Hey! Hallie here!
I’ve talked a lot about my favorite cozy games on this blog, but recently I had a real life situation that made me think of ‘Spiritfarer’ in particular. ‘Spiritfarer’ has been a very sad but calming form of catharsis for me, and I don’t think that would be true if it wasn’t for the amazing cast of characters you get to know throughout the game. ‘Spiritfarer’ does an amazing job of making you care about every single spirit you encounter, even if you didn’t like them at first. So much so that you feel a sense of sadness when you help even the difficult characters cross over. But still, some characters feel more memorable than others, and some aren’t quite able to overcome the bad things they did in life. For this post I’m going to rank each of the spirits, but naturally, this is my personal opinion. If I put your favorite character towards the bottom of the list, this is my preemptive apology! Also, SPOILERS AHEAD!
14.Elena: There are some characters in this game who are difficult to deal with, but Elena puts them all to shame. First off, she won’t accept hugs. Hugging the characters of this game is one of the most wholesome elements of the entire thing. Still, I would have accepted a character who challenged the mechanic by putting up boundaries, as long as they weren’t incredibly rude about it. But Elena thrives on being rude. She says things like “don’t touch me,” and “keep your distance,” when you offer a hug. When she talks about her past you very quickly realize that she was the type of teacher you hated as a kid. She thought all of her kids were lazy and inadequate, and she notes that one of the highest moments of her career was when she finally got up the courage to scream at the kids in her class. And though she does say that the school she worked at valued money more than hard work, you still can’t help but think that screaming at students wouldn’t accomplish anything. And unlike some other characters in the game, she doesn’t change. She doesn’t go through much character growth before she decides to pass through the Everdoor. If Elena is anything, she’s a lesson that even people you don’t get along with deserve some empathy at the end of their lives. That lesson doesn’t make her any easier to like, though.
13.Bruce and Mickey: These two wind up at the bottom of most people’s lists and I’m not one to break this trend. Once again, we have a character who isn’t easy to get along with. That isn’t Mickey, the big bull who doesn’t speak, but it instead describes his brother Bruce, a small hummingbird who speaks on behalf of himself and his brother. Or so he says. Though Bruce is mostly unpleasant (The brothers do accept hugs though,) and irritates the majority of the spirits on Stella’s boat, their story is the thing that saves them from the last place position. It becomes clear towards the end of their time with Stella that Mickey isn’t there. He’s silent because he passed on long ago after a car-chase ended in him getting shot, and he only appears because Bruce isn’t willing to let go of him. This state reflects the state they were in when Stella knew them as an End-Of-Life Nurse, where Mickey was technically alive but braindead, and Bruce never left his side until the end of his life. It’s a devastatingly tragic story, but it isn’t one that allows these two a higher position on this list.
12.Giovanni: A lot of people have mixed feelings about Giovanni. On the one hand, he’s extremely charming, has an excellent sense of humor, and is overall very kind to Stella. But when you hear his wife, Astrid’s, point of view your opinion of him quickly becomes complicated. He was known for using his charm to win over many women. While he was married to Astrid. He cheated on her, and even in death he doesn’t show much remorse for it. While he will admit that he hurt her, he has a firm belief in living life to its fullest. Which to him means that marriage shouldn’t hold him back from the excitement of flirting with other people. He can even be found flirting with other women in the spirit world. Though he will eventually confess that this entire attitude was a facade built to hide behind how inadequate he felt next to the successful and well-liked Astrid, it still doesn’t excuse his actions. This is a case of someone who seems likable on the surface but only leaves you with mixed feelings when he passes through the Everdoor.
11.Daria. I love Daria, but she, much like the next character on this list, doesn’t get a lot of time for her story. What we get is extremely interesting. She was a patient at the hospital Stella and Jackie worked at (We’ll talk about Jackie in a bit), who struggled to connect with others due to her sound-to-color synesthesia. You connect with her in mini-games through music and eventually find out that she was a talented painter and musician before her condition worsened. But that’s really all you figure out. She doesn’t even spend time on your boat until it’s time to take her to the Everdoor. You just don’t get a lot of time with her, and though the gameplay with her is memorable, her story doesn’t get enough of a spotlight.
10.Buck. Buck is always one of the last characters you’ll pick up on Stella’s boat and he won’t ask to go to the Everdoor. He is meant to be the last person on the boat, the one to accompany Stella to the Everdoor, and because of that you don’t get as much time with him as you do other characters. You do become very familiar with his nerdy interests, specifically concerning table-top roleplaying games. You get hints of the guy he used to be, a former friend of Stella’s sister who died too young and rounds off Stella’s story as one of her first experiences with death. In a way, you warm to him just because he’s the last person to be encouraging to the player before Stella passes on. But unfortunately, there still isn’t a lot to his character.
9.Beverly: Beverly is a kindly old owl who only ends up this low on the list for not shining as brightly as the other elderly women you meet in ‘Spiritfarer’. She’s also one of two characters who deals with memory problems, but hers are admittedly less impactful than the other event I will mention later. Her life was pretty simple. She talks a lot about her husband, who she met on a blind date and who passed before her, and her two kids who have long since left. She’ll reminisce mostly about small events she can remember, and as her memory goes, she begins to repeat those events. What really stands out about her is her stubborn and witty personality, but ultimately she’s just a neighbor Stella once knew. There isn’t anything particularly surprising about her.
8.Jackie. Kind of like Giovanni, Jackie is a bit of a more complicated character. He’s a former co-worker of Stella’s who lived on her couch for a while before his untimely death. In life and in death, he’s always been a bit jealous of her. While she found purpose in her role as a nurse, he hated his role as an orderly and often shirked off work as a result. He was responsible for caring for Daria when she was alive, and though he used her as an excuse not to do other work, he never bothered to connect with her and advised others not to bother with her. At one point his actions and general anger problems caused Daria to retaliate, harming Jackie and leading to his dismissal. Which in turn, led him to Stella’s couch. After you essentially replay the events of Jackie and Daria’s life in the Spiritworld, Jackie moves onto Stella’s boat and decides to start working on his problems. He makes a genuine effort to work through his anger issues, his lack of self-confidence, and the depression that led to his lack of motivation. By the end of his story you can see Jackie has grown into a better person who’s more proud of who he is. It’s a really great character arc, and a memorable one as well.
7.Gustav: We’ve gotten down to the characters I absolutely adore and we’re only at seven. Gustav is a really fascinating character. He’s a German art curator who Stella met in Japan, and throughout their interactions you can tell he majorly inspired her in life. She visited one of his art shows and spoke to him often, and his imaginative and wise words even serve to leave a lasting impact on the player. Gustav can be a bit difficult to please on the boat, but he’s always kind and level-headed. The problem with Gustav is his attitude towards his multiple sclerosis. He makes it very clear that it was mentally hard for him to come to terms with it, and he hated the impact it had on his body. All of that’s fine. What’s not fine is his very limited view of his inability to walk, and his relief over not having a wheelchair in the after-life. This isn’t so much a problem with the character as it is a misunderstanding by the writers when it comes to disability representation, and the ways aids like wheelchairs play a role in many people’s lives. But that conversation is better heard from disabled fans of the game.
6.Alice. These last few are really difficult for me to sort out, but Alice is a very important character to me. She’s extremely nice but can fall to the background if a player isn’t paying enough attention. She’s quite shy and doesn’t want to be a bother to anyone. But the more you get to know her, the more you see a bright, warm personality. You get to know her as a mother who loved her kids and who wanted the best for everyone. But in life she had dementia, an illness that Stella took care of her during and which inspired Stella to become an end-of-life nurse. In death she struggles with the same illness. By the time you take her to the Everdoor, she doesn’t remember Stella and the player must dress Stella in colors Alice associated with her daughter so she’ll trust Stella to help her cross over. It’s absolutely heartbreaking and hits extremely hard for anyone who’s seen someone suffer form a similar illness. But, like all the other crossings, it offers a level of peace and comfort that I very much needed when I played it.
5.Gwen. Gwen is the very first character you meet in ‘Spiritfarer’ and the spirit who helps Stella build her boat and gain the confidence to become a spiritfarer. As you get to know her you realize she was an old friend of Stella’s, one who was known for trouble-making but still was a figure Stella looked up to for a good portion of her life. Gwen is jaded from her difficult relationship with her father and has a hard time accepting her smoking habit as the reason for the lung cancer that killed her. But she still makes a point of looking out for Stella, and it really feels like you’re losing a safe space when you help her through the Everdoor. Though Gwen is only there for the first part of the game, her connection to Stella and her complicated personality make her memory last long after she’s gone.
4.Atul. Uncle Atul is one of the most adorable and heartbreakingly confusing spirits in the entire game. No one can argue that Atul doesn’t give the best hugs out of every spirit in the game, and his generally boisterous and joyful personality only serve to make his rounded frog form more adorable. When you talk to Uncle Atul he always talks fondly of his family, including Stella, his actual niece whom he took pride in teaching many life skills. Even though he can irritate other spirits on the boat with his constant tinkering, he still puts other people first. He’s almost too kind to everyone he meets. But Atul is more complicated than he seems. He struggles with finding happiness himself despite all the good things he’s done. And then there’s his disappearance. Atul doesn’t ever get to go to the Everdoor. He’s just gone. This parallels the disappearance that happened in life, a situation that devastated Stella. Though seeing his spirit confirms for Stella that he died, the fact that she can’t help him pass on further cements for Stella that there was nothing she could have done in that situation. Still, it’s hard to let him go.
3.Astrid. A complete badass who you meet while she’s arranging a worker’s strike, Astrid isn’t one to mess with. She’s kind but fair, gentle but firm, and doesn’t take anyone’s BS. Hilariously, she isn’t one to turn down a bit of gossip, but she’ll never cast judgement on someone who doesn’t deserve it. I mean, she hid Jewish children in her mother’s restaurant during World War II. How could this woman be anything but badass? All of this makes it more heartbreaking when you begin to explore her relationship with Giovanni. She loves him dearly even though he by no accounts deserves it. And she struggles with wanting their relationship to bring them both happiness while coming to terms with the fact that it never can. But even through all that she still keeps an eye on Stella, whom she took in as a surrogate grandchild. She’s just amazing and it’s difficult not to like her.
2.Summer. An absolutely gorgeous snake and an actually confirmed queer character, Summer married into Stella’s family when she fell in love with Stella’s aunt. She struggled her entire life with breast cancer, experiencing a dread for it that she still hadn’t accepted in death. But Summer put all of her effort into being at peace with the universe, deciding to grow a garden and pursue more spiritual hobbies. Because of these things she’s a very calming presence to be around. She’s one of the best spirits to talk to just because she’s so empathetic and understanding towards Stella. Her impact on Stella also plays directly into the story, as being by her side after Summer’s wife died and her cancer returned inspired Stella to become a nurse. I also find her storyline the most healing, with her character more than any other character deciding to spend her time on Stella’s boat working to fully be at peace with the way she died. By the time she leaves she’s achieved peace and there’s something so fulfilling in seeing that.
1.Stanley. Yes, I’m one of those ‘Spiritfarer’ fans who can’t get enough of Stanley. Can you blame me? Stanley is the only child you encounter during the game. That in itself is absolutely tragic. But interacting with Stanley, you never feel too sad. He’s the brightest ray of sunshine you’ll meet in the game. He’s also hilarious. He’ll tell anecdotes that sound very much like a little kid, will repeat adult words he doesn’t understand, and will draw your attention away from serious thing so he can talk about his pet beetle. Already his appearance, as a mushroom with multiple arms rather than an animal, reflects the whimsical imagination of a kid. But the quiet moments where he contemplates his situation also reflects the surprising wisdom of a child. The moments right before you send him through the Everdoor are definitely sad, especially because he expresses that he’s frightened. But like every other character, you see him grown and change with his time on Stella’s boat, and you can only feel happy for him when he passes on. In many ways Stanley reminds me of why I like this game so much. While his situation is sad, the way it’s dealt with is so lighthearted and gentle that ultimately, it winds up comforting rather than horrible. It’s not easy to create a tone like that, but ‘Spiritfarer’ does.
Don’t do anything fun until I get back!
Hallie
Oreos & Peanut Butter 