Indie Philippine game devs Yangyang Mobile has announced their next game: Spirit Rancher.
Pitched as Palword meets Stardew Valley, Spirit Rancher will have you discover and catch a variety of spirits that not only can fight, but also help with the rancher at home.
When out and about in Spirit Rancher, you’ll be discovering new spirits, bringing them home and also fight in battles.
Bring the spirits home and build habitats and facilities that can help them thrive, they even can produces resources. Or be the the resource of another. There’s a bit of Slime Rancher where you can feed a spirit to another spirit as part of a production chain.
Speaking of production chain, your homestead in Spirit Rancher isn’t a typical rustic farm in your typical cosy farming game. The game allows players to tinker and create their own automated systems. There are carts on tracks wheeling away resources in the announcement trailer that’s pretty much a conveyor belt, bring in some of that industrialist thinking out of Factorio or any other factory builder/automation game into Spirit Rancher as well.
In short, the gameplay loop of Spirit Rancher should bring “the thrill of creature collecting with the cosy satisfaction of building, optimising and expanding a home of your own,” as the press release states.
Yangyang Mobile has built a repertoire in making either visual novels or games where romance takes a central theme—the last game we covered, Love Esquire, was both.
Spirit Rancher looks to be a fascinating change in direction, though who’s to say this won’t be any romantic interactions with people down the line, considering one of the inspos here is Stardew Valley.
Spirit Rancher won’t be ready just yet, as it is planned to be released on PC via Steam Early Access in 2028.