Signs of the Sojourner Reviews
Signs of the Sojourner’s creative card-based conversations make for a unique and satisfying mechanic that compliments the very endearing narrative. There’s just something mighty satisfying about seeing a successful conversation play out the way you want it to, whilst the ‘easy to play but difficult to master’ nature of the gameplay ensures it never grows stagnant as you progress. There were a few frustrating moments here and there where I felt at odds with the game and couldn’t succeed in conversations due to the random nature of the deck-building, but it didn’t cause enough issues to deter from what is otherwise a warm-hearted and memorable experience. Signs of the Sojourner really does something different with the genre, but what it does is entertaining throughout.
At its core, Signs of the Sojourner is a deck-building card game with elements of a visual novel. At times the card drawing feels very much like it’s luck of the draw. Like real-life conversations with others, it’s a game were failing these card encounters is a part of the experience. You can’t see everything in one playthrough or win at every conversation every time. And the narrative of the story adapts to that, leading to multiple endings. Similarly in the world of Signs of Sojourner as in real life, words and actions do have consequences!
Signs of the Sojourner is an interesting interpretation of the art of communicating and the difficulties of the maturing process. The dialogue made through cards with symbols is simple to understand, but offers depth with the varied effects of the cards and the minimalist construction of decks. The journey through this exotic world is immersive because of the many interesting characters, beautiful locations and unique ambience, in a diversified journey made to be experienced several times. Some details, like the influence of luck and the constant inclusion of useless cards in the deck, bring a little frustration, however, I interpret it as another metaphor of the game - just like in life, we need to do the best with what we have. In the end, Signs of the Sojourner offers a different and unique narrative experience.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
...it’s a lot of fun to craft a deck to meet the challenges and stories of the road. Meeting the characters along the caravan’s route and learning their stories is a joy that drives mechanical experimentation. It’s refreshing to create harmony and boost meaning-laden signal over noise.
With a novel concept and brilliantly thought out execution, Signs of the Sojourner has all the makings of gaming’s next indie darling.
Had Signs of the Sojourner allowed the player to fail without having the door slammed in their face, it would be easier to forgive some of the flatness present in its card system or the brevity of its script. But by framing conversations as games to be won without anticipating how often they’d be lost, huge chunks of the game become sequences of frustrating nonsequiturs.
There’s a lot to love here, but I don’t think the main mechanic works very well. Which is sad, because I wish it did. I want to love it, but ultimately I just found it frustrating, and watching the credits roll felt like a compromise. So be fairly warned before giving it a shot.
Signs of the Sojourner is a very good amalgamation of Deck-buildings, Rogue-likes, Visual Novels and even Tetris and the Whole thing works beautifully. It really forces you to make hard decisions about how you move your story forward and to understand the whole thing, you need maybe a dozen of playthroughs.
Review in Persian | Read full review