Signs Of The Sojourner
Play your cards right
This is an approach to dialogue like nothing we’ve ever played. It’s a deck-builder where you carry out conversations by playing cards, carefully matching your card with your partner’s to agree with them, or setting down different cards to highlight your own perspective. It completely breaks away from traditional competitive card games, deciding instead to explore how we connect and communicate with others.
Alongside its clever twist on deck-builders, Signs Of The Sojourner is a bittersweet adventure that follows the highs and lows of travelling life. You play as a nondescript main character; you’ve taken over your mother’s shop after her death and must travel to different locations trading goods to stock in the store. Your mother was well-known on these roads, and chatting to merchants about her escapades makes you feel like you’re getting to know her better.
In a world of wanderers and drifters, having the gift of the gab is important and your curated deck is the key to success. As you chat with a person, you each take it in turns to place cards, matching symbols to continue the flow of the conversation. Co-ordinating cards with some characters can be a breeze, but you’ll often try talking with someone whose cards have unfamiliar symbols causing conversations to screech to a sudden halt, neither of you able to match. You’re on different wavelengths.
DEAL WITH IT
You won’t be able to get along with everyone, that’s just the nature of the game (and... life?). But in travelling and collecting new cards, you learn how to communicate with different people. Each region speaks in its own way and you quickly inherit their social dialects as you play, unlocking new paths and taking the story in different directions.
Signs Of The Sojourner is ultimately about learning to connect with people, and the moments when we play all our cards right, immediately clicking with someone, are magical. Occasionally we feel disheartened when dealt a bad hand we can’t do anything about, completely bottling a conversation with someone we care about, but we know we’ll see them again. That’s how life on the road is.
Signs Of The Sojourner is a compelling adventure that explores loss, healing, and the intimacy of conversations, wonderfully gamifying interaction. Rachel Watts