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(Consider this to be "part two" of the series of video game related posts I mentioned a few days ago.)
Spiritfarer. Available on Steam and GOG.com, as well as on Switch, PS4, and X-bone.
This is sort of a weird mix of platformer, adventure, city builder, and farming sim. You play as Stella (and her cat, Daffodil, if you do the local co-op thing, which I don't have the means to do) who becomes the new "Spiritfarer" at the start of the game. A psychopomp, in other words.
Soon after the game starts, you acquire a large boat, which is where you'll probably spend most of your time in the game. As you travel from island to island, you'll eventually meet several spirits who will join you on your ship (after you do a quest or two or ten for some of them). While on the ship, they'll give you additional specific tasks that they want you to do, such as building them a certain building, or giving them a certain meal, or bringing them a certain item, either one that you create yourself or one that you find somewhere in the world. You can build a bunch of different buildings and such on the ship, and after you build the right ones, you'll gain access to the ability to cook food, farm crops, raise livestock, smelt ore, weave fabric, and so on and so forth. There are also several different mini-games that you'll come across while traveling the world that will gain you unique items, such as literally catching lightning in a bottle as one example. And you'll need a lot of that stuff and all the other stuff you make or find in order to upgrade your boat, as there are some areas you can't get to until you have certain upgrades. Unfortunately, in particular the ones that let you reach new areas, some of these upgrades require "spirit flowers," which you only get after you take a spirit to the "Everdoor," which means it's not possible to have all the spirits on the boat at the same time. Also, throughout the course of the game, you will get Metroidvania-like personal upgrades, like double-jumping and gliding and such, which will allow you to get to areas of the platforming-stage-ish islands that you can visit that you otherwise would be unable to reach.
It's also a story-based game. Each spirit has their own tale, which you'll eventually learn as you get to know them. All of them are tied to Stella in some way or other, either by being a family member or someone she had worked with in the "real world." And, of course, the game being what it is, these stories are usually pretty sad in some way. The worst, or at least most hard-hitting for me, were the two that involved the spirit becoming stricken with dementia over the course of their stay on the boat (one was way worse than the other, and it reminded me too much of my own mother, as she was in the end). But all of them are pretty sad at the end, when you have to take each spirit to the Everdoor.
Honestly, for me, it was all about the day to day chores, like watering the crops or shearing the sheep or picking the fruit or milking the cow or cooking food for the passengers or whatever. There was just something relaxing about loading into the game and doing all of that stuff. Even after you upgrade your boat so that it doesn't move so slowly, you'll still usually have plenty of time to do stuff on the boat between moving from one place to the next, and that's even if you use the fast travel walrus, which I rarely did. And then, even when you arrive, nothing is forcing you to immediately leave the boat.
Mild spoilers after this point.
I'll give a small hint, with moderate spoilers: you may want to keep Atul and Gustav around for as long as you can, because they both play music that make the other spirits happier (including each other, which makes each more likely to play music in the first place), which will make getting their moods up to max easier. For Atul, that's a bit tricky, because (SPOILERS) unlike all the other spirits (aside from Buck, who never leaves), you never actually take him to the Everdoor. Once you do his final quest related bit, he will suddenly leave all on his own. So, to spell it out, if you want to keep him around, do not complete his request for a dinner party until you're ready to let him go.
Another small hint: Elena is pretty much the exact opposite of all the other spirits, in that she hates being hugged and she doesn't want upgrades to her house. I found out the second one the hard way, when I built her house and then, because I already had the materials to do so, went ahead and added all the upgrades to it, and then when I talked to her, she was pissed and in a bad mood for a while because I'd cluttered up her house. She got over it, though. (Elena was my least favorite spirit, by far, which is saying something in a game where Giovanni and Bruce exist.)
One last thing: outside of the one cutscene and despite what is said in that one cutscene, meditating is apparently not actually a thing you can do in the game. Not sure why they haven't fixed/changed the cutscene to reflect that (or else actually implemented the meditation mechanic that they clearly had intended to include but then didn't for whatever reason). In any case, don't spend time like I did trying to figure out how to meditate or to figure out why meditating isn't working, because it's simply not in the game as an actual mechanic. It also kind of makes all the other meditation spots you find in the world pretty much pointless, beyond being scenery.
So yeah, I'd recommend Spiritfarer. I will say this, too: this is the only game, so far, for which I've separately and after the fact bought the digital artbook. (Any other game for which I may have gotten such a thing, I did so only because the version of the game I bought simply came with it already included, and I most likely would not have bought it separately otherwise.)
Spiritfarer. Available on Steam and GOG.com, as well as on Switch, PS4, and X-bone.
This is sort of a weird mix of platformer, adventure, city builder, and farming sim. You play as Stella (and her cat, Daffodil, if you do the local co-op thing, which I don't have the means to do) who becomes the new "Spiritfarer" at the start of the game. A psychopomp, in other words.
Soon after the game starts, you acquire a large boat, which is where you'll probably spend most of your time in the game. As you travel from island to island, you'll eventually meet several spirits who will join you on your ship (after you do a quest or two or ten for some of them). While on the ship, they'll give you additional specific tasks that they want you to do, such as building them a certain building, or giving them a certain meal, or bringing them a certain item, either one that you create yourself or one that you find somewhere in the world. You can build a bunch of different buildings and such on the ship, and after you build the right ones, you'll gain access to the ability to cook food, farm crops, raise livestock, smelt ore, weave fabric, and so on and so forth. There are also several different mini-games that you'll come across while traveling the world that will gain you unique items, such as literally catching lightning in a bottle as one example. And you'll need a lot of that stuff and all the other stuff you make or find in order to upgrade your boat, as there are some areas you can't get to until you have certain upgrades. Unfortunately, in particular the ones that let you reach new areas, some of these upgrades require "spirit flowers," which you only get after you take a spirit to the "Everdoor," which means it's not possible to have all the spirits on the boat at the same time. Also, throughout the course of the game, you will get Metroidvania-like personal upgrades, like double-jumping and gliding and such, which will allow you to get to areas of the platforming-stage-ish islands that you can visit that you otherwise would be unable to reach.
It's also a story-based game. Each spirit has their own tale, which you'll eventually learn as you get to know them. All of them are tied to Stella in some way or other, either by being a family member or someone she had worked with in the "real world." And, of course, the game being what it is, these stories are usually pretty sad in some way. The worst, or at least most hard-hitting for me, were the two that involved the spirit becoming stricken with dementia over the course of their stay on the boat (one was way worse than the other, and it reminded me too much of my own mother, as she was in the end). But all of them are pretty sad at the end, when you have to take each spirit to the Everdoor.
Honestly, for me, it was all about the day to day chores, like watering the crops or shearing the sheep or picking the fruit or milking the cow or cooking food for the passengers or whatever. There was just something relaxing about loading into the game and doing all of that stuff. Even after you upgrade your boat so that it doesn't move so slowly, you'll still usually have plenty of time to do stuff on the boat between moving from one place to the next, and that's even if you use the fast travel walrus, which I rarely did. And then, even when you arrive, nothing is forcing you to immediately leave the boat.
Mild spoilers after this point.
I'll give a small hint, with moderate spoilers: you may want to keep Atul and Gustav around for as long as you can, because they both play music that make the other spirits happier (including each other, which makes each more likely to play music in the first place), which will make getting their moods up to max easier. For Atul, that's a bit tricky, because (SPOILERS) unlike all the other spirits (aside from Buck, who never leaves), you never actually take him to the Everdoor. Once you do his final quest related bit, he will suddenly leave all on his own. So, to spell it out, if you want to keep him around, do not complete his request for a dinner party until you're ready to let him go.
Another small hint: Elena is pretty much the exact opposite of all the other spirits, in that she hates being hugged and she doesn't want upgrades to her house. I found out the second one the hard way, when I built her house and then, because I already had the materials to do so, went ahead and added all the upgrades to it, and then when I talked to her, she was pissed and in a bad mood for a while because I'd cluttered up her house. She got over it, though. (Elena was my least favorite spirit, by far, which is saying something in a game where Giovanni and Bruce exist.)
One last thing: outside of the one cutscene and despite what is said in that one cutscene, meditating is apparently not actually a thing you can do in the game. Not sure why they haven't fixed/changed the cutscene to reflect that (or else actually implemented the meditation mechanic that they clearly had intended to include but then didn't for whatever reason). In any case, don't spend time like I did trying to figure out how to meditate or to figure out why meditating isn't working, because it's simply not in the game as an actual mechanic. It also kind of makes all the other meditation spots you find in the world pretty much pointless, beyond being scenery.
So yeah, I'd recommend Spiritfarer. I will say this, too: this is the only game, so far, for which I've separately and after the fact bought the digital artbook. (Any other game for which I may have gotten such a thing, I did so only because the version of the game I bought simply came with it already included, and I most likely would not have bought it separately otherwise.)
