Hey people! Nick Guérin, Creative Director of Spiritfarer here. It’s a bittersweet moment for the team today as we kick off the latest content update for Spiritfarer, the comfortable death management game. In today’s Jackie and Daria update, you’ll help our heroine Stella appease a troubled spirit and restore a dilapidated hospital to its former glory. It’s a nice reminder for the game as well as a big show of gratitude to the fans who have supported us since the day we announced the project – we hope you like it!
Yes, this is the end of a long journey for Team Spiritfarer. Today, since we are closing the book on the game for the foreseeable future, we are adding the subtitle “Farewell Edition” to Spiritfarer. It’s sort of a victory lap for a game we hold dear, a game we never dreamed would be adopted by a million players and it continues. I would like to take this opportunity to tell you a little more about how we got there.
As we shipped Spiritfarer, our comfortable death management game, into a global pandemic in August 2020, we felt a whirlwind of doubts and joy, a maelstrom of anxiety and relief.
The first reviews were good – dare I say great! But the emails, letters, and direct messages with sincere and kind words were especially surprising. Words of gratitude. Gratitude for the way Spiritfarer made them feel, think, or behave. For the role he played in easing the grief caused by the pandemic. And even for the way it had rekindled their passion for their profession as a healthcare professional or their duty as a caregiver. It all really melted my heart.
Obviously the fans had really connected with the game. And while the team was pretty happy with the version of Spiritfarer at launch, we knew we still had a lot to do. Beyond that, as we explored all that we had accumulated to create the original game, it became clear that the team still had a lot of stories to tell in this world.
Above all, we wanted to make sure we were telling Stella’s story correctly. We didn’t want to leave players confused as to what exactly happened in the story – so with our first content update, we’ve added Lily, Stella’s sister, to help flesh out the story with elegance and close that main narrative loop.
Then we turned to the characters we already knew intimately, who we had created at the start but weren’t able to integrate into the original game – still patiently waiting for them to come into the limelight, for their stories to be written. and told. So was born Beverly, the little but adorable owl spirit from our summer update.
Now what can you expect in today’s update? Stella sets sail for Overbrook Island, where problems abound at the dilapidated local hospital. Stella will first befriend spirit hyena Jackie, a well-meaning but disheartened thug who is overwhelmed with whatever needs to be done to keep the facility running. Stella will lend a hand by providing new resources for the hospital, as well as understanding how Charon’s mysterious vending machine works.
Stella also meets and befriends Daria, a bat-spirit and a particularly troubled patient at the facility. As the story unfolds and Daria begins to play a major role in Overbrook, she will challenge Stella to take on a whole new rhythmic platform challenge, in a kaleidoscopic level seemingly evoked straight from the restless mind. by Daria.
Ultimately, players will be delighted to find that the Jackie & Daria update fits into Spiritfarer’s evergreen themes of the Guard and the Goodbye. The new friends introduced here will also pass, once Stella has done her duty. But it was especially important to the art team that the cuteness affecting the protagonist’s world was visually communicated in this final update. On Overbrook, Stella’s passage literally brings color and life back to the island and its buildings, as evidenced by the before-and-after concepts presented here.
I’m extremely proud of what the team has accomplished in crafting the suite of updates leading up to today’s launch. I don’t have the words to express how grateful I am to the team, the audience and everyone who helped make Spiritfarer what it is today.
But now is the time to say goodbye to this world, let it rest and remember it as the bittersweet beacon of love that we hoped it would be, and how much it has become.
Thank you all and goodbye.