Spirittea Review (Switch)

Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away is one of my most favorite animated films. Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli has excelled in creating bite-sized worlds of charm, fantasy, and mystery that are worth rewatching over and over again because they’re literally for all viewers. You need not be a child to enjoy any of Miyazaki’s work, but you’ll appreciate his films’ finer details each time you rewatch them.

Yet, very little games connect with Studio Ghibli’s inspirations. It would make sense for a cozy game to involve peaceful interaction with spirits, managing a business, and befriending villagers. But, simulation games often disregard a thematic and encourage players to build their own stories set in rural environments. Specific thematics are often disregarded in favor of narrative freedom and simple yet repeatable tasks.

Not Spirittea. Cheesemaster Games has created a life management/onsen sim. It’s pretty dang charming, too.

Spirittea begins just like other farming sims you might have played: You hop onto a bus with a one-way ticket to a town you’ve always dreamed of visiting. The small town’s villagers are pleased to see you, commenting on you being the first new addition to the town in a hot minute. You’re shown to your little house where you need not pay rent. And that’s it! The rest of the game is yours to explore.

I jest.

Upon brewing a pot of tea in the empty house’s teapot, the spirits of the world make themselves visible to you and you alone! Your spirit cat pal, Wonyan, comments with punny and sarcastic quips to each of your actions, driving you to the top of the town where an overgrown onsen needs your attention. As you play and befriend your town’s NPCs, additional spirits will emerge alongside side quests. Completing the sidequests makes additional patrons available to visit the onsen. More spirits = more money. Easy, right?

The key element of this little sim is its tea house/onsen management. It’s where you make nearly all of your in-game money. At first, the management is simple. Wash towels, hang them to dry, cut wood for the onsen’s water heater, and show the spiritual patrons to their spots. Rinse and repeat until your character is too tired or it’s too late at night. Should you want to dust, take down cobwebs, and/or use the broom to scrub your patrons to increase their happiness (and in turn, the money they spend), you can do that, too. Once you’ve unlocked additional spirits, you’re tasked with fine-tuning the onsen experience like cooking dishes and using elixirs to purify the water.

The onsen management game is the core experience of Spirittea. Luckily, it’s a repeatable and relatively fun experience once the rhythm kicks in. Once I had that rhythm going, I was able to see opportunities to figure out how to continuously optimize and expand my onsen in intuitive fashions.

Spirittea isn’t just about managing an onsen, mind you. Like other sims, there are a handful of other minigames to play as you seek to befriend the town’s NPCs. You can fish, eat Korean bbq, catch bugs, and even sing karaoke! The karaoke game ended up being a fun rhythm minigame, albeit slightly difficult. None of these minigames get officially introduced, however.

The biggest issue currently impacting Spirittea is that of its information presentation. The first time I was taught some important gameplay mechanic, like onsen management, was often the last time that mechanic was taught. Very little references in-game can remind players of what to do or what they should do for the purpose of optimization. Take for instance appeasing spirits. I was taught right at the start that I should put spirits of consecutive seasons next to each other (like Spring + Summer) and spirits of opposite seasons across from each other (like Spring + Autumn). However…how was I to know which spirits were from which season? Their happiness bubbles only emerged after they were placed into the hot baths, so if I placed incompatible spirits next to each other, I was out of luck. I learned far too late that it was possible to identify spirits’ seasons and preferences in a menu…so long as their spirit tome had been found via digging.

The information presentation is only exacerbated by the notion of minigames being hardly discussed at all. When I bought a fishing rod, I had little understanding as to how to use it and activate the minigame at first. I had to look up how to begin the minigame to better understand what to do. I kept hoping to receive a notification that I had unlocked a minigame and would be told what to do so I could figure out what I should do in the future.

I get it, though. The best simulation games are light on the handholding and introduce you to new mechanics and elements in a procedural fashion. It’s important to know what you can do before you figure out what you should do. When it comes to storing that information in an easily accessible and consistent space, like the menus, Spirittea doesn’t do the player any favors in making the game intuitive. Instead, it frontloads the bare minimum at the start of the game and then waves you off on your own like a parent encouraging their child out of the house on a Saturday.

Luckily, Spirittea doesn’t outright punish you for making bad or less-informed decisions, running out of energy, and/or timed quests that only add to the stress of the gameplay. Instead, currently-available sidequests remain active and accessible until you’re able to complete them. In that regard, this game is a fine recommendation for someone wanting a truly cozy sim experience. I’ve seen folks debate endlessly about what it truly means for a game to be cozy. There should be little debate as it relates to Spirittea. It keeps the player invested just enough while giving them unfettered freedom to play as they want with as little punishment as possible.

Some of my key metrics for evaluating a farming sim like Spirittea involve its ability to encourage replayability, planning ahead, and relaxed cozy gameplay. Spirittea doesn’t really hit the mark on the planning ahead front simply because it lacks an intuitive process for learning its gameplay beats. On its own, the onsen management game ends up being fun once you’ve figured out what works and what doesn’t all on your own. Its coziness makes the game a relaxing experience, but it comes hand-in-hand with some frustration thanks to the game’s vague learning curve.

I love Spirittea’s vibe, however. I picked up on its Miyazaki-esque worldbuilding right from the start thanks to how well it establishes the village’s rural background and villagers’ simple lives. The spirits in the town end up being very silly, albeit forgetful until I came along. The spirits’ designs skew friendly and Eastern-inspired rather than Western-inspired ethereal beings that seek to spook. The game’s music and art are charming, too.

Before I conclude, I want to emphasize that Spirittea is not meant to replace Stardew Valley. It’s not meant to offer a carbon-copied sim experience, either. If you go into this game expecting the same level of depth and/or hand-holding to get your little onsen going as you might from ConcernedApe’s beloved farming sim, you’ll be pretty disappointed. Frustrated, even. If you approach Spirittea blindly, you’ll most likely have a good time, albeit with some confusion when trying to figure out how to proceed.

Let’s wrap this up.

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.