Signs of the Sojourner Reviews
Despite all its gameplay issues, Signs of the Sojourner remains an entertaining title that you can experience time and again; each time encountering new things. Playing this game can distance you from AAA titles for a while, and will bring you a fresh experience
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Signs of the Sojourner is a slice of life deck building narrative game. If that was more than a mouthful for you, you may consider steering clear of this game as the conversation based game-play will careen you down a narrative driven path rife with haggling and sometimes fleeting relationships. For the right gamer, Signs of the Sojourner will provide the kind of unique game play that you can't find anywhere else. For deck builder fans, you may find it hit or miss to your tastes, but if battling is more your speed, this might not be up your alley.
Signs of the Sojourner has an excellent premise, an incredible soundtrack, and solid writing, but this jars with an often punishing and frustrating difficulty. All signs point towards this being a light-hearted narrative Indie, but the balance undermines that core identity, making it a struggle to fully enjoy.
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.
With a novel concept and brilliantly thought out execution, Signs of the Sojourner has all the makings of gaming’s next indie darling.
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!
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.
I have, to borrow a metaphor, a lot of Fatigue cards in my deck some days.