Spirittea is what would happen to Stardew Valley if it was to be invaded by troublesome spirits who seem to love their sauna a bit too much. This is a cute life simulator where you try to start a new life in a cozy town only to be surprised by a spirit right in your home, sweet home. From this moment, it’s a mashup of the best things that the genre has to offer, with some addictive gameplay that accomplishes a nice balance between open exploration and handheld narrative. It’s not without its flaws, but if you are looking for an enjoyable adventure with a business management spin, this is a solid choice.

Spirited Away

Your first steps in Spirittea take you into town discovery and meeting all of the townspeople, a wildly varied bunch with different personalities and likings, even clearly diverse backgrounds, and a surprisingly friendly behavior apart from an oddball or two – they even leave their doors open, so you’re free to “borrow” some stuff if you so wish. They are well-developed and exciting to meet and hang around, as you learn their tastes and advance your friendship level, something that is going to come in handy when you unlock one of the main features of the game: the bathhouse.

The bathhouse is Spirittea’s spin on the business management simulator. Think of this as a restaurant, but with the focus on pools for spirits to have a relaxing bath. Being abandoned for a long time, it is full of cobwebs and dirt, tree branches all over the place, patently requiring some repairs and dusting from the ground up, something that will come with time. You have a broom and a duster to tidy up the place, but the process is slow and somewhat dull, so don’t focus entirely on this as customers require your attention. A local is handy with repairs, and when you have enough currency, you can request her to fix one of the areas at a time, from the kitchen to several pools.

There is a chain of actions at work here which you must fully abide by to earn the always useful currency. Each spirit needs a clean towel before you show them to the pool, where they stay for a – long – period before exiting, paying their share and leaving a dirty towel for you to wash. This cycle repeats frequently, washing and drying up towels before taking the stack to the entrance, where new customers await. The bath water must be warm and there’s even a boiler room powered by a magical ever-growing tree. Use the saw to cut a log and burn it to warm the water, and do this a few times until it stops growing for the day.

Spirits like to sit close to others of the season after theirs, and dislike when they are near the ones who are of the opposite season, another detail that we must pay attention to if we want to earn the most amount of coins, but that isn’t entirely easy to decipher. You can either try your luck even if it means earning less, or try to find buried maps with the spirit’s tome, because finding the spirit and having it in your collection isn’t enough for them to spill the information, making the process cumbersome and something that should be revealed sooner than later, not to mention that the tomes don’t always correspond to the spirits you have already freed.

Spending time in the bathhouse is worthwhile and pretty much mandatory, as this is the place where every new spirit flocks too, and the more you serve, the more your spirituality level increases, which in turn allows you to discover additional spirits in town. It’s a gameplay loop that also provides you with currency to buy tools, furniture, a bicycle to move faster, and other options, so there’s no escaping it even if the shadow of repetition soon looms over, the towels starting to creep into your dreams, so many have you carried throughout a single journey.

You can ease things slightly by convincing a few residents to give you a hand with some tasks, including keeping the boiler alight, carrying towels, or giving spirits a  good back scrub to improve their mood. With a few helpers, the tasks become more tolerable, but the grind for money persists and it doesn’t get any more fun.

Country Life

Given all this, purely labeling Spirittea as a relaxing life sim may be deceiving, as there is a frequent requirement to repeat the bathhouse actions to progress. This is probably the part of the game that gets the most tiresome, as the outside adventure is more enjoyable and hands-free, an experience that isn’t quite sandbox but does allow you to focus on your favorite locals and spend time with them by playing a host of mini-games.

Each townsfolk has their own likings and that is patent in the conversation. The lore behind the characters is interesting to listen to, with more than meets the eye, and they have a life routine that keeps the world alive and in motion. If no one is at the store to sell you a bicycle, then you must return at another time, because the owner may be at home sleeping, eventually at the café or the restaurant, or maybe even going for some karaoke or a drink. Enjoying a favorite activity with someone is the best way to see the friendship rating skyrocket, and this is where some minigames come into play, fishing obviously included.

Some are very simple, such as catching bugs or the rhythm-based karaoke game, while others are more on the convoluted side, like the cooking one. It’s not the minigame itself that is overly complicated, but the lengthy tutorial for a handful of actions felt a bit daunting and unnecessary. But it’s always fun to discover a new minigame associated with a specific person, and your preferences may end up steering you to this or that local.

A quest system of sorts is there to point you in the right direction, with a notice board reporting on strange events deserving of your investigation, mostly issues caused by troublesome spirits. Chatting with the locals may also unearth clues about the whereabouts of more spirits, but again, the adventure only develops if you have taken your spirituality to the next level by successfully progressing in the bathhouse.

The map will be your second best companion right after cat spirit Wonyan, but it leaves something to be desired in terms of ease of use. It only displays the player and NPC locations along with the buildings, but there’s no indication on who is who or any distinction between stores apart from the actual tiny graphics. This means that you have to memorize character names and buildings, an unnecessary initial hurdle for a game that goes for a relaxing mindset but is asking you to do something that could be solved with a mere legend system.

There are a few glitches as well, an early one with our guide dog Jan as she takes us around town to meet every single person. However, right at the second request she became stuck between a chair and the wall inside the school, looking for a way out that didn’t appear. Only by exiting the building this situation was fixed.

Good Spirits

Despite the repetition associated with the bathhouse progression and some flaws here and there, Spirittea remains a cheerful game that deserves a look from every fan of Stardew Valley and other retro life sims. At its best when we have all the time in the world to talk to the townsfolk and steer clear of the bathhouse money grind pains, the gameplay loop is entertaining to the point of occasionally becoming addictive.

Spirittea is best played in short sessions, just long enough to get the bathhouse running for a few days, making some new friends, and finding those naughty spirits, one at a time. It may not be as relaxing as first impressions seemed to indicate, but it absolutely captures that often elusive addictive spirit.

Score: 8/10

Pros:

• Pleasant balance between freedom and handholding
• Townsfolk with daily routines and likings
• Many secrets to discover
• Cute pixel graphics

Cons:

• Bathhouse gameplay becomes dull
• Map is a little on the lazy side

Spirittea review code provided by the publisher. You can read MP1st’s review and scoring policy right here.