One of the best games of 2020, Spiritfarer is now available on Netflix

There are so many deaths in video games. It is always fleeting, a You died Screen or numbers lined up on a scoreboard. Of course, these deaths have meaning: reflections of perseverance, skill, progress. wrong way driver takes a different approach, looking closely at the finite reality of death – of people and things dying and moving on. It’s equal parts sadness and optimism, a playful and sad display of caring for someone leaving this world. It is among the best games of 2020 and you should not miss it.

wrong way driver is no longer on Xbox Game Pass, but anyone with a Netflix subscription can play it on mobile. It’s only for Android and iOS devices, and although this might not be the best version of wrong way driver

it’s still a beautiful game that I think about often, even years after I first played it.

Developer Thunder Lotus describes the game as a “com fortable management game about death”. It is based on classical Greek mythology, specifically the story of the River Styx, the iconic path between earth and the afterlife. Styx’s ferryman is Charon, bringing spirits across the river and into the underworld. wrong way driver

‘s story replaces Charon with a young person named Stella and her cat Daffodil. In their green boat, Stella and Daffodil recruit new friends, build a sprawling home on their boat, and take their neighbors to the afterlife when it’s time to move on.

Image: Thunder Lotus Games

This means traveling between the islands of the world to meet ghosts that remain behind. Once on board, these recruits become crucial to growing crops, cooking, and building a mobile city made up of stacked rooms – personal quarters for each ghost, but also a garden, cooking kitchen, and resource mill. wrong way driver can be repetitive and slow as you venture out into the world to find resources, process them, and attend to your spirits’ needs. But this slowness serves a purpose; these activities are acts of care. The time and effort it takes to meet these needs only adds weight to the ultimate goal of guiding the spirits to the afterlife. wrong way driver is such a special game because its gameplay blends effortlessly with the story. There is no management simulation for that; each of these efforts is a conscious act.

The reward for these acts is getting to know each of the spirits, yes, but also helping bring their stories to the end. It’s often incredibly sad, and a sense of melancholy is inevitable when you know that the very people you care for will end up leaving you. But the sadness comes second to the joy and hope found in each of these stories, which are sometimes messy but always thoughtfully told.

Unfortunately for wrong way driver, the Netflix mobile port has some issues with crashing and unwieldy controls. But at least the control problem has a solution – use an external controller. It plays better on a bigger screen via an iPad, but phones are fine. wrong way driver can be played cooperatively – one player as Stella and the other as Daffodil – on PC and console, but this feature doesn’t extend to the mobile port, perhaps due to the size of the screen.

Management and life simulators have seen a resurgence in recent years, with players looking for lower-pressure, slightly slower-paced games. There is no shortage of them. but wrong way driver stands out from the crowd for how perfectly its management gameplay supports its moving, emotional story.