‘Spiritfarer’ Is ‘Animal Crossing,’ If It Were All About Death
Spiritfarer is a cozy, charming little life-sim adventure about animal spirits, the afterlife, and what you leave behind when you die. With an adorably touching art style on par with Animal Crossing’s furry neighbours, Studio Ghibli’s dashingly curious childlike protagonists and classic Disney 2D animation, it looks wonderful.
And, as Junkee discovered playing a demo of Spiritfarer at E3, it just might help you cope with dealing with grief, death and the fear of losing a loved one.
A cozy life-sim about dying
Stella is a young ferry master. With her fluffy white pet cat Daffodil, she travels the world by sea in search of animal spirits that are not yet ready to leave the world. Her task: to help ease them into the idea of death and the afterlife and complete their final requests before sending them off to the afterlife.
It’s an utterly charming premise that, as art director and one of ThunderLotus’ six core developers Jo-Annie Gauthier told Junkee, aims to help players cope with death, grief and existential dread.
Just like any other life-sim, you’ll explore islands for resources, scavenging supplies by mining, farming, fishing, crafting and cooking. You’ll also come across lonely animal spirits in need of a home. To recruit them on your voyage, you’ll have to build a house on your ship that they’ll feel at home in, befriend them and make their lives nice and cozy. When a spirit is ready to leave, you’ll travel to a portal to the afterlife hidden away in mysterious islands. There, you’ll give them one final hug goodbye and send them off.
As Gauthier explained, Spiritfarer is as much about remembering the positive impact a person’s left in your life as it is about giving you the tools to emotionally prepare to say goodbye to a loved one.
Each spirit has a preference for how they want their house. For some, they might like a small cottage hidden away at the top of the boat so they can feel the breeze on their skin. Another might prefer a place wedged between neighbouring spirits and a garden they can tend to daily. Or somewhere they can meditate and hear the calm sounds of waves crashing against the ocean surface. And, beautifully yet tragically, when they move on, their home will remain on the ship like an heirloom to Stella and the memories you shared with them.
“We’re trying to make [grief] a positive thing and not just, ‘you’ve lost so much and need to be sad now and sad forever’,” Gauthier said. “[It’s] about what they leave behind and the positive impact they’ve had on your life.”
“We can’t treat kids like just people who don’t understand; they’re people who need deep experiences [just as] adults need to be reminded. Everyone deals with grief differently. We just really want an emotional experience that everyone can relate to because everyone at some point has lost someone.”
As such, Spiritfarer’s cast of loveable animal spirits deal with the idea of passing on differently. For some, they fear it, delaying any conversation about it and their impending end with games and random activities around the ship, while others embrace it in their furry and feathered arms, looking back on the life they had and the people they met. Either way, they’ll all need some convincing before they join you.
You can hug every single one of these friendly fuzzy critters
Much like Animal Crossing, what makes Spiritfarer so charming isn’t its life-sim mechanics but its fully realised characters and charming, playful world. The world is inhabited by a mischievous travelling raccoon salesman, mythical temples and shrines of light, rivers of red water dressed in hanakotoba flowers and gorgeous sunset-kissed islands.
Characters react and animate like the cheerful and boisterous residents of the old-fashioned pencil-on-paper 2D animation of Mary Poppins. They frolic, waltz, hop and cheer about the ship’s cabins and deck, about to break into a camp song about friendship and the wonders of imagination at any second.
Stella is a child brimming with imagination, optimism and empathy, playing around with Daffodil, laughing and hugging her animal neighbours. Echoing the main motive behind the game, characters will sometimes reject these hugs and at times need to feel physical intimacy. This helps to fully realise these characters not as funny adorable animals but as people with multifaceted wants, needs and behaviours.
In Junkee’s demo, we played out a day in the life of Stella and met three of her animal companions: Gwen, the warm-spirited fluffy deer, Atul, the loud-mouthed cheerful frog and, Summer, the frail grandmotherly snake who calls you sweetpea.
We began our day exploring the ship and visiting our new neighbours, who each had a different task they needed help with. Gwen wanted to help teach us about the importance of farming and home-cooked meals by harvesting carrots in her garden and baking. When it started raining, Atul wanted to play music from his clarinet outside and teach us how to use our powerful magical orb to catch bolts of lightning. Daffodil wanted pats, attention and company.
Meanwhile, Summer was emotionally dealing with the stress and grief of having to say goodbye. Wrapped in a ragged cloth cloak, she approached us with a request: she needed a rare gem found in a faraway island to make a necklace she could take with her into the afterlife. So, as she began slithering around the cabin deck beckoning her kind-hearted sweetpea to follow, we went to the navigation room, adjusted an old fashioned map and set course.
As we began arriving at our destination, Summer admitted she wasn’t ready. We hugged, knowing this journey would be our final few moments together but also giving her all the emotional support she needed. After stepping onto the island, and finding the rare crimson red gemstone, we returned to Summer. She shed a small tear and went to her room to prepare to say farewell.
Setting course again to a mysterious unknown location we sailed past clouds of fog and misdirection and came across her final resting place, a temple hidden beneath a dense jungle plain. As we arrived, we said one last goodbye. By this point, we had only played Spiritfarer for about ten minutes and only briefly met Summer, but it was already hard not feeling a bit teary at the thought that our new friend was going. Then, in a few flashes of light and touching sounds, she was gone.
From what little we played of Spiritfarer, it’s no doubt that the game will turn out to be pretty special. A magical, touching tribute to the loved ones you’ve lost and our shared experience of grief and fear of death told through a wonderfully enchanting world of beautifully expressive 2D animation, infectious everyday lives and furry, feathered and wet-skinned animal friends.
Spirifarer reaches our shores on Switch, PS4, Xbox One and PC sometime in 2020.
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Julian Rizzo-Smith is a freelance games and pop culture writer. After playing this, he wants to become a ferry master, befriend animal spirits and give them a big hug. He tweets @GayWeebDisaster.