This game helped me process and deal with the death of my father. I don't think I have anything else to say, I'll just be forever thankful.

Spiritfarer is a beautiful game. Animations and art style are unlike you've ever seen. The game will touch you, but it is not without it's flaws and I want to talk about those flaws.

At the end of the day the game is overshadowed by its time sink mechanics. The whole gameplay loop is designed to take unnecessarily long. There are simply way too many time consuming factors in the gameplay: you must travel, you must wait for resources, you must unlock things to be able to unlock stuff so that you can unlock another thing x10, you must wait with each passanger arbitrary time to proceed. Everything takes time and the amout of backtracking is nuts.

If you pick up someone late, you're going to be doing nothing for hours as you wait for the passanger's cues. There is no reason why the game makes you wait this long, or maybe it's a sick meta game about wasting your time on Earth.

I played the game for nearly 40 hours and there's still 10% more things to accomplish. But the things that remain are purely waiting, travelling to the same destinations and doing some errands, I can't. I wish the game cut it's length into half. That way the meaningful moments wouldn't be so far from each other and the whole experience would be more memorable. Now in the near 40 hours I had maybe an hour worth of meaningful stuff happening. Rest is micromanaging, waiting, running errands. Maybe it is a meta game of life, but it's not fun nor entertaining.

Still, I would recommend this game. But don't try to get 100% done. It will take way too much time.

This game was gifted to me during a very tough time. Playing this game in a grieving state isn't a requirement, no, but doing so elevates the experience to a personal level. I don't think my review is unique in this way either.

The game doesn't pretend to hold all the answers, and it certainly isn't a cure-all, but I am ever grateful for the solace it provided me during one of the hardest periods of my life.