Review: Spirittea

destructoid.com:

I was really hoping for a relaxing game. I needed one. Spirittea was promising that experience. Unfortunately, it’s a clear demonstration that there’s a fine line between relaxation and boredom.

Mashing up my favorite Spirited Away and Stardew Valley and featuring my favorite pastimes of taking baths and drinking tea, it had everything going for it. Heck, the protagonist is a writer who travels to the countryside to work on their latest book. I’m a writer. At least, I sometimes claim to be.

But after nearly 20 hours, I was a season and a half into the game. I’d befriended a handful of spirits and villagers. The bathhouse was coming along. But it was crawling. Forget relaxing; going back to Spirittea was beginning to just add to my misery. Something went wrong here.

Spirittea (PC [Reviewed] Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Switch)
Developer: Cheesemaster Games
Publisher: No More Robots
Released: November 13, 2023
MSRP: $19.99

I’ve given some of the synopsis already, but to reiterate, you’re a writer who has retreated to the countryside to remove distractions and focus on your next opus. However, soon after drinking tea from a magic teapot, you gain the ability to see spirits. Well, a spirit. However, this maneki neko tells you that all the other spirits of the village have become lost as the residents have stopped worshipping them. You’re tasked with helping them find themselves, then, uh, bathing them.

Yeah, there’s a bathhouse at the top of the mountain, and it’s a great way to make money because my old college professors were right: writing doesn’t pay the bills. Any spirit you help out becomes a customer at the bathhouse, and so do all their identical siblings.

You then spin off the money you make to expand the bathhouse,