Spiritfarer is celebrating its 5-year anniversary today, August 18, 2025. Below, we reflect on how the game's compassion and empathy can help influence our own lives.When it was first introduced, Developer Thunder Lotus billed Spiritfarer as "a cozy management sim about dying," which immediately intrigued me. What's so cozy about dying, and what difference does the team see between a game about dying and a game about death? The wording seemed unmistakably intentional. Many games are, to some degree, about death--and specifically, avoiding it. But Spiritfarer not only makes dying unavoidable; it makes dying the whole point. As Stella, players ferry over a dozen characters through a purgatorial plane, waving them goodbye as they cross the Everdoor into a permanent afterlife. But it's her thoughtfulness and understanding of each passenger, regardless of the life they lived, that I find so inspiring. Stella's hospice care approach works great on the precipice of the afterlife. But we don't need to wait until it's nearly too late to express such a devotion to forgiveness.It's Stella's job to manage the many personalities that find their way aboard her boat, helping each passenger with their unfinished business before sending their souls floating away into the warm glow of the Everdoor. Though this sounds like the setup for something so saccharine it may induce nausea, in reality, Spiritfarer doesn't shy from the much gloomier and less picturesque aspects of life. And yet, despite its flawed, hurting, sometimes even hurtful characters, it never wavers in its expressions of love and understanding, and it's that difference that helped me learn something about my own life.Continue Reading at GameSpot