I’ve been a big fan of Spryfox games since I got hooked on Alphabear, and have played at least a bit of every game released since then. One of the games that I had looked forward to was Spirit Crossing, right up until the point that I found it was initially going to be mobile only. While I play games on my phone, I have no interest in playing a game as complicated as Genshin Impact on that device. So I waited and have apparently been rewarded with that patience, as you can now join the Steam Playtest. Mo was faster on the uptake on this one, but I joined in starting Sunday morning. Last night we played together during our regularly scheduled sibling time, and the game is a heck of a lot of fun with other players.
One of the first things that happens to you as a new arrival is that you are tossed straight into a storm. These are the only real dangeous encounters in the game, and there are these giant spirits that remind me of the Hollows from Bleach. Essentially, during a storm, your stamina does not regenerate, and I have not pushed my luck to see what happens if I stay out in the storm for too long. During this first storm, a spirit gets damaged, and your initial mission is to try to help her out by collecting fragments that were knocked out of her in the crash landing.
It would not be a Spryfox game if you were not immediately introduced to a rather losenge shaped bear. The lost bear ultimately becomes Roomie, your mildly curmudgeon room mate and guide to helping you figure out how to repair Maya. The only annoying thing about the game is that you are time-gated not only in the collection of resources, but also in questing. For example, I have a quest right now telling me to go somewhere…. but the somewhere is not available to me, and I figure logging back in today will grant me access. This is very much the sort of game where you want to play a little bit of it every single day. This is both a good thing and a bad thing, in that it ultimately limits how much time I need to spend in-game each day.
The collection mostly comes in the form of a harvest mini game, where a small ring will appear on the screen, and you are supposed to hit the E button when another ring appears within that space. Not all collection functions like this, for example, you can just pick up flowers and fruit, but ore and wood specifically require you to play this game. The more you harvest, the more skills you gain, allowing you to upgrade your tools and, as such, harvest more difficult things. The pickaxe and axe have upgraded rather quickly, but others like the shovels, machete, and shears have gotten almost no progress. I need to roam around aimlessly a bit more in the entry lands because I think there is more of the low-level vines that you use with your machete.
I am having a heck of a lot of fun. It very much lives in the “cozy MMO” genre like Pokopia and Animal Crossing. It seems like anyone can sign up for testing currently via the Steam page. However, if that changes, here is a sign-up code that I was able to generate from my account. If you are at all interested in this sort of game, I highly suggest checking it out. Weirdly, it reminds me of Guild Wars 2 if you took out the combat elements. I think this is probably the heavy reliance on gliders to get around, and the core focus on harvesting materials, both of which I do plenty in GW2. Clearly, I need more real-world friends in-game because there are things that need four players to optimize.
Probably my favorite aspect of the game is what happens when a storm comes into the wilderness. Players flock around a fire to wait it out, and inevitably, someone starts playing music. You can then join in with your own instrument and play a jaunty tune to pass the time. The players that show up as shadowy are folks you have not introduced yourself to. I’ve made it my mission to try to introduce myself to every player around the fires so that I can see more friends on the map when I am doing stuff. Making random friends is deeply charming. Eventually, you get the ability to trade gifts with other players, which will increase your friendship levels. What this actually means in the grand scheme of things, I don’t really know, other than some gifts are gated by this level.
Anyway, if anything I have said interests you, then I highly suggest you check out Spirit Crossing.
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