Signs of the Sojourner, hippie deckbuilder
Posted: Sun May 09, 2021 11:51 pm
In this game, the card "battles" are the conversations you have with other characters. Each turn, you try to play a card whose symbol matches the card the other person played. If you make enough matches, the conversation goes well and you learn a little more. If you (or the other person) fail to make a match, the conversation goes awkwardly.
The game takes place in what looks like the American Southwest, sometime in the future when the roads are bad, water is scarce, and communities are poor but slowly developing their economies through arts and crafts. Your character has recently lost his mother and is struggling to keep his mom's store in business. You go on a caravan that visits nearby towns to do trade. In each town, you talk with the locals. If a conversation goes well, you pick up some local news, earn an object to put on the store shelves, get the map marker of another town, or learn a secret about your mom's past.
After each conversation, you are forced to put a new card in your deck (representing the local lingo you've picked up) and lose an old card (representing how you've fallen out of touch with your past). Sometimes this is a welcome upgrade, and sometimes it isn't. Also, the longer you're out on the road, the more Fatigue cards your deck accumulates. Fatigue cards don't match with anything. They're useless and take up space in your hand, making it harder to have good conversations. There are few opportunities to lose Fatigue cards on the road, so the only way to lose them all is to return home and rest (though doing so ends your caravan excursion and starts the next chapter in the story).
I really enjoyed this game at first because of how well the card game simulates conversation. When you talk with your best friend, the conversation goes without a hitch. But when you meet someone new in another town, you might struggle to match symbols and the conversation flops. When you return home after a long trip, your friend greets you, but the conversation doesn't go as well as before because you're tired and aren't the same person.
I also liked the setting. The art and music give a rustic, Bohemian feel to the town backdrops and characters' clothes. The people you meet seem torn between the freedom of the nomadic lifestyle and the security of settling down. Even the caravanners are torn between the safety of a routine trip and the thrill of exploring the unknown. You can break away from your caravan to explore other towns and hopefully learn more about your mom, though there's a price for not staying with the caravan.
The game grew frustrating, though. Breaking off from the caravan usually led to failed conversations and fruitless pursuits. Occasionally I would have a hand full of Fatigue cards. I guess I was just not good at the card game. And when you're having a bad time with a game, the flaws stand out more. The game is pretty harsh; if you flub a conversation, you don't get another chance at it, and may have closed a branch of the story for good. And some of the writing and characters aren't that interesting.
I got a bittersweet ending. I didn't get to meet all the characters, visit every town, or learn who Mom really was. I may play the game again someday, making fewer mistakes. What would make that more likely is if the game offered a "New Game Plus" mode for having gone through it once, like a bigger hand.
Most reviews of this game are positive, so your experience will probably be better than mine. And if you bought last year's Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality from itch.io, you have the game already.
The game takes place in what looks like the American Southwest, sometime in the future when the roads are bad, water is scarce, and communities are poor but slowly developing their economies through arts and crafts. Your character has recently lost his mother and is struggling to keep his mom's store in business. You go on a caravan that visits nearby towns to do trade. In each town, you talk with the locals. If a conversation goes well, you pick up some local news, earn an object to put on the store shelves, get the map marker of another town, or learn a secret about your mom's past.
After each conversation, you are forced to put a new card in your deck (representing the local lingo you've picked up) and lose an old card (representing how you've fallen out of touch with your past). Sometimes this is a welcome upgrade, and sometimes it isn't. Also, the longer you're out on the road, the more Fatigue cards your deck accumulates. Fatigue cards don't match with anything. They're useless and take up space in your hand, making it harder to have good conversations. There are few opportunities to lose Fatigue cards on the road, so the only way to lose them all is to return home and rest (though doing so ends your caravan excursion and starts the next chapter in the story).
I really enjoyed this game at first because of how well the card game simulates conversation. When you talk with your best friend, the conversation goes without a hitch. But when you meet someone new in another town, you might struggle to match symbols and the conversation flops. When you return home after a long trip, your friend greets you, but the conversation doesn't go as well as before because you're tired and aren't the same person.
I also liked the setting. The art and music give a rustic, Bohemian feel to the town backdrops and characters' clothes. The people you meet seem torn between the freedom of the nomadic lifestyle and the security of settling down. Even the caravanners are torn between the safety of a routine trip and the thrill of exploring the unknown. You can break away from your caravan to explore other towns and hopefully learn more about your mom, though there's a price for not staying with the caravan.
The game grew frustrating, though. Breaking off from the caravan usually led to failed conversations and fruitless pursuits. Occasionally I would have a hand full of Fatigue cards. I guess I was just not good at the card game. And when you're having a bad time with a game, the flaws stand out more. The game is pretty harsh; if you flub a conversation, you don't get another chance at it, and may have closed a branch of the story for good. And some of the writing and characters aren't that interesting.
I got a bittersweet ending. I didn't get to meet all the characters, visit every town, or learn who Mom really was. I may play the game again someday, making fewer mistakes. What would make that more likely is if the game offered a "New Game Plus" mode for having gone through it once, like a bigger hand.
Most reviews of this game are positive, so your experience will probably be better than mine. And if you bought last year's Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality from itch.io, you have the game already.
