In yesterday’s post, I was talking about my two top five (six) list of games. One is my list of the FromSoft games and the other is my list of my five favorite other games of all time. I have to do it because otherwise my top five fave list would just be From games. I don’t have a problem with that, but it’s not respresentative of my interests over all.
What do I mean by that? I mean that while I adore the From games, I also really like indie games for very different reasons. I’ll be real. I don’t get that deep in my feels while playing From games. Don’t get me wrong. There are feelings there. Liking wanting to bonk this character or that. I kid, but I am also not kidding. There are many tragic stories in the games, and they are involved and in-depth. Layered, even. I have had feelings while experiencing the different NPC questlines, sure, but…
Is this heresy to say? It might be, but I don’t care. I’m just keeping it real.
In playing games, I have not gotten as deep in my feels as I did while playing at least three of the games on my non-From list. Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall); Spiritfarer (Thunder Lotus Games); and, Cozy Grove (Spry Fox). They are all special in different ways, but they have a thread that runs through all of them. Death.
I played the three games before my medical crisis (and some Cozy Grove after), and now, they mean so much more since I died (twice!). I have a completely different lens through which I look at life, and these games have stayed with me. I talked about Night in the Woods in yesterday’s post, and today, I want to talk about Spiritfarer.
What can I say about this game? First, it’s made by a dev that I had tried one of their prior games (or both. I can’t quite remember. Sundered and Jotun), and I did not like either. They have a new game that is played by up to 33(!) players at the same time–which is also so much not my jam. Howevwer, when I saw the trailer for Spiritfarer (which I’ll include below), I knew immediately that it was something special. The environments were hand-drawn, rich in color, and just so lovely. The music suited the game, being simultaneously ethereal and haunting, and the characters were rich and complex.
I will say that I didn’t realize it was actually tagged as a platformer because that’s such a minor aspect of the game, and it’s the part I least-enjoyed. I won’t get into that, but the platforming at the end almost made me quit the game.
Anyway, the main character is a silent protagonist named Stella who is the titular spiritfarer. Her job is to take people to the Everdoor at the end of their lives. As the player, I had to build up the boat on which I spent a lot of time making things. There’s a lot of plant growing, cooking, and other such activities on the boat.