Adventure · 2020 · Thunder Lotus · local
Spiritfarer
A boat that carries the departed to the afterlife, and a cat helping out.
What it is about
Stella takes over as ferrymaster: she collects the departed, brings them aboard her boat and stays with them until they are ready to walk through the gate into the beyond. Until then they live on board, and each of them wants something — their own house, a particular meal, one last conversation.
The boat is extended piece by piece: kitchen, weaving shed, sawmill, garden. Between islands you fish, smelt ore, spin wool and cook. There are no enemies, no clock and no way to do something irreversibly wrong.
With two players, the second person plays the cat Daffodil. She comes along, helps with harvesting and can hug — but the workbenches, the dialogue and the decisions stay with Stella. You play on one screen with one copy, or across distance via Remote Play Together.
Our verdict for couples
The second player is a cat, and that is not a joke but the design: Daffodil walks along, jumps along, harvests and hugs — but the workbenches, the conversations and every decision stay with player one. What sounds at first like half a co-op is in truth the friendliest answer for a very uneven pair: one leads, the other sits alongside, talks it through, picks things up and sends the cat bouncing across the screen without ever losing to a control scheme. Someone who has never held a controller is playing within two minutes. The game around it is the calmest hour you can have together: warm colours, no time pressure, no failure, and at the end of every story a farewell that genuinely hurts. Only anyone expecting two equally strong roles should know that in advance.
Pros
- One copy covers you both
- The cat role suits a pair with very uneven experience
- Nothing can go wrong and nothing is lost
Cons
- Only the first player operates workbenches and conversations
- The routes across the map grow long over time
- The gathering and delivering repeats
Suitable from
Casual
- Conflict potential
- Serene
- Cosiness
- Very cosy
- When you can stop
- Any time
- How long it lasts
- 15–40 hours
What other co-op fans say
What stands out here is mostly what nobody writes about: the co-op is barely mentioned in the reviews at all. What gets praised is the story, the hand-drawn art and the music, and unusually often that they cried at the end. The recurring objection lands on precisely the part you do together: the gathering, cooking and delivering strikes some as busywork stretched out for the sake of the story.
- “Beautiful characters and stories. Love the design. Very enjoyable and cozy game considering it's about death.”
- “Spiritfarer is a great little cozy game. If you love a story driven game with some small mini games it's worth giving a try. Just expect some feels.”
- “The story may be good but this is the most grindy and repetitve game i've played in a while, I'm not willing to spend this much time doing chores in a game just for a good story.”
Summarised by machine from 60 Steam reviews, not written by our editors. The quotes appear verbatim in those reviews.
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