Video games:
Two ways to confront loss on the coziest terms
For a cute video game, “Spiritfarer has a lot to say about both life and death,” said Tom Marks in IGN.com. The “gorgeously animated” 2D adventure stands in stark contrast to the dark realism typical of most games that have attempted to address mortality. In this wretched year, it offers “a feel-good hug.” You play as Stella, who, accompanied by her cat, Daffodil, assumes the role of a mythological ferry master who carries spirits across a sea to their final resting places. Performing the task takes you to “beautiful villages full of rice fields, snowy lighthouses, and even bustling spirit cities,” but the game’s most poignant moments come as you piece together the “somber, touching” life stories of the “wonderfully written” animal characters that occupy your boat, from a posh deer named Gwen to a “lovably obnoxious” frog man named Atul. When the first of my passengers was ready to disembark forever, “I found myself genuinely in denial.” Once I finally acceded to the request, the moment was “shockingly affecting.”
Like Animal Crossing or The Sims, Spiritfarer is a management game, said Emily VanDerWerff in Vox.com. You spend most of your time completing small tasks to make your boat more pleasing to your animal passengers or to prepare them for the next life. Unlike similar previous games, though, this one is about how the homes you build don’t last forever. Over everything hangs the apprehension that “someday, this will all be over, and we don’t really know what’s next.” The memento mori come gently, though: “What I love about Spiritfarer is how, every so often, it quietly asked me just what I thought I was doing. Why was I trying to complete every task? Why was I not relishing this moment, this journey, this ocean?”
Spiritfarer isn’t the only recent indie game that soothingly addresses mortality, said Andrew Webster in TheVerge.com. In I Am Dead, which is “a lot more whimsical than the name implies,” you play as Morris, a recently deceased British museum curator who must seek out fellow ghosts in order to save his island home. To do that, you venture into the memories of the living and use your ghostly X-ray vision to peer inside household objects, many of which have stories to tell. “The game is full of jokes, oddities, and sweet narrative touches that reward poking around,” so go ahead and inspect that old record collection. “You can rifle through someone’s bedroom or relive the memories of their lost love,” and you won’t be rushed. This game is “obsessed with the details and history of things—and it wants you to become obsessed, too.”