My duty is to “reward” this unconscionable behavior with, well, more junk. Through your ceaseless plunder of this world’s very finite wonders, you will no doubt come to stockpile a collection of junk to rival the greatest garbage dumps of history. You see, I am the Collector not by choice, but by duty. … The gods, in all their materialistic arrogance, have played a cruel trick on me. Her monologue is as follows (shortened for length): Stella never speaks, so Susan has a one-way introductory “conversation”. Susan is a walrus (many NPCs are animals), and her introduction dialogue reveals a lot about her personality, as well as her opinion about the act of collecting. The tiny one-person island is an elegant lounge for the NPC who lives there, and there isn’t anything or anyone for the player to interact with, except Susan. When Stella arrives at the island, she goes up an elegant white ladder which leads to a single platform. Susan’s Museum is an island in the North West part of the world in a region called Hummingberg. The quests, which drive the stories pertaining to the spirits, lead Stella to numerous islands, including one called Susan’s Museum. Spirits will also ask for quest-specific items, and Stella is often sent across the map to find knick-knacks in boxes, on top of buildings, and even in the middle of the sea. They request structures (like a kitchen or gallery) or food, which the player crafts. As Stella meets spirits on her journey from island to island, the spirits join Stella on her boat as a passenger. Stella has a bottomless inventory, and everything from wooden planks to bottled ectoplasm will be kept until the items are used or sold. In terms of gameplay, Stella (the player) manages her boat by travelling from island to island, collecting materials which she uses to build structures, make items, and upgrade the vessel. The game’s easy pace, detailed animation, and beautiful music come together to unravel touching stories that explore death and compassion. In an interview, the studio staff describe their inspirations for the game’s setting and gameplay, which include Greek mythology, Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away, and farming simulators such a Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley. In comparing real-world collection practices with those in Spiritfarer, I hope to show how Spiritfarer’s “reconstructive” storytelling and its collection mechanics can help shed light on the memory function of collection management policies and practices of libraries and museums.Ĭreated by Thunder Lotus in 2020, Spiritfarer is a 2D side-scrolling action-platformer and lore-rich adventure game, also pitched as “cozy management game about dying.” The game’s protagonist, Stella the spiritfarer (or ferrymaster), goes around the magical and charming world on her ever-expanding boat, befriending and caring for spirits until they’re ready to move on to the afterlife. This post will discuss Susan’s role and her views on collecting, and compare Susan and her ideas to real-world institutional collection management practices. While Susan is a minor character in-game, “collection management” is a real-world profession integral to museums, libraries and other curatorial institutions of all themes and sizes. When the player first meets Susan, she describes her distaste for the collection of “junk.” Nonetheless, Susan is the in-game collections achievement tracker, and will reward the player for finding objects throughout the game. There is a character in Spiritfarer called the Collector, a well-dressed, finicky walrus who goes by the name of Susan.
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