Game: Spiritstead
Genre: Indie, Casual, Simulation, City Builder
System: Steam (Windows)
Developer | Publisher: Turbo Dog Games | WINGS
Controller Support: None
Price: US $9.99 | UK £TBC | EU € TBC
Release Date: August 6th, 2026
Review code provided with many thanks to Turbo Dog Games
Spiritstead is the debut game of the four-person independent studio, Turbo Dog Games. I had the pleasure of playing it and had lots of fun with it.
Welcome to the Magic World of Spiritstead
Spiritstead is a cozy city builder simulator set in a magical land where villagers, wildlife, and magical spirits live together. They all once lived in harmony, but that harmony between humans and spirits was broken, causing spirits to fade from the world. Now it is up to you to help humans restore the Grand Spirit Sanctuary, bringing back the spirits and restoring balance to the land across three different biomes: Green Forest, Snow, and Swamp.
The art of Spiritstead is inspired by the atmosphere of Hayao Miyazaki’s films, and it shows. Its stunning visual style transports you to a cozy, warm, and intriguing world. It makes it even more impressive to know that it’s hand-drawn! Not only is the art style pleasing to look at, but the background music makes you want to stay and look at how your village comes alive on its own.
Cozy Building or Adventuring? Spiritstead has it all
Spiritstead is designed to be a single-player experience and has 2 modes: Adventure Mode and Creative Mode. The latter is all about freedom to design and decorate your village without the pressure of managing your residents or fulfilling daily tasks.
As for Adventure Mode, or rather story mode, you can gather resources, give villagers jobs, care for their wellness, and build constructions, such as markets, cafés, hospitals, farms, and decorations to boost your villagers’ happiness, like bonfires, roads, benches, flowers, etc.
The main goal of Spiritstead is to keep residents happy. If the happiness bar drops down to 0%, the game is over. Luckily, as this is a cozy city builder, the chances of getting 0% happiness are so low that you would have to be intentional to lose.
Spirits can also be found in this mode to help you manage your town and automate tasks. You can discover them by interacting with the world in funny and unconventional ways. Each spirit has its own special abilities; some are focused on gathering specific items, others can help you with mining resources.
Gameplay of Spiritstead
When you start playing Adventure Mode, you’ll be shown the tutorial. The game controls are quite simple. Most of the time it’s just dragging and dropping villagers all around the place and clicking the resources to collect them.
At the beginning, I felt the pace was a bit slow and overwhelming, since you have to micromanage every villager and click every single resource they gather. However, the more you progress through the story and unlock magical spirits, the easier it gets to just sit back and relax while managing your village and forget about survival mode for a moment.
The Adventure Mode is set to offer around 6-8 hours of gameplay; however, on my first run, I finished the main story in under 5 hours. There’s no need to rush, but as I was so invested in the story and unlocking new things with each level, the next thing I knew I had finished it.
I’m always in for a challenge, so Spiritstead’s Adventure Mode called out to me more than the Creative Mode. Once I finished the main story of the game, it felt as if I was playing in Creative Mode but with a little bit more spice.
There’s not really a tutorial for Creative Mode, but if you click on the book icon with the letter C on the bottom panel, besides giving you spirit information, it shows you the game controls. I recommend starting Spiritstead with Adventure Mode to get the hang of the controls, and then building the cozy village of your dreams in Creative Mode.
There’s never a dull moment in Spiritstead
From getting rid of evil spirits that hunt your village to caring for your residents and taking them to the toilet or the hospital, Spiritstead is an engaging game that doesn’t feel repetitive. You can also play 3 mini-games: fishing, scratching and matching items, and aiding a jumping frog cross the pond.
Even the achievements are fun to obtain and really engaging. I’ll keep playing Spiritstead until I get 100% of the achievements! As an achievement and trophy hunter, I’m so pleased with how easy it is to complete the game.
With my village being mostly automated with spirits’ help, it gives me the opportunity to focus on discovering the remaining spirits. Finishing the main story doesn’t mean that the game ends there; there’s still plenty to do, and I appreciate that tremendously.
Conclusion
Spiritstead is such a lovely combination of a cozy and engaging city builder without overcomplicating itself and overwhelming you with tasks.
In a lot of city builders, I get this pressure to maximize natural resources in order to expand as much as I can. However, it is worth noting that Spiritstead’s goal of restoring harmony to the world takes that pressure away. There are tasks where you work alongside spirits and wildlife that serve as a reminder to take care of nature and our world in order to build a peaceful place to live in.
With Miyazaki’s inspired art style and the developers’ sense of humor, this game is unique on its own. I can’t wait to complete all the achievements and see how Spiritstead evolves. I’m hoping we get more spirits and more biomes to explore, as I’d love to stay longer in this world.
Final Verdict: Two Thumbs Up
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