Spiritfarer Review: The Most Pleasant Game About Death You'll Ever Play

Legendary supporter Sea Sniper made Paul play Spiritfarer, betting that Paul's love for Stardew Valley would carry over. Paul went in cautiously optimistic and predicted he'd rank it around 30th on his leaderboard. Ryan promised to play along with him and, as Josh predicted, never did. So this episode has a fun format: Josh and Ryan ask the questions, and Paul answers.

Josh's first question: "Did you cry?" No. But Paul definitely had feels.

What is it?

You play Stella, a young woman with a big hat and an even bigger smile. Charon, the ferryman of the dead from Greek mythology, tells her it's his last day and she's the new Spiritfarer. You get a boat and sail a hand-drawn, side-on world, finding spirits, taking them aboard, caring for them and eventually bringing each one to the Everdoor, the passage to the afterlife. Stella never says a word. Your cat, Daffodil, comes along (and sometimes gets stuck when it's time to saw a tree together).

There's a lot to do

It's a cozy management game, a crafting game and, surprisingly, a light Metroidvania.

• Your boat gets upgrades at the shipyard: more space, more speed, and the ability to break through barriers into new waters, like Vice City's "bridge under construction."
• The islands have their own resources, and the map tracks what each one has, including whether there's a spirit you haven't found yet.
• New abilities unlock as you go: double jump, a hat glide, umbrella bounces and a dash. Paul loved returning to an island the moment he could finally reach that ledge.
• The spirits each ask you for buildings (a workshop, a kitchen, a garden), and every one unlocks a new resource or crafting system. There are 15 in all.
• Every job is a minigame. At the sawmill, you steer a plank through the zigzag cut, and better cuts mean more planks. There are about 20 of these, and they get a little repetitive.

And the fishing? Paul says any game with fishing is guaranteed a pass from him, but this is the weakest activity in the game: hold X, let go, hold X again. The tuna, with its epic music, is cool, though.

The spirits

Spirits appear as animals: a deer, a mushroom, a frog. Paul thinks that's deliberate. It puts a little emotional distance between you and some heavy stories, like an eight-year-old who keeps saying he fell asleep and can't wake up. Not everyone lived a good life. Some are ready to go after two errands, some are bitter, some were criminals, and some are family.

You can hug everyone, including the cat. You cook people their favorite meals. And when you take a spirit to the Everdoor, it's just the two of you in a rowboat. They share their final thoughts on life, Stella hugs them goodbye, and they rise into the sky and become a constellation. You'll see it in the night sky for the rest of the game, their old room stays on your boat, and they return as glowing figures you can still hug when you pass the Everdoor again.

The breakout character is Stanley, the eight-year-old mushroom. His requests are pure kid logic: "Throw this old boot in the forge and see what happens!" (Glue.) "Now put the glue and sawdust in the oven!" (Paper.) He's the funniest part of the game.

Paul's favorite moments are the conversations with Hades, who appears as a towering, Godzilla-sized owl with fiery feathers. Those scenes feel straight out of Studio Ghibli, which inspired the developers.

Not manipulative

Paul hates games that beat you over the head to make you cry, and Spiritfarer never does. The orchestral music swells at all the right moments, and Paul gets why it reduces so many people to tears. It's a G-rated game, but he calls it maybe the most adult game he's played, because of its subject matter. It's best for grown-ups who've experienced loss.

The VGP take

Paul ranked it right where he predicted, 30th out of 107, and gave it a solid A-minus. The story carries it (he estimates it's 80% story, 20% gameplay), and the gameplay drags it down just a tad. Stardew Valley's gameplay loop is still better. Some stories hit harder than others, depending on your own life. He'd wait for a sale to get it under $20, or play it on Netflix if you already subscribe.

Josh and Ryan both loved hearing about it and both think it's not for them. Josh suspects he'd dislike about 16 of the 25 hours. But hearing about a game you'd never pick yourself is exactly why we love Hijack a Host.