SPIRIT OF THE NORTH GAME PASS FULL
SPIRIT OF THE NORTH GAME PASS FREE

Jump off this vine to the venus fly trap-like plant to the right and climb up the tree wall next to it. Don’t hold on for too long as when you reach the top, you’ll find the vine belongs to a plant that wants to eat you. Head back to the hanging blue vine and now when you jump on it, it will bring you up. That will light up much of the area above. Use these projectiles to reach the spirit light in the corner and then use them to light the blue glowing thing on the right. Use Kuro’s Feather on the pot on the left to create fiery projectiles. Push it off the ledge to make it drop below. Jump left onto the hanging blue vine and quickly jump left again (you’ll slide down this vine quick) to reach a boulder that can be pushed or pulled with RT. Otherwise, jump up to the floating lanterns, bash to the lantern on the right and then bash off of that lantern to reach flat land above. Head right and jump down to find a Life Cell plant. Jump on top of Baur and climb over him to progress.

Talk to them and they’ll go back to sleep. Head right and you’ll run into the bear, or Baur, again. A gust of wind will go straight into the bear’s nose and it’ll wake them up, opening up a new passage for you to reach a new section of the game known as Baur’s Reach. Head inside with Kuro’s Feather equipped and use the feather by pressing the button it’s equipped to. Talk to the Moki and they’ll tell you that you need something to tickle the bear awake. When you arrive, you’ll enter a cave with a Moki outside of it. It’s important to note that you can’t get past this point in the game without Kuro’s Feather.

SPIRIT OF THE NORTH GAME PASS FULL

Hopefully, the full game trends away from them, because the time I spent earlier in the demo simply taking in the environment at my own pace was a great experience that I’d love to play more of when Spirit of the North releases on Switch this spring.To get to this area in the game, head to where we are on the map below. I spent a little under an hour with Spirit of the North, and the rune puzzles didn’t start to pop up until the last fifteen minutes or so, so I didn’t get enough time with them to know if they were developed further or if they become less prominent as the game goes on. Since I never felt like I was pressured to find a staff in order to continue my journey, I enjoyed stopping to look around for them whenever I noticed a body much more than I relished the “main quest” puzzles. The staves are hidden throughout the world, waiting to be stumbled upon or sought out specifically, and their optional nature makes them far more satisfying to find than the power plants that let you open runes.

SPIRIT OF THE NORTH GAME PASS FREE

Much more interesting were the bonus side-tasks of placing a magical staff next to the deceased body of a traveler to free their spirit, presumably allowing them to pass on peacefully. This leads to frustration whenever you happen to walk past a power plant without seeing it, as you’ll inevitably find yourself at a dead end with no option but to simply backtrack, find the plant, and then return to the dead end to progress.

There’s no downside to carrying the spirit’s power, and it doesn’t disappear until you’ve transferred it to the rune, so it’s best to keep a charge of the power whenever possible. I call them 'puzzles', but I think that's being a bit generous there isn’t really any particular problem-solving involved. In order to achieve this, you first need to absorb the spirit’s power from a particular kind of plant and then carry it back to the rune. Shortly after, I began to encounter puzzles based around transferring the spirit’s magic into runes to open pathways. These simple moments were the core appeal to me when playing Spirit of the North, and I wasn’t surprised to hear the developer hosting the demo say that they were the main focus of the game. This spirit acts as a guide that shows you the way through the environment, serving as a companion in the lonely wilderness. Eventually you meet the ghostly image of another fox: the eponymous spirit of the north.

Spirit of the north game pass