This is really becoming the time and place for some cozy death games, isn’t it? While titles circling around death are far from new or novel, it seems that the stance of the English speaking world is finally shifting towards better accepting and understanding. With the success of Spiritfarer, Spiritea and even the more recent Kulebra, devs are really embracing the afterlife as a playground to explore thematics of loss, meaning and acceptance. It’s certainly a healthy shift away from the perspective of my youth, which was “never talk about it ever and just live with existential dread.” But, as we all must face the end, it comes that everyone has their own perspective on what, if anything, comes next, and indie developer Wobble Ghost brings equal parts action, humor, mystery and introspection with his pixel art project, Spindle.

With Spindle, players are going to start off confused, and I suppose that’s okay. You play Dengel, who appears to have been a young boy enjoying some time with his father when, suddenly and inexplicably, dad is gone and you’re now Death. No big deal, you’ve got a talking pig to explain things to you. Taking on the mantle (as though you have a choice), you quickly become the gopher for Charon, who advises you on which souls to collect, and the job immediately has some complications. For one, souls appear to not be releasing the way they should. Some dark force is influencing spirits to remain and become malevolent, which isn’t good. Dengel deals with a lot of weird stuff while slowly finding out what is going on, why souls aren’t going to where they’re supposed to be, and why you apparently have to be the capital D Death.

The majority of Spindle is focused on an action/adventure situation that reminds me heavily of games like Tunic or SNES era Zelda titles. You’ve got your basic scythe initially, and you gradually unlock new skills and abilities, like self-healing, a dash attack and riding on the aforementioned pig, just to name a few. Dengel doesn’t get XP or coins, so attacking monsters is more a matter of necessity for unlocking puzzle doors. You also have an energy meter which is important for other abilities, like a spin attack.  You get the energy from, well, enemies and bushes, so you can hack away at anything to refill your meters. If you run out of health, you respawn at the last autosave point, which sometimes feels really arbitrary, so don’t be surprised that you have equal odds to start over in the previous room as to re-appearing several screens away.

Spindle has some good points and bad points, which of course it does, you’re reading a game review. In the positive category, Wobble Ghost has done a fantastic job on delivering the visuals and the atmosphere from front to back. This could have easily turned into a game that was either too dour or too goofy, but it manages to run straight up the middle to give players something memorable and engaging. The townsfolk all do have their own personalities, which delivers doses of silliness and melancholy with equal doses. You can spend time trying to conquer the puzzle rooms that one villager has constructed, or, if you listen carefully, you’ll understand why things like chili peppers and chicks might have something to do with each other, and unfolds as an optional but engaging side quest. You do these things out of interest, not because it’s needed to progress.

In that same kind of mindset, you also recognize that some of the jokes and humor, while not being macabre in nature, are still there to offset some of the darker notes throughout the game. After all, it’s silly that a talking pig is your companion, and that Charon has a hot air balloon, but you’re ultimately seeking out entities who have died, even if they don’t know it yet. One of the earlier souls you save is someone’s son, which is truly devastating once you unpack the deeper meaning of what’s happening. Spindle is tremendous in giving the players the pieces and letting them assemble them in their own way. Nothing is too obfuscated, but you also aren’t spoon fed what’s become of one character or another. In essence, you can make the game as poignant or surface level as you want.

Though I will admit, there are times that Spindle seems to have more invested in the characters than others. Some of the first couple of souls you rescue feel like they have consequence and interest behind them: their lives had some impact on others and it was important to help them rest on multiple levels. Then you get certain souls where it just feels like a means to an ends in moving the overall story along about the unknown darkness, which really rubbed me the wrong way. In a game where you have an important deal and players/people want to know that they matter, having a character’s soul amount to little more than “well, he was kind of a dick but at least now you know how to get somewhere” was almost offensive.

Continuing with gameplay notes, the game melds itself very well in terms of how difficult or easy you’d like it to be The difficulty adjustment meter adheres strictly to damage received, but you can also add in some bonuses, like invulnerability and seeing enemy health meter, either of which can be toggled on at a moment’s notice. There’s also the option to adjust the brightness of the game by cutting down on dark places, which is a godsent for the Switch Lite. As much as I love my handheld, it’s often necessary to find the optimal lighting to play, and Spindle does its best to provide on its own side. Oh, there’s also a setting to make fishing easier, but it feels pretty unnecessary, especially since fishing is usually just a fun side project of the game.

The fighting and combat is decent, and the bosses are fun, but there’s nothing that’s really challenging in the fighting department. A lot of what you see is either just swinging wildly until an enemy goes down or watching and figuring out a small but concise pattern to follow in order to win. This only gets easier and better the further along you go with the game, adding in new abilities and techniques that are helpful in their own way. Some are a little obtuse at first: the way in which you can control your piggy partner takes a bit of getting used to, and it does come at the expense of an entire boss area feeling like a tutorial for something that, hereafter, has aspects of combat but are more for exploration and obtaining specific, secret sections of the game.

Spindle boasts a fantastic score, though some tracks stand out more than others. Going into the city in the volcano, there’s an eclectic scoring that really grabbed my attention and made me remember the music more than the rather simple atmosphere of the city by itself. Conversely, there’s quite a few times where the composer reverts into what almost feels like commonplace ideas for what the music should sound like. A lot of isolated piano with somber tones to it. We get it, you’re Death and things aren’t always happy this way. But we’ve done the piano bit to death, pun intended. Keep on moving with some of the stranger sounds and the complexity that paints a picture beyond the imminent sadness that comes with the grappling of mortality.

What keeps Spindle from really reaching higher marks with me is that the actual gameplay feels inconsistent on a performance and technical level. On the one hand, the Nintendo Switch is underpowered compared to many things on the market now, so I can’t totally fault the game when you move between areas and there’s a brief loading pause that can also throw off the cadence of the soundtrack. That doesn’t affect the enjoyment of the game. But when you’re trying to traverse an area like I did in chapter four and the landscape literally doesn’t render properly so you’re walking into invisible walls, it’s rather irksome and throws off my groove. I don’t mind having to wait an extra moment for the game to be drawn, as long as it’s drawn correctly and errant shadows aren’t appearing where nothing exists and I’m trying to skirt around what I can’t see.

Additionally, it’s sometimes frustrating to be in the developer’s head for exactly where and what you’re supposed to be doing. The map that you’re given doesn’t properly differentiate between water and land, so trying to find a cave near a river can be a hassle when the locations seem arbitrary. When you’re trying to outrun a massive bug that’s an instakill, it’s not fun needing to perfectly line yourself up to barely escape by the hair on your chin. And when you need to travel back long distances to get to places, the pig riding isn’t really great, accurate or helpful. This whole game could probably be about four hours, tops, but you spend an unbearable amount of time trudging, loading and doing the same stuff again and again when you honestly don’t need to.

Having said all that, Spindle does have its charm, it has some intrigue in gameplay and story telling, and the boss fights are fun and creative. I wasn’t totally sold on the side quests, but it didn’t stop me from trying to look into it now and again. I’m always a fan of Death as a playable character, and a talking pig happens to be the secret sauce that’ll keep me going even after I’m wildly frustrated.  Spindle has heart in a bare ribcage, and it beats for the player as well as the NPCs. Take a chance, breath deeply, and remember: you’re already dead. You’ve got all the time in the world.

Graphics: 8.0 Really well done pixel art and some truly great animations for the pig and Dengel alike. The glitch effects are jarring in a great way, and I was always on the lookout for new and interesting formations in the landscape and the enemies.	Gameplay: 6.0 Hack and slash with no real consequences. Puzzles fluctuate between very easy and majorly obtuse, with almost nothing inbetween. Why put a red herring in the pirate lore book? Side quests were inconsequential, and meandering lead to the game feeling drawn out.
Sound: 7.0 When the music was on, it was exciting, enthralling and really cpatured my ear with some creative compositions. When it dipped, it just felt like the same kind of soundtrack you would expect for a Grim Reaper game, and that was disappointing.	Fun Factor: 6.0 Brilliant bursts of storytelling, boss fights and cheeky characters with long stretches of repetitive fights, endless re-treading and some majorly disappointing pacing. Chapters both dragged and flew by in the blink of an eye. Once it’s over, it’s over.
Final Verdict: 6.5

Spindle is available now on Nintendo Switch and Steam.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch.

A copy of Spindle was provided by the publisher.