*Note: I received the game for free for my honest review. Thank you to PRHound and Wobble Ghost for the Nintendo Switch game key!
Right from the start you can see the nods to classic Legend of Zelda games in Spindle. The art for the game is hand drawn and it's wonderful. For me it brought to mind playing old school adventure games when I was a kid and that nostalgia hit hard in the best ways. The initial introduction is interesting, but doesn't really explain a lot and that's the point. It's a mystery we have to solve. It's a dark and stormy night and you are woken up by a cute talking pig and you are Death. It's an intriguing set up as you and your pig companion try to figure out what is going on in the world.
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| Death and a cute talking pig. |
It's obvious things have gone very wrong when you discover the soul of an old man is not with his body. Spindle isn't just about death and how we deal with it, it's about understanding the nuances of balance and it's up to you and your pig companion to restore that balance while unraveling the mystery that caused the chaos. Charon is a constant presence offering advice about where to find the lost souls as well as trying to help figure out what's going on.
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| Meeting Charon. |
It's up to you to explore the various towns, talk to the people there to get information, and of course explore the dungeons and solve puzzles to get to where you need to go. I love puzzles, but I'm not the best at them and it can take me several tries to figure out the solution. Spindle definitely had some tricky puzzles, but nothing that was too frustrating. I was having so much fun with the game and story, I was very determined to solve those puzzles and when I did I felt so proud of myself for figuring it out.
I did have a couple issues with the game. There was an issue at one point with stuttering frame rate on the Switch. It was quite noticeable, but once I closed the game and rebooted it was fine and there were no issues. There was also a glitch with a puzzle where it was not working correctly, but again rebooting the game solved the problem. The last one was gameplay with the world map and I do feel it is a lack of accessibility. The map is very detailed which is great. However, some of the colors are so similar they tend to blend together and the fact that I could not zoom the map in at all made it challenging for me to navigate my surroundings and figure out where to go next. There was a lot of backtracking for me because of getting turned around and that was a bit frustrating.
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| World map in Spindle. |
Those issues aside, I really enjoyed Spindle. I liked the story and how it kept me guessing with reveals I didn't see coming. I appreciated the way the villagers in each town just accepted Death and his pig as normal and asked them for favors or helped them out with little clues here and there. I also loved the little nods to taking a moment to just be with things like being able to go fishing and fill up a fishing encyclopedia with all the fish you find.
The biggest thing for me playing Spindle was the power of connection. Throughout the story, Spindle showed how each of us is connected whether it's through family, friends, community, or just finding common ground with a kindred spirit and how even in death that connection never truly goes away as long as we have empathy and compassion for each other. It's a powerful message told beautifully through the charming art style, amusing bits of humor, and in depth emotional moments through each character you meet. Spindle isn't necessarily a story about death, it's about life and how we navigate it and find that balance from the beginning right to the end. It's beautifully done with a gentle thoughtfulness and I appreciated the journey.
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| Having a relaxing time fishing. |
*Spindle is available to play on the following platforms: Steam and Nintendo Switch
*Join the Mothergamer community on Twitch where we play games and discuss mental health: https://www.twitch.tv/mothergamer
