Spiritfarer är inspirerat av grekisk mytologi och Studio Ghibli

Microsoft visade upp Spiritfarer under sin E3-presskonferens, ett äventyrsplattformsspel på väg till PC och Xbox One utvecklat av Thunder Lotus Games. Efter Xbox-presskonferensen fick vi chansen att snacka med creative director Nicolas Guérin som förklarade vad tanken bakom Spiritfarer är:

"Yeah, so as you say, Spiritfare is what we call a cosy management game about dying. And in the game you play Stella, who is little girl here on the screen and she's the newly-appointed fairy master to the disease. She's the spirit fair and whit her is Daffodil the cat. We're joining the adventure with her and two-player co-op and in the game you have to build a boat to explore the world and pick up serrate to bring them aboard and then release them into the afterlife. So it's a management game, so basically every resource should get from see events, going on occasions farming, mining wood cutting [....]. The whole point is to make a safe haven for the spirit, so all those guys they have stories, they have personalities, they have very distinct story traits physically. So you need to understand them who they are, what they want and then when they're ready for basically living you will release them into the afterlife."

Det låter ju såklart väldans mysigt, men hur fungerar det spelmässigt då? Guérin förklarade:

"So, you see, Stella is the main character and definitely was out there right now. The two characters are going to an island and on that island we'll have to pick up a necklace basically for Summer who's the snake spirit. And the game right now is more of location exploration. So you see that shrine over here is a platforming upgrade so you get double jump from that thing every spirit when they come aboard to give you a noble, which is the Greek symbol of basically the passing, the idea of passing. And we always with all those opposed to upgrade your platforming abilities and platforming is part of the game, but it's meant to be a subset of the managing system which is going places like this, finding resources, buying, selling, farming and the boat as well and making resources on the boat. But also mining, wood cutting tons of areas where you can do stuff that you like any farming saying basically so you can hack wood, you can plant carrots, you can extract metal and stuff like that."

Något som får Spiritfare att sticka ut lite extra är såklart designen och vi var nyfikna på var inspirationen kom ifrån. Det visade sig vara både grekisk mytologi och Team Ghibli:

"Yeah, we knew from the get-go that we want you to take the Charon myth that at the heart of the game. So Charon is the fairy master through the season in Greek mythology so you go to the river Styx and then Charon takes you aboard if you have a noble and makes you cross the river. So that's what basically Stella is. Now for as you can see on screen the graphical inspiration is way more colorful, way more you know large-hearted. We wanted to talk about grave subject matter lightly which was what you have on screen. At the core we were so very heavily inspired by the works of Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki, movies like Sprited Away, Howl's Moving Castle."

Spiritfare släpps under 2020 till PC och Xbox One.