Spiritfarer

is about death. You play as Stella, whose job is to take dying spirits through the Everdoor to their final death, when they’re ready. Except, I think it is actually about kindness. Helping a spirit become ready to go involves cooking for them, hugging them, and building them a home on your enormous houseboat. And for that you must care for sheep, play music to plants to help them grow, mine for coal and learn to smelt silver.

It is a cosy management game where you spend most of your time harvesting things to make other things. Like Stardew Valley, but where your thousand acts of labour are done entirely for, on the face of it, nothing. Or at least not for your own material gain. It’s all given away. It is excellent.

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Spiritfarer

, the “cosy management game about dying”, is full of many little acts of kindness.

“You can hug anyone, by the way,” Nicolas Guérin tells me, during my recent hands-on preview. Guérin is creative director at Thunder Lotus Games, and Spiritfarer is a slight shift from their action games Sundered and Jotun. Death is a common theme, perhaps, but Spiritfarer is a much more gentle affair. I hug a little mushroom with arms and legs, who is the avatar of a seven- or eight-year-old boy. He leaps into my arms. It is very sweet.

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June’s not quite here but we’re already being treated to a few digital showcases in the style of E3 presentations. Wholesome Direct rounded up a whole 55 indie games with varying styles of kindness and cuteness to show off in a 35-minute show. A few big names like town sim Ooblets and boat manager Spiritfarer showed up to join arms with some smaller but equally swell looking games you may not have heard of. You can rewatch the entire show below.

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You, there, stop that. You’ve got new videogames to play. Good Old Games has just launched free demos for Desperados 3 and the System Shock remake, along with a handful of other upcoming games. I’ve already had a sneaky play of both tactical cowboys and cybernetic spaceship loners, so I can already tell you they’re worth your time. Aren’t I good.

This is also another chance to check out Carrion, a horror game where you are a horrible mass of sticky tentacles.

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Steam kicks off a nearly week-long spree of free game demos today with its Steam Game Festival. It is certifiably a celebration of great indie games, with demos available for some that are already released and others yet to come. There appears to be a bit of everything: puzzles, action, management, platforming, and more. Everything from Thunder Lotus’ upcoming cozy management game Spiritfarer to the buzzsaw hell game Disc Room. They’ve all got free demos available until Monday the 23rd.

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I’ve been quite jazzed about Spiritfarer since it was first announced last year. The cozy crafting and management game has a much different vibe from the last Thunder Lotus game I played. Jotun kicked my rear right through the final moments so I’ll be glad to have a different relationship with this next one. There’s a new trailer out today showing off some of the gathering and crafting you’ll do while piloting your ferry.

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Over the break we had a chance to do some serious scientific study of this business we call games, and it turns out that games are actually good. 2020 in particular has a healthy mix of big budget bonanzas and smaller indie plates to suit everyone’s discerning tastes. And, as you know, the RPS treehouse is the most discerning, so to make it easier for you we’ve got a big ol’ list of the games we’re most looking forwards to this year. It’s traditional.

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This would not be RPS if I didn’t return from Gamescom and write minimally about the triple A-xtravaganzas and maximumly about smaller, weirder things wot I saw. So here, have at it: my favourite of the independently made games I saw at this year’s show. I flatter myself that the selection is broad enough that it covers genres to suit every taste. Strategy games! Card games! Building games! I haven’t picked all story driven adventure games or RPGs! That’s personal growth on my part, that’s what that is.

Highlights include the one about loneliness, the one about loneliness, and the one about death.

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“We all die, everything dies, every living thing dies.”

Nicolas Gu rin is reassuring me. He’s the creative director at Thunder Lotus Games and they’re working on Spiritfarer, announced at E3 2019 as a “cosy management game about dying.” I need reassuring because I’ve played a 15-minute demo of Spiritfarer and I’m worried that a game that treats death lightly will make light of the suffering that is death’s bedfellow.

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I wouldn t blame you for having missed Spiritfarer s trailer at E3 this week, which came right after Keanu Reeves surprise appearance at the Microsoft press conference. But still, now that it s the weekend and things are calming down a bit, it s the perfect time to take a look at its pleasant management-y-ness and beautiful skybox. According to its trailer, which you can see below, its key verbs are build, care, explore, which are all lovely. And you can hug a deer, a long term ambition of mine.

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