What I'd give to be my mom's butler in the afterlife.

Take her to beautiful places to shop for fruits and fabrics. Build the dream house she always wanted—the one I could never give her while she was alive.

Cook for her, listening as she complains about the meal, all while still feeling her unconditional love. Treat her to everything she always wanted but never had. Accept her flaws, just as she wholeheartedly accepted mine in life.

Give her a chance to heal the wounds of her heart, even if it means watching her depart a second time. Defeat the cancer that took her away.

I know I'll never see her again, but, boy, did this game make me imagine what that beautiful reality would be like.

I never thought a video game would change my life. I never thought Spiritfarer—a game about guiding souls to the afterlife—would be the thing that finally bridged the silence between my son and me. But here I am, a 62-year-old father, trying to put into words how a game about saying goodbye brought us closer than we had been in years.

My son is 29 now. He grew up, found his own world, and somewhere along the way, I stopped being a part of it. We still lived under the same roof, but we might as well have been strangers. Ever since my wife—his mother—passed away, that distance only grew. We grieved separately, spoke less, and let the silence settle between us like an old, worn-out piece of furniture. I wanted to reach out, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t know if he even wanted me to.

Then, one evening, I saw him playing Spiritfarer. I didn’t understand much, just that he was ferrying spirits across a vast, endless sea. He looked focused, immersed—but there was something else, too. Something softer. Something I hadn’t seen in a long time.


I don’t play video games, but I wanted to understand. I wanted to understand him. So, I made a Steam account, bought the game, and asked if he could show me how to play. I expected a quick explanation, maybe a few minutes of his time. But instead, he smiled, pulled up a chair, and for the first time in years, we spent the evening together.

He showed me how to build on the ship, how to care for the spirits, how to cook their favorite meals and listen to their stories. We laughed when I accidentally burned food, struggled to time my jumps, and fumbled my way through the mechanics. And then came the moment I wasn’t prepared for—the first goodbye.

I watched as one of the spirits I had come to love stepped onto the Everdoor. I heard their final words. I saw them disappear. And suddenly, I wasn’t just playing a game anymore. I was remembering my wife. The day we said goodbye. The silence that followed.

I put the controller down, expecting my son to move on without me. Instead, he sat there, watching the screen, eyes filled with something I hadn’t seen in so long—understanding.

We didn’t say much, but we didn’t have to. We just sat there, side by side, both feeling the weight of everything we had lost. And for the first time in years, I didn’t feel alone in it.

Spiritfarer gave us that. A game about death, about letting go, somehow helped us hold onto each other again. We kept playing together, night after night, but it wasn’t just about the game anymore. We talked more. We shared more. We started living in the same world again.

I bought Spiritfarer because I wanted to be closer to my son. I never expected it to help us heal.

Because in the end, it wasn’t just about ferrying lost souls to the afterlife. It was about the living—the ones left behind. It was about love, about loss, about finding your way back to the people who matter before it’s too late.

And I will cherish that journey for the rest of my life.

I tried the demo on Switch, and initially intended to get the game there, but it was on sale for an incredibly generous markdown on Steam so I grabbed it here.

I found this game while trying to find one to help cope with grief - this one was highly recommended for that, as well as trauma. A couple of reviews suggested that it may be too difficult to play in the earlier stages of grief, but I decided to try it anyway.

I recently lost my father. We were estranged for several years before his diagnosis, but we reconnected and he was sorry for the things he'd done. I spent his last few weeks at his side for a few hours each day.

Suffice to say, the reviews were correct, lol.
Not even an hour in, and I've wept twice. I don't even entirely know *why*, but there's something about how the first characters speak to you that is so .. comforting, enough so that it borders on feeling like a sort of empathy. Going off of the demo I played, I do think that feeling remains.

It's probably a game I'll take a long time to get through. I might even set it down a while; however, the comfort and kindness it brought (despite the bouts of weepiness) prompted me to leave a review already. I'll add more to this when I can get through the game.

The art is beautiful, the music is quaint, and the characters so far are quite endearing. This game was clearly crafted with love.