You’ve got me in Stardew meeting Soul land
Simulators are an important part of the game industry, and they’ve especially noticed some love in the last few years following the success of games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Stardew Valley. This year, it looks like there are more sims than ever, and emulators are one of my all-time favorite game genres, so I was pleasantly surprised by it. Out of all the trailers for the emulator we’ve seen this year, one trailer caught my eye to be Spirittea, is being developed by Cheesemaster Games and published by No More Robots. Diary is it Stardew meeting Soul land, automatically enough to get me on board. I’ve played the demo and so far, everything looks pretty promising.
What Spiritteapremise of?
It’s the classic story of moving from a big city to a small town that community sims tend to have, only when you get there you drink some special tea that allows you to peer into the spirit world. Ghostly! After tea, an adorable floating cat friend named Radish (how adorable!) comes to greet you and tell you that you’ve been tasked with running the mountain bathhouse that has been abandoned for years.
From there, most of the demo is your first day at the bathhouse, which is heavily focused on management simulator territory. You are tasked with keeping the boiler full of fresh firewood to warm the bath water, wash and dry towels for guests, only give baths to guests, add salt to the bath water… you come up with an idea. I used to play a lot Diner Dash salon days on my iPod Touch, so it’s pretty familiar territory there.
A relaxing management sim
There’s also a mechanic, where each soul that visits you corresponds to a season, and souls have preferences about where they sit in the tub (and who sits next to them) based on that season. It’s up to players to figure out what spirit the season is going to take and keep them happy in their genre. I didn’t have enough time to learn all that while playing the demo, but I know it’s an additional level management simulation challenge that I’ll be looking forward to competing in the full game. .
Spirittea also alludes to being able to purchase upgrades to make your bathroom life easier, and I imagine those become quite useful when there’s so much more to play around with. Outside of the bathhouse, there’s a lovely little town to explore filled with townsfolk. Unfortunately, none of them will talk to me during the demo because I have an important mission in the bathroom. That leaves another feature of Spirittea expect, because making friends in the simulation community is one of my favorite things about simulation games.
Many more of Spirittea expected!
I also have to mention the art and music – the whole time I played, I was immersed in the soundtrack because it was so enjoyable. It fits the atmosphere perfectly, and it’s engaging enough for me to notice that I’m enjoying it, but not so much that it’s distracting. The pixel art is great too and definitely makes me look forward to spending more time exploring the town and surrounding area.
I still have a lot of questions about Spiritteaand the jury is still out on whether it’s completely scratched Stardew itch, but from what I’ve seen so far, I’m happy to try the full game once it’s over. All we have about the release date right now is the “Coming soon” message on Steam pageso for now it would be nice on my wish list.
