X
- E10+
- No More Robots
- E10+
- No More Robots
- E10+
- No More Robots
- E10+
- No More Robots
Spirittea
Released On: Nov 13, 2023
76
6.9
Where to Buy
Where to Buy
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 10 Critic Reviews
76
40% Positive
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
60% Mixed
6 Reviews
6 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 10 Critic Reviews
76
40% Positive
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
60% Mixed
6 Reviews
6 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Overall Spirittea is imbued with so much charm, and it’s all wove together to create a fascinating and whimsical experience. Plus, with a character as sassy and hilarious as Wonyan to guide me, all the tasks he bestows are always delivered alongside amusing dialogue. I’m a dog person at heart, but Wonyan is my honourary cat.
Spirittea is a great game with the potential to be one of my favorites in the genre, but it needs some updates and fixes on Switch. I still recommend it, and enjoyed the mini-games, characters, and gameplay loop a lot. The aesthetic might not work for some, but I like it a lot and recommend trying the demo if you are interested. I’ll be grabbing the physical copy for this for sure whenever it gets announced.
Spirittea is a fantastic cozy game. It sticks closely to the life sim template with the skeleton of its gameplay, but its main gameplay of bathhouse management and its spirit -finding progression system means that players will thoroughly enjoy what Spirittea has to offer. In addition, it's even better on Switch as something to be lazy with on the sofa or on a long journey.
On the whole, Spirittea is a sweet game with just enough charm and whimsy to make up for its flaws. While I certainly don’t see myself sinking anywhere close to as many hours as I’ve put into games like Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing, I’m enjoying the chance to take a deep breath and settle into a slower way of life, if only for a few hours a night.
Spirittea is the farming sim with Miyazaki vibes I’ve wanted for a hot minute. It doesn’t onboard the player in the most intuitive fashion, so it’s a smidge hard to pick up to get into the groove. But, once you’ve managed to parse through the disparate tea leaves that make up its multiple activities and mechanics, it’s worth a try. I’m looking forward to seeing how Spirittea evolves in the future while I enjoy its coziness this holiday season.
A charming, whimsical and very soothing life simulator that makes good use all of all its many influences and still feels refreshingly unique in itself.
On the whole, Spirittea is an enjoyable management sim with a strong concept and charming pixel art that’s ultimately let down by a lack of polish.
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 7 User Ratings
6.9
43% Positive
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
29% Mixed
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
29% Negative
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 7 User Ratings
6.9
43% Positive
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
29% Mixed
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
29% Negative
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
It's a nice little pixel style game where you manage (simplified) a bathhouse for Yokai inspired spirits, with some life sim mixed in.Despite the lack of tutorials where they were needed (I always taught seed bags were just sell-ables until I was in my first year winter with almost all spirits and upgrades because I saw recipes I didn't know how to get ingredients until I looked up online for example), most of it is quickly understood. It is however hampered down by badly optimized and unintuitive controls for Switch players (with a Pro **** menus it's too sensitive while other times a button press doesn't get registered and in the fishing minigame it's for some reason inverted and I can't change it and since you have to be on the fish it tends to overshoot too when you have to quickly change from one direction into another. The singing minigame is also crazy beyond the first song. At least they are just minigames.
The cooking mechanic is way too convoluted and complicated and you really SHOULD be able to just choose a recipe you want and the ingredients get automatically added instead of searching through multiple storage's that don't even show all the pages when you choose in the cooking menu. Add to that the sensitivity that may cause you to choose something different from what you thought you did and the occasional not registering of your A presses and you get how annoying it can be.
The re-spawning of only forage-able ingredients is also botched. And some like the Cloudleaf, Snail Fruit, Pumpkins, Sun Melons or Ugly grass flat-out don't re-spawn ever. At first I though maybe because it's due a different Season they don't spawn anymore but even in the following year no sign of them. At some point you'll need sakura blossoms for a recipe that you could easily need to use 6-9 times per day, depending on rng but it hardly re-spawns at all. Add to that that you might not see if they lay on the ground due the tree foliage covering the screen and for a wild reason don't get transparent when it would cover you like in other layer shenanigans of this game.
Asides the unfortunate way you have to choose and use your tools from the bag and can't permanently sort your tools in the top row, your “advisor” spirit Wonyan isn't very helpful in most cases. He isn't specific enough for you to understand what you have to do or rather what you are supposed to do for later story events, if he has anything to point you at all.There are also treasure maps for some items and they are absolutely useless in most cases, they give you a bad to no sense of distance or were it really is and often were absolutely not helpful to determine where exactly it wants you to dig. It also stockpiles maps no matter if you found it already or not and you can't easily look at the maps not found yet.
You can recruit townsfolk to help you out in the bathhouse for Spirits but you can only really employ 4 per opening and 4 jobs at the same time (while it's ALWAYS you that has to decide where to place the visiting spirits). Considering the amount of spirits and the randomness involved, at least for scrubbing you should be able to use way more at once. Further during late/endgame additional mechanics come in play and you are the only one that can execute em. It would have been nice to also have jobs for “Monkey Chaser” “Outdoor Scrubber” and “Lord Spirit Attendant” you should be able to make the connection once you reach that point.
In order to recruit townsfolk for the bathhouse you need to max out friendship. It's not entirely clear when and how often you can increase friendship with the townsfolk and there are some seemingly text message bugs for events that you already cleared. I also had a bug where an NPC I was walking with, slid around out of bounds and another one where I was stuck in the bug catching animation (no pun intended) and effectively soft-locked. Also has some other persistent graphical bugs (though it was kinda funny to see that painting on many screens and even during credits). Somewhere after 50 hours I also noticed downward phantom inputs for moving while it worked with other games so it couldn't be my controller.Bugs that get you stuck are especially annoying since you can only save by sleeping. As a working adult and with a gaming system that can be used mobile, I need to be able to either save anywhere, anytime or have generously distributed save points. By the time you read this, these bugs might be patched out though.
It sounds rather negative like that but it is still a nice pass time otherwise I wouldn't have given a 7 out of 10 though I'm more leaning towards a 6,5 out of 10. I like the nice background music. Just don't get too into everything it offers or you end up frustrated not relaxed. All the inconveniences in interacting with the game pile up to a worse experience than it really needs to be, even if it was made by just one person. Most of it could easily be patched as well I'd wager.
Report
Nintendo Switch
Fun for the first 3 hours, gets repetitive and progress stagnates. Felt like a drag afterwards.
Report
Nintendo Switch
Summary Inspired in equal measure by iconic life sim Stardew Valley, and classic spirit-focused anime and manga, Spirittea follows a writer who has escaped to the countryside in order to clear their head and find inspiration for their next novel. However, after accidentally drinking from an old mystical teapot, our protagonist begins to see the ...
Rated E +10
for Everyone +10
Platforms:
- PC
- Xbox Series X
- Nintendo Switch
- Xbox One
Initial Release Date: Nov 13, 2023
Developer:
- Cheesemaster Games
Publisher: No More Robots
Genres: