Video Game / Spiritfarer

A cozy management game about dying.

What will you leave behind?

Spiritfarer (official site) is a management game with light Metroidvania elements by Thunder Lotus Games, creators of Sundered and Jotun.

Spiritfarer follows the story of Stella, who wakes up in the boat of the mythological ferryman Charon and is informed that she has been chosen to take over his task as the new Spiritfarer, carrier of the Everlight and ferrymaster for departed spirits. Along with her cat Daffodil, Stella sets out to sail the world to befriend and care for spirits before finally releasing them into the afterlife.

The game was released on August 18th of 2020 on various platforms. In 2021, it was announced that three new spirits would be added over the course of the year. The first, Lily, was added on April 20th, 2021. The second, Beverly, was added on August 31st, 2021. The third and final update, Jackie and Daria, was added on December 13th, 2021.

---

Spiritfarer contains examples of:

• Aborted Arc: After meditating with Summer at Mount Toroyama, the next conversation with her has her express surprise over Stella apparently receiving a vision of some kind while meditating, and urges her to meditate at any similar rocks to the one at the top of Mount Toroyama. The player never gets to see Stella's vision and it is never brought up again, and there is no option to meditate at any other of the similar stones they can find.
• Abusive Parents: Stanley is implied to have a verbally abusive mother.
• Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: If the spirits wear any clothes at all, they usually don't wear more than an accessory.
• Affair Letters: When Astrid gets worried about where her husband Giovanni went, she gives Stella a suspicious letter she found in the mailbox, not wanting to read it. It's a love letter from Jennyfer, who invited him to her apartment at Oxbury.
• Affectionate Nickname: Most of the spirits give Stella nicknames. Atul calls her 'Sprout' and sometimes 'Scout' (as does Bruce), Summer calls her 'honeybee', Astrid calls her 'Munchkin,' Giovanni calls her 'peanut', 'bambina,' and 'bella', Alice calls her 'little one,' Stanley calls her 'big hat,' and Buck calls her 'Commander'.
• All There in the Manual: The digital artbook - which, as of launch, is only available on itch.io or if you purchase the game via Steam - contains additional information about the characters and their lives.
  • The projector room has an upgrade that allows you to see facts about all the spirits you meet.
• Ambiguously Brown: Well, Ambiguously Indian anyway, or part Indian. Summer wears what seems like a sari, plays the sitar, is vegetarian and does meditation; however, she is a snake with green skin, which obviously obscures her ethnicity a little. Lily confirms that she, Stella and the rest of her family were Indians living in France.
• American Gothic Couple: The Old Painting that can be sold to Francis has a pair of bird spirits reenacting the famous Grant Wood painting.
• And You Were There: All of the spirits are either Stella's family members or patients at the hospice she worked in.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Several quests will get you new palettes to dress Stella in, as well as new fur colors for Daffodil. While you can change the colors of her garments from the time you unlock use of the wardrobe, Stella can't unlock most colors until the player gets an associated outfit.
• Animal Stereotypes: Mostly averted, though some of the spirits play the stereotypes of their species straight. Atul the frog is a jolly, boisterous musician who loves the water, Bruce the hummingbird is an energetic Motor Mouth, and Gwen the deer is elegant, calm, and majestic. The developers chose a hedgehog for Alice to represent her gentleness and timidity and spines to represent her lashing out in the depths of dementia.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Rain and heavy storms will take care of watering your crops for you.
  • With the Lily update, she allows you to sail even at night time.
  • With the Beverly update, you can set material gatherings in your quest log, and sail through event areas without having to go to the starting point and saying no; passengers will give hints to their favorite foods, and failing Elena's tasks will make retries easier.
• Artistic License – Animal Care: Sheep and cows can be fed anything, even food that's unhealthy for them in real life. As long as the sheep are well-fed and are kept in sheep corrals, they won't eat Stella's crops.
• Bad Boss: Astrid is first encountered leading a bunch of workers in a strike against a boss who doesn't really seem to care about them at all. He doesn't give them much vacation time, they have no health benefits, the site seems to violate a bunch of safety rules, and they're not paid leave if they get injured.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies:
  • Nebula pillbugs, the adults of which are about the size of a sheep. Thankfully, they're friendly.
  • Jacob, Stanley's pet ghost beetle, is almost as big as the mushroom child spirit himself. The ghost mites, which Stella can help Stanley and Jacob collect for their Ectoplasm, are much smaller, but they're still relatively bigger than real-life mites.
• Bittersweet Ending: There's no way around it: Stella is as dead as any of the other spirits, and eventually, she has to ferry herself to the Everdoor.
• The Big Guy: Atul is a frog spirit and is the largest of the cast. He's stubborn, boisterous, loves food, and is irrepressibly cheerful.
• Book Ends: The story starts with the current Spiritfarer Charon going through the Everdoor, and ends with his successor doing the same.
• Cartoon Cheese: The cheese you can make in the game is depicted as your typical holey Swiss variety.
• The Casanova: Giovanni the lion spirit has been a womanizer for the longest time and it appears he still is even the spirit world. He's also cheating on Astrid, who gets suspicious when Giovanni stops sleeping in the same room at night.
• Cats Hate Water: Jumping into the water will make Daffodil attempt to balance on his Everlight as it floats along the surface.
• Censored for Comedy: The Ruined Meal icon is portrayed as a plate of food with a censor blur over it. Apparently, whatever abomination you whipped up is too horrible to even look at.
• Central Theme:
  • Learning to say goodbye. Every spirit you take care of is already dead, and is about to proceed into the afterlife. As you go through the game, you get familiar with them, learn about their stories, struggles, worries, and build an attachment to them. But at some point, they eventually tell you that they are ready to go through the Everdoor. The game gives you time to prepare, and you could even keep them on your boat forever, but in order to progress you will have to send them away. After all, the only way to move on is to realize you have to let go. The spirits you bid farewell to never appear again, but they live on in your memories.
  • You Are Not Alone. During the entire game, the theme of being there when someone needs you (especially in death) is repeated over and over, with Giovanni and Astrid, Bruce and Mickey, and Stella and her patients. In the end, Stella's greatest need is to know that she is not alone, which is fulfilled by being with her favorite pet Daffodil, and with the Lily DLC, knowing her mother and her sister are holding her hands when she passes on.
• The Chosen One: Humorously, at the Shrine at Greymist Peaks Shrine, a spirit asks Stella if she's going to save everyone trapped there, being the "Chosen One" and all.
• Civilized Animal: Many of the less anthropomorphic spirits fit this description, though their behavior is not really animalistic at all.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Summer quickly figures out that strong emotions seems to able to influence the Spirit World in substantial ways, proving it by asking Stella to participate in an experiment to play music for plants, which makes them grow faster.
• Constantly Lactating Cow: Cows can be milked once an in-game day without needing to get pregnant.
• Continue Your Mission, Dammit!: The spirits constantly remind you of the tasks you should complete for them if they're not telling you that they're hungry, have resources to gift you, or have a new story to tell.
• Co-Op Multiplayer: The game can be played in this way, with the second player controlling Daffodil the cat.
• Cooking Mechanics: By cooking ingredients in the ship's kitchen, you can make a whole host of dishes to feed the spirits on your ship, categorized by meal size and type (plain, healthy, acquired taste, dessert, etc.). Feeding spirits regularly is not strictly necessary, though they will pester you if they're hungry, and keeping them well-fed keeps their mood up. All spirits also have specific likes and dislikes in terms of food, which is not limited to meal type—Bruce and Mickey will refuse to eat anything with shellfish (since Mickey is allergic to it), as well as dishes with only one ingredient (they consider them too simple). Every spirit also has a favorite food, which they can occasionally request.
• Crate Expectations: The shipwrecks scattered around the map all contain floating crates, which you can open to get various items and materials.
• Dead to Begin With: The game is set in an afterlife (or pre-afterlife) world populated by spirits of the dead, meaning almost everyone in the story has already died. Including Stella, who lives through her final moments throughout the story.
• Delicate and Sickly: According to the digital artbook, Stanley was one, succumbing to a fatal disease at the age of 8.
• Disney Acid Sequence: The mysterious dimension that Stella and Daria enter whenever the former plays the latter's song for her is a psychedelic world with floating platforms, some of which disappear for a few seconds. Stella has to jump on them to reach Daria before being taken back to the spirit world.
• Don't Fear the Reaper: Stella is one of the least threatening depictions of a Psychopomp in media, being a friendly and cheerful girl whose job it is to befriend lost spirits and keep them happy until they are ready to pass on.
• Dying Dream: The digital artbook describes the game world as "a projection of Stella's life as an end-of-life care nurse, imagined by her while she, herself, was living through her final moments."
• Empathic Environment: When Stella first arrives at Overbook, it's raining and the background music is gloomy to reflect how desolate the hospital is, but as she helps improve its living conditions, the rain stops and the music becomes more cheerful.
• Exiled to the Couch: Where Giovanni sleeps represents the state of his relationship with Astrid. When she finally meets up with him, they sleep in the same bed signifying a honeymoon phase where they're happy. Eventually however, he starts sleeping on the couch outside the house which clues Astrid in to him cheating on her again. When his infidelity is discovered, Astrid kicks him out of the house where he moves into a lounge. Notably, his spirit flower is found on her couch, showing that ultimately he still loved her even if he couldn't stop hurting her.
• Fishing for Sole: One of the possible items Stella can get while fishing are "soggy and smelly" Old Shoes, which can be sold to Francis at 8 Glims each.
• Fishing Minigame: Fishing for various sea creatures is one of the easiest and most consistent ways to get ingredients to feed your passengers.
• Flipping the Bird: Implied when Gwen tells off the first Theodore Stella meets by telling him that he's "the reason everyone has middle fingers".
• Foul Cafeteria Food: The cafeteria at the run-down hospital at Overbrook serves what looks like brown sludge on a tray. One patient mentions that it looks like "food from yesterday"... not as in the food looks old, but that it looks like it's already been eaten. Once Stella hires a new chef and helps them get ingredients, the quality begins to improve.
• From the Mouths of Babes: At one point, Stanley asks Stella to make him a "fakinhage", much to the confusion of Stella. Stanley is surprised she doesn't know what a "fakinhage" is and explains that it is something his mother used to tell him to get while grocery shopping and that it's white and oval-shaped. Turns out his mom meant a "fucking egg".
• Funny Animal: Several of the spirits fit this description, though many are less humanoid.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: The quest "I Must Be Off" has Gwen temporarily leaving the ship to be alone, and you must find her across the map. However, finding her in a good mood while shopping doesn't advance the questline because she'll talk to you as she normally would in this situation. She actually went back to her childhood mansion instead.
• Gentle Giant: Atul is a very large frog spirit, and it just as friendly as most of the other spirits. Mickey also applies, being a huge buffalo that mostly just sits around and doesn't say much.
• Get Out!: When Stella follows Giovanni to Oxbury at night at Astrid's request to see where he's gone, she finds him with Jennyfer at her apartment. Jennyfer tells Stella to leave because she and Giovanni are going to "get busy", confirming Astrid's suspicions that Giovanni is cheating on her again.
• Granny Classic:
  • Alice the hedgehog spirit is described as "the grandmother everyone wishes they had". She is kindhearted and selfless, she recounts tales of her younger days and gives you free pastries from time to time. Apart from caring about Stella, she clearly also cared a lot for her granddaughter Annie, and when her Alzheimer's starts getting worse, she mistakes Stella as her own granddaughter when the latter dresses up in the same clothes as Annie.
  • Beverly, who is 92 and sharp-minded — until she starts to repeat herself. She's quick to realize that her age is starting to catch up with her brain, so she's aware that her mental health is declining.
• Granola Girl: Summer the snake spirit fits this bill, she loves nature, is spiritual, is into New Age things like crystals and energies and is a staunch vegetarian because she doesn't like the idea of animals having their lives taken for food. Her long illness with cancer made her change her diet and her outlook on life.
• Guide Dang It!: It's impossible to catch tuna naturally. When the rod turns orange/red, instead of releasing, it's required you quickly tap the use button til it turns yellow again, so the line doesn't slack so far the tuna escapes.
• Guilt-Based Gaming:
  • If Stella neglects to feed her sheep and keep them in corrals, they will eat her crops. Bruce and Mickey will also get mad at her for it, and their mood won't improve until she prevents her sheep from escaping.
  • Stella can cut down the ash trees at Ambertown Park to make ash planks out of them, but one of the visitors there will chide her for destroying the environment. Atul, on the other hand, can get away with collecting wood at the park.
• Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Most of the spirits wear little more than an accessory or two if they wear anything at all (Fur Is Clothing, after all), but Mickey wears a toga-like wrap around his chest.
• Have a Gay Old Time: When Stella tells Francis about Daria's peculiar demand, he remarks on how "queer" it is. Since he's an old monkey-onion hybrid spirit, he meant it as "strange", not as the umbrella term for LGBTQ+ people.
• The Hero Dies: Stella is a spirit like any other, and will have to go through the Everdoor. The only thing the player gets to decide is when.
• I'm Cold... So Cold...: When you take Stanley to the Everdoor, he'll mention feeling cold as he’s about to pass on.
• I'm Standing Right Here: After Jackie argues with one of the hospital residents about his work, he asides to Stella not to mind the resident, for he's an idiot. The resident then tells Jackie that he's right in front of him, but gets cut off by him.
• An Interior Designer Is You: The game lets you craft furniture upgrades for your passengers' houses, which usually gives them a mood boost. Sometimes furnishing a house is required to advance a passenger's story. However, one passenger is a strict teacher type and actually wants a plain, undecorated house, and will get a temporary mood loss if you give them decorations anyway.
• In-Universe Game Clock: One in-game day lasts 20 minutes, and it's divided into six time periods: sunrise, morning, day, sunset, evening, and night. Each spirit goes to sleep at night, and it's too dark for Stella to steer her ship at that time.
• Jerkass:
  • Bruce and Mickey are rude and abrasive, not just to Stella but also to other spirits on the boat, which can lower their mood. They are also very materialistic and entitled.
  • Elena the greyhound spirit almost makes Bruce and Mickey look nice by comparison. She constantly chastises Stella whenever she fails to meet her high standards, shows disdain for her students she used to teach, even the talented ones and is the only spirit whose mood drops if Stella tries hugging her.
  • Jackie is an incompetent, brusque orderly who owns a Never My Fault attitude. However, it's revealed he's aware he has severe anger management issues and is helpless at dealing with it.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Astrid is described as having a "rough persona [that] hides a sensitive heart."
• The Journey Through Death: You play as a new Psychopomp Stella and her cat Daffodil, taking over from Charon, helping spirits she finds in this limbo like realm on her boat until they are ready for her to ferry them to the Everdoor to the afterlife. As she does so Hades contacts her and indicates this journey is less about her helping them cross over as much as it is her coming to terms with the people she lost in life (both personally and as an end of life care nurse) so when she feels she's done enough for those she's cared for she can go to the portal to pass on herself.
• Kind Hearted Cat Lover: Stella's "second in command" is Daffodil, a cute fluffy cat that assists Stella in her duties as Spiritfarer.
• Leitmotif: A distinctive one that can be found in the game's main theme (which plays in the trailer), "What Will You Leave Behind." The melody, especially from the chorus, can be found across multiple songs, although you'll be hearing it most often as an orchestral arrangement that plays whenever you bring a spirit to the Everdoor, "Last Voyage." There's even a unique rendition for Stella's departure.
  • All of the Spirits each have one, which tend to play when talking to them.
• Light Is Good: Stella is a friendly and cheerful Psychopomp whose outfit includes a lot of gold and carries a golden glowing orb called the Everlight that she can use to manifest different tools out of solid light.
• Logical Weakness:
  • Inverted. Every spirit in the game requires you to ferry them personally to the Everdoor... that is, everyone except for Atul, who's a frog, and can thus swim straight into it. As a result, he essentially vanishes overnight once you've completed his questline.
  • Played with with Stella's Everlight. Her power comes from light, so it seems like she can't move the boat in the dark of night. However, the given reason is that Stella still needs sleep.
• The Masochism Tango: Giovanni and Astrid's relationship which is implied to be tragically cyclical. He cheats on her, she gets angry and kicks him out, eventually she forgives him and takes him back. Rinse and repeat.
• Magic Tool: The Everlight, a golden glowing orb that Stella wears on her belt and Daffodil wears on his collar, can be used to manifest different tools that seem to be made of pure light, from oven mitts to a fishing rod.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: While the official artbook confirms that the whole game is Stella's Dying Dream as she reconciles with her end, other parts of the artbook imply that the spirit world has existed before Stella and will keep existing after she's gone, making it unclear how literal the events of the story are.
• Mind Screwdriver: Lily's whole purpose is to be Mr. Exposition and explain all of the metaphors in the game.
• Mini-Game: Gathering resources and crafting items take the form of various mini-games, such as a rhythm game for singing to the plants and racing to stand under the spots where lightning would strike to collect them in bottles.
• Mood Whiplash: Many times, especially if taking someone to the Everdoor, the player will have to use Alex to travel before and after a tearjerking moment; Alex's island comes with goofy music and Alex himself is a bit of a Cloud Cuckoolander. Thankfully, the Beverly update added an option to disable his music.
• Motor Mouth: Bruce never stops running his mouth, in sharp contrast to his brother Mickey.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Bruce is capable of carrying around his brother Mickey, despite Bruce being a tiny hummingbird and Mickey being a huge buffalo.
• Mushroom Man: Stanley is the only spirit you don't find wandering around. You can fish his seed out of the water, while some people will buy him from a vendor. You then plant him and pull him out once he grows. His sudden and unorthodox appearance certainly is very unexpected.
• Never Got to Say Goodbye: Will likely end up happening to the player at the end of the Atul questline. Every other spirit gets an extended farewell scene as you ferry them to the Everdoor, whereas Atul simply disappears once he decides he's ready, likely swimming there on his own.
• No Communities Were Harmed
  • Hummingberg is France, Stella's birthplace.
  • Furokawa is Japan.
  • Oxbury is Montreal.
• Nonhumans Lack Attributes: Most of the spirits don't have clothing, but nothing is visible despite this.
• Notice This: Locations in the water where you can dive in and retrieve something are marked with a sparkling golden light.
• Now Allowed to Hug: Elena, a spirit who dislikes physical affection and the only spirit in-game whose mood decreases if hugged. Upon completing her quests and taking her to the Everdoor to pass on, Elena audibly considers hugging you before accepting one just before moving on.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted, since there's Beverly's late husband David and another David who is a park ranger at Sunspring Square.
• Our Spirits Are Different: The spirits here are the souls of the dead currently residing in the Spirit World that the game takes place in. They look like anthropomorphic animals, and it's the player's job to help them pass on to the afterlife proper. The one exception is Lily, who appears as an amorphous cloud of butterflies — but she's not dead.
• Posthumous Character: All of them. Including Stella, but not Lily who is The Blank.
• Predatory Business: Raccoon Inc, which in the past was responsible for disrupting other businesses by crashing into their ships at sea and making them lose their stock, among other things.
• Press X to Die: Not necessarily in the spirit of this trope, but an absolutely literal rendition of it, as your final command in the game is to press the action button and send Stella through the Everdoor.
• Pretty in Mink: Gwen's design is clearly supposed to evoke this look, with the fur around her neck resembling the collar of a poofy fur coat.
• Production Throwback: On one island, you can talk to a phony psychic who tries to guess Stella's name. One of their guesses is Eshe, the protagonist of Thunder Lotus Games' previous game Sundered.
• Prophet Eyes: All of the spirits have blank white, glowing eyes.
• Psychopomp: The job of a Spiritfarer is to find lost spirits and befriend them, caring for them so they may pass on to the afterlife.
• The Quiet One: Mickey is described as being "too deep in introspection to produce anything other than murmurs," in sharp contrast to his brother Bruce.
• Refrain from Assuming: In-Universe: Several residents in Edgeborough Lane argue over whether the song is called "The Autumn End" or "Lover's Myth" because while the former is its actual title, some residents call it by the latter title because it's repeated in the lyrics. Since they believe that they're two different songs, the tall orange resident asks Stella to buy the sheet music for "The Autumn End" at Nordweiler, and then play it on her guitar for them to prove the others wrong.
• Schmuck Bait: The Thunder Lotus Twitter says that you should hug the dog spirit Elena. Just try that outside of sending her off, that oughta end well!
• Shop Fodder: The various treasures Stella can find by diving, growing from the Odd Seed, opening treasure chests and crates, or receiving as gifts from Gustav can only be sold to Francis at a high price.
• Shout-Out:
  • Raccoon Inc, the main business that you buy goods from throughout the game, mimics Tom Nook's business Nook Inc. from the Animal Crossing series. It's staffed by various raccoons (or tanukis, Gwen isn't quite sure) all named Theodore, and has a reputation for being a harsh Predatory Business reminiscent of a long-standing interpretation by Animal Crossing fans of Tom Nook being a sleazy businessman.
  • The description for sawdust reads that it's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.
  • The names of the three turtles (Olga, Masha, and Irina) are taken from Anton Chekov's play Three Sisters, which the artbook lists as Stella's favorite piece of literature.
  • Upon offering Gwen a cup of coffee, her favorite food item, she proclaims it to be "a damn fine cup of coffee."
  • Among Buck's figurines are a man with an absurdly huge sword in a red cloak between a man with white hair and armor and a dark-skinned woman, both wielding more reasonable swords. Seems the guy is a fan of Berserk. He also has a Conan the Barbarian poster and a pair of hobbit figurines.
  • While it could be a coincidence, the description of sugar cane is "That cane will sure come in candy!" Puns aside, that's exactly how another charming psychopomp offered a comfortable journey into the afterlife, though admittedly on a tighter budget.
  • There's a twofer in the mint trading card — it's for "Sorcery: the Reunion" and the narration hopes it's a Black Thunder Lotus.
  • The description of the Valuable Ring:
    A beautiful specimen of the one true ring. But this one doesn't rule anything, except your wallet.
  • This is a pretty obscure one, but it has to do with a Mondegreen. In the song "Our Lips Are Sealed" by The Go-Go's, the titular line is sometimes misheard as "Alex the Seal." The seal which runs the bus stops is named Alex. Also, one of the game achievements is called "Sealed Lips."
  • The self-help books you can add to Jackie's On-Call Room are described to be written by "self-help professionals such as Bobson Dugnutt and Dwigt Rortugal". These names come from the Japanese version of the SNES game localized as Fighting Baseball, where the Japanese developers didn't have the rights to use the names of real MLB players and made up American-sounding names instead. A list of several of them went viral online around 2017.
  • Francis's errand to give him three different kinds of tuna in exchange for five jars of honey is called "Honey, I Shrunk the Fishes".
  • One of the residents at Edgeborough Lane says, "When the sun hits that dumpster just right, you can really smell the dead fish."
  • According to the archive files, Buck, who loves tabletop RPGs, thinks that Demons and Ghouls 2nd Edition is better than the first.
  • A very obscure one is the questline for Jackie that is named "Hang in There, Skeleton!", much the same as a a popular message left by players in Dark Souls II, which simply read "Don't give up, Skeleton".
• Sibling Yin-Yang: Mickey is a large buffalo that doesn't move or talk very much, while his brother Bruce is a tiny, energetic hummingbird who is always running his mouth.
• Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism: All of the spirits have the appearance of humanoid animals, though exactly how humanoid varies. Some are mostly humanoid in shape, others are almost totally bestial, and others are somewhere in-between. They still all act like people though.
• Sound Test: The lounge has a radio that lets you play any song you've already heard in the game, but this gets drowned out by certain songs, such as Francis's theme if he shows up.
• Spikes of Doom: Subverted: The spikes in the alternate dimension that Stella enters whenever she plays Daria's song at designated spots may look dangerous to the touch, but they don't hurt Stella.
• Spirit World: The game's setting seems to be this. It acts as a place in-between the mortal world and the afterlife where the spirits of the dead go until they pass on to the afterlife proper.
• Spoiler Title: One of the soundtracks is called "Stella's Departure", spoiling the fact that Stella dies after her work is done.
• Stellification: Whenever a passenger passes through the Everdoor, a constellation bearing their likeness forms and is permanently added to the night sky, including Stella and Daffodil.
• Super Wool Growth: Sheep can be sheared once an in-game day, every 20 minutes of real time, as long as you keep food in their stalls.
• Tastes Like Chicken: One patient at Overbrook Hospital asks Stella if they can take a small bite out of her, and if she says yes, the patient nibbles her and remarks that she tastes like chicken along with a few spices.
• Toilet Humor: Jackie tells Stella that the vending machine at Overbrook is working again by farting into his letter for her. Fittingly, the quest where she receives it is called "Wells Fartgo & CO."
• Trademark Favorite Food: Every spirit has their own food preferences, with the exception of Atul who happily eats pretty much anything (though he still has a favorite: pork chops).
• Turtle Island: The three turtle sisters (Olga, Masha, and Irina) are almost as big as Stella's ship. They each have three planting spots on their backs, where Stella can grow trees and minerals and come back later to harvest them.
• Unfinished Business: Subverted. Stella never resolves the regrets and wishes that each spirit has. All she can do is be their friend until they decide it's time and then bring some comfort when ferrying them to the Everdoor.
• Video Game Caring Potential: The entire point of the game. You cook food for your passengers, build them nice places to live, help them deal with their problems, hug them, and generally try to keep them happy until they are ready to move on to the afterlife.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: You can feed the spirits glue to make them ill, which you might be tempted to try out on some of the more abrasive passengers.
• Violation of Common Sense: Some areas past the line of rocks on the map have electrical wires that Stella can zipline on, which is dangerous in real life, but they can let her reach higher spots or zip through the areas faster.
• Voice Grunting: Each character has unique vocalizations whenever they talk to Stella, while Stella herself grunts as she does her everyday activities. Even the generic spirits grunt when they talk to her, with some having vocalizations that don't match with what one would expect from their genders.
• Wingdinglish: Signs are written in glyphs composed of dots and strokes for ease of localization, which are stand-ins for the Latin alphabet.
• Wham Episode:
  • After you release your first spirit (likely Gwen), you're transported to a strange array of platforms in the form of a rising tower. It just seems like some strange post-release interlude at first... and then the big fucking ghostly owl appears.
  • When Alice is on the prow because of her worsening memory, and she asks you if it's time to go home. Confused? Don't worry, looking at your requests will make it clear what she wants: Take Alice to the Everdoor.
  • Lily's appearance becomes one, as you realize Lily is her sister, and she and their mother are at her bedside.
• Wham Line: "My time has come." Who's the one saying it? Stella. If she's met with Lily, she adds "I'm not alone. Mom and Lily are holding my hand, somewhere over there."
• What the Hell, Hero?: Lily was a little steamed at Stella taking the family cat with her to Montreal.
• World-Healing Wave: Each time Stella buys a candy bar from the Overbrook vending machine, it releases a magical wave across the island that restores it to its former glory.
• World of Symbolism: Besides Animal Motifs and Flower Motifs, many features of the world reflect the lives of the characters before their deaths, especially the "hazard" animal minigames:
  • Giovanni's comet event is a reference to the traumas he suffered as a soldier.
  • Gwen associates the jellyfish with lung cancer.
  • Summer's dragons have mineral-like tumors growing on them, similarly to her own battle with cancer.
  • Other events are more obviously linked to the world of the living, as in they're a direct replay of previous events.
• X Called; They Want Their Y Back: When Anthony gets bored with talking to Stella about Beverly, he says, "The Renaissance called, they want their hat back."
• You Are Not Alone: The Central Theme of the game, which makes sense since that was Stella's job as a palliative care nurse at a hospice — to be with patients who were dying. In the end, Stella has to be reassured that she too is not alone in death.
  • And as of the Lily update, she isn't. After completing Lily's questline, her real-world self will let you know that she and your mom are right there with you. In gameplay, this is represented as a swarm of butterflies hovering over you as you row yourself to the Everdoor.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: Lily tells Stella: "You never shied away from death. You basically made it your whole world." Many of the locations Stella visits are abstractions of real places.
• You Shouldn't Know This Already: "Humble Abode" has Stella searching for Astrid's husband Giovanni. Even if you know that he's in Loneberg, he won't join Stella aboard her ship until the necessary steps in Astrid's questline are completed.

---