izigame.me

So I beat the game...but basically because of sunk cost fallacy. The game has some highs but far heavier lows. This is definitely a "doing chores" game above anything else.

Mild Spoiler Warning below.



Spiritfarer is beautiful with its art direction and it controls well. The story premise is interesting and I wanted to be invested in it...but I just could not be. The game revolves around two things. Resource management and interacting with Spirits living on your boat. The idea is to get to know these individuals over time and release them through the Everdoor to pass into the afterlife.

The problem is the game does neither of these particularly well. The resource management was good at first, it scratches the resource management board game itch I have. But then where to spend resources is either non-existent or you find you suddenly have to grind for another couple of hours to complete one thing.

The spirits themselves...man they basically picked every worst archetype of people out there and put them here. There were a total of 2 spirits I actually cared for by the end. You don't get to know them THAT well in the end, you mostly just get to hear their quips directed at you, which the majority of them are very negative to downright insulting you constantly. If they aren't insulting you, they are being annoying as possible. There were a couple of spirits that I looked forward to seeing their final moments just to get more background on them and how they died, but in that moment they did almost none of that, so I STILL had no connection to them as they passed. Characters weren't just "here's something I like", they were "this thing I like is my entire personality, deal with it".

Time. Your time is not respected here. You will be grinding and grinding for resources to advance minor things constantly. Not only that, there's MANY things in the game that require full, multiple in game days to pass which are about 20 mins long. There were countless times I left my game running in the background because I was forced to wait literal hours for something to be done. There is no time advancement in the game other than sleeping at night. All day hours must be waited out in real time. In addition I would be doing this and doing all the quests I could with the resources the game had available at those intervals (you have to unlock more of the map with boat upgrades for more resources) but it turned out I had to do some random interaction to progress the game. No progression was ever clear. I would just be stuck because I needed resources I didn't have access to. For example, one requires fishing. I had done so much fishing up to that point I hadn't done it again for hours because I had SO MUCH already in my inventory, so why would I ever bother to do the mundane task again?

I tried so hard to like this game but man it was such a slog to get through with how bad pacing is and how unclear progression is. I love the idea, the execution was just so far off. You shouldn't assume your players are going to just do everything on repeat after they've already done it for hours on end. It gets boring, you need to spice it up or give better direction. I guess people who enjoy "cozy" games likely will enjoy this more but I was losing my mind after every dull task.