When Charon decides that his time has come someone needs to take over his duties. That someone is a young woman with her fluffy cat companion - Stella and Daffodil. After Charon gives them the symbol of their Spiritfarer status, the Everlight, their journey through the afterlife in a search for lost souls in need of guidance may begin.

Spiritfarer is visually beautiful and you can spend hours just watching the sunset or stars or fields under the mountain… pick a scenery that suits you the most. It's very colorful and the main locations are nicely varied. Watching Stella and Daffodil performing their duties or your Spirits walking around the ship is a joy. The music is also exceptional and corresponds with the game very well. All of it can quickly fill you with various emotions.

There are three different gameplay levels - resource management, metroidvania-like platformer and "visual novel" with deep emotions; and most of the time all of them work pretty well together. Also, my experience is heavily influenced by the fact that I have played it fully in co-op with my partner, and we have enjoyed it very much, but for one player some of the things can be too overwhelming.

Resource management game
As a true Spiritfarer Stella has a ship on which she must ferry the Spirits to the Everdoor. But it doesn't serve only as a means of transport, because your passengers are a bunch of demanding individuals and you need to take proper care of them by building suitable houses and serving their desired food. All of it requires a lot of resources and even though many can be found floating in the sea/river or on the scattered islands, it's best to be self-sufficient and for that you need to build a kitchen, field, chicken coop, sawmill, foundry and other utility buildings. At first, your ship is rather
small, and positioning everything on the deck takes some skill - felt like playing Tetris. ;) With story progression and more resources at your disposal you can expand your ship so more buildings can fit there. As your ship gets bigger finding the right space for everything isn't such fun any longer as you have a lot of space available. You just need to decide which look of your ship you like the best.

The vast majority of buildings can be further upgraded - utility buildings give (mostly) a boost to their production, decorating Spirit's homes gives a boost to their mood. Except for the decorations (which are inside) the buildings don't change in any way, they only receive a golden plate on the doors. Most of the upgrades make your life easier, but I wasn't a fan of upgraded field and garden - their yield is quicker but not higher (disappointing with the vegetable that gives you only 1 specimen), which makes caring for them rather tedious in the long run. Add to it a long animation sequence that can't be hastened in any way and you have a great combo for growing frustration.

Creating your own products is great fun and there are a lot of things you can do around the ship - fishing, harvesting crops, smelting metal into ingots, crushing stones to dust or sunflower seeds to oil, spinning fiber or yarn etc.! You also need to take care of your animals - sheep, cows and chickens! And you can't forget about your passengers - give them food, talk and hug with them regularly! The more happy they are, the more benefits you get from them. Time sure flies fast when you have to manage all of it and if you have a little bit of OCD inside of you, you will be trapped! ;D But! You don't have to do all of these things repeatedly as there is no penalty, even if you allow your passengers to be starving and unhappy.

Metroidvania-like platformer game
In Spiritfarer you will be exploring in two ways - on sea and on land. New sea locations are locked behind ice, rocks and mist borders. You need to upgrade your ship to be able to cross them. For that, you need to bring some of the Spirits to the Everdoor. That means some of them can't be with you for a longer time, because without releasing them you can't proceed. Aside from islands, you can stumble upon shipwrecks with crates holding random loot, travelling merchant, or even bus stops, which can be used for fast travel. The seas also give many exceptional resources that can't be found anywhere else. Harvesting such items takes the form of an extra event that is closely tied to a specific Spirit on your ship. Because of that, you can't harvest something before you get the Spirit that teaches you about it. When they are gone you can activate the event through symbols on doors of their homes. These events, like catching falling stars, are also a lot of fun! And we have spent a lot of time just riding around and seeking them out!

On land, you will be exploring small and bigger islands for resources, curious characters and lost Spirits. Some places will be inaccessible until you
get a new ability though. For that, you need to have enough Obols, payment for the ferry, and to find the required shrine. Like this, you can learn for example double jump or how to glide. With these skills, you can further explore the land and they are even pretty helpful during sea events!

"Visual novel"
Spiritfarer is about death and this simple statement holds in it a premise for a deep story filled with heavy emotions. Your main goal is to find Spirits, take them on your boat, listen to them, fulfill their wishes and accompany them on their last journey to the Everdoor. There are 14 Spirits that you need to take care of and as you interact with them they share bits of their past lives with you - their fears, hopes, misfortunes, happy events… and this is where the game lost me. Most of the time I have felt confused about what is going on. The story started to make some sense once we got to Jackie & Daria and that happens in the last location that you can access, which means that we have spent most of our time guessing - that doesn't help in connecting with the Spirits. They are a fine bunch, but I can't say that they had enough time to grow on me. It's just so quickly over, so when I took them to the Everdoor I didn't feel any deep emotions. Yeah, I was sad that they had to go (it will be more empty without them around and they won't give out free items any longer), but that was it. No tears for them (and I have cried during Pyre mind you).

Anyway, even if I am not sure where the game missed its point with me and the story felt like the weakest part, I still recommend Spiritfarer. I think it's a great game with funny, sweet moments and with a lot of hugging that would brighten your day! If you are gonna play alone beware of the many tasks that you need to perform as you can be quickly overwhelmed by them and play instead in shorter sessions. Oh, and lastly, the controller is more suitable for some tasks than the mouse/keyboard… luckily my co-op partner was doing those for me!