or bosses of sorts but this game is done differently that appeals to a casual player like me. You can't die in this game. The only thing that can happen is that you will be sent back just a bit and have to re-evaluate your platforming to finish what you are meant to be doing. None of this is terribly difficult but it is surprisingly engaging in its execution. There is no point in the game where someone is going to rage-quit because it is too hard. In fact, there isn't a single instance in which I ever did quit because a portion of the game was something I consider to be difficult at all.
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There is no combat in the game, nor are there any weapons. In fact, this isn't really a game that has controls that one need to master at all since most of the things that you have to do are just an unrelated series of minigames that are independent of one-another. In the above event you have to run around your ship to collect meteors that are falling on your ship and in another you will need to operate a sawmill in order to cut logs that you have collected. If you do it wrong there is no real penalty, there is just a small benefit if you do it exactly right. There are probably trophies if you do it exactly right, but I have not looked into it that much.
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The constant evolution of your ship, and the buildings on it is one of the best aspects of this game. Once something is built it doesn't deteriorate. You only ever need to build something once and you can reorganize where you have put the various buildings without cost, as often as you want. This was a wise choice on their part because it would have been tedious and stupid if they had either not allowed you to move a building once it is complete, or if you had to pay some sort of fee every time you did so. You'll start out with a small vessel but as the game progresses your ship will become far larger and with many building and new companions.
This brings us to the best part of the game and what I consider to be what makes Spiritfarer more of a work of art than a game: The character interactions. While I can not yet tell what is the main role of being the Spiritfarer actually is I can see that it involves being an assistant in the afterlife. Whenever you meet a new person they appear to be drab ghosts that look just like everyone else in this whimsical world. Once you befriend them, they take on the persona of some sort of animal creature.
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In a sort of non-evident way it becomes clear that these creatures were or are people that Stella has met at some point in her human life but I don't actually know what the full story is. I would imagine that this comes together at the end in some sort of grand crescendo. The individual stories of each of these characters are melancholy as can be and at multiple times in the game I have found that the dialogue (which is normally something I complain about) was making me feel real-life emotions about my own misgivings or mistakes in life. It is very rare that any videogame can bring about these feelings in me. I normally don't even care for games with long stories but this one, is definitely an exception and is extremely well-made.
While the game is simple enough that almost anyone that understands English will be able to play it, it is much more deep in the story than almost any game I have ever played. The gameplay consists almost entirely of resource gathering and management, but none of this is difficult, it is just time-consuming. I know that last night I stayed awake for a lot longer than I planned to just because I wanted to see what was going to happen next.
This game wont be for everyone because it is very simplistic but if you are a casual gamer that gets annoyed by overly complex controls and also enjoys a good story, this might be the game for you!
I highly recommend this game!
Games played so far in my trip through all the "Extra" games on Playstation Plus
- Windbound (survival game with rogue-like elements - not recommended)
- Magicka 2 (top-down humorous multiplayer hack and slash-sort with immense spell system - maybe recommended)
- Tearaway: Unfolded (charming casual 3D platformer with inventive graphics and gameplay designed for all ages - recommended for casual players)
- Spiritfarer (casual simulation / resource-management style game with an extremely good story - recommended for all)