Quick Review: Spirits

The spirits of fallen leaves? In my frozen Canadian North, they’re already gone.

A creation of Spaces of Play UG released on February 15th, 2012, Spirits is a Lemmings-like puzzle game in which several little light creatures, the spirits of fallen leaves, have to reach the swirling goal in each level. For this, a finite amount of spirits will spawn in that level, and a certain number of them have to reach their destination. Fortunately, these creatures have abilities to help their brethren… at the cost of their own lives.

Starts simple enough. Blow the spirits upwards.

Okay... that's gonna be trickier.

These abilities aren’t available in every level. The first is the Blow ability, which will turn a spirit into a cloud blowing a gust in one of five directions – left, right and the three directions upwards. The Grow ability will turn a spirit into a plant growing upwards left or right, which other spirits can then walk on. The Dig ability allows a creature to, well, dig in one direction – left, right, or the three directions downwards – and the others will then follow that new path. The last ability, Block, can be used to block a gust of wind that already existed in the level. Some abilities have additional effects – as an example, using Dig on ground blocking a gust of wind will allow said wind to come through. You can activate an ability at any time while a spirit is walking, and you can also deactivate it at any moment afterwards; keep in mind, however, that the spirit will die.

Alright, looks like I'm getting the hang of it.
Only took me 5 retries for that one.

On top of that, most levels also contain small plants that can be gathered by a spirit walking by them. Alternately, you can click a spirit in mid-air and they will drop a spore – and if that spore touches a plant, that plant will be “collected” as well. According to the game, a plant is worth a thousand spirits. On top of the requirement to finish a level, there is a secondary challenge to “perfectly complete” that same level, which involves not only getting as many spirits into the swirl as possible, but collecting all the plants as well. Since the end of a level can feel slow as the spirits walk and float around, you can hold the Space bar to speed things up.

Red spikes bad.

A pretty good idea overall; I appreciate that there is some level of complexity, and that depending on the level you don’t have access to every ability. It can get very tricky after a while, as the challenge becomes not only to get enough spirits into the swirl, but to take them to it in the first place. Add to this the extra challenge of collecting every plant and saving as many spirits as possible, and you’ve got a few hours of stuff to do. It’s a very stylistic experience, with soothing music and a relaxing style with the colors associated to fall.

The spirits have to travel quite a bit in order to
reach the swirl and gather every plant.

Probably the more annoying part with this puzzle is that you have to act very fast, and with a plan in mind, as you won’t have time to think thoroughly once the creatures start walking. Later levels add to the difficulty with multiple spawn points. You can restart a level as often as you want, but a point comes where you have to restart repeatedly just to figure out what to do. The crowds of spirits can also be a problem, with some that can get stuck in places and others that can be a bother. When so many are in one place at once, it’s tricky to select the one you actually want to use.

I like the idea, but my opinion of the execution is meddled. It’s a decent game, I liked it just fine, but it didn’t grab my interest as much as it could have with such a concept, which is unfortunate.

Spirits is available on Steam for 3.99$ USD.