Review: Signs of the Sojourner (2019)

Original post: https://misthold.dreamwidth.org/4407.html

Signs of the Sojourner (2020) is a narrative card game where encounters are conversations and not battles. It's the very first card-based video game I've played, and I LOVED it.

You play as a faceless, genderless, nameless shadow-person whose mother died recently. She left you a general goods store in your small home town, and you have to go get stock from other towns. You can join a caravan, or go on your own (both lead to different plot points). Subplots pop up the longer you travel, if you can successfully navigate the conversations. The world is a rich and vibrant setting with BIPOC and nonbinary characters filling it, with a fun soundtracks running in the background.

It took some doing to get used to the card play, since you not only have to consider what's in your hand, but what cards your conversation partner has. The goal is to match up symbols and continue the conversation. Successfully complete the convo and you'll get items to sell in your store, information about other towns and roads, and info about your mother (who recently died).

After every convo you MUST switch out an old card for a new card. The further from home you go, the more cards with new symbols show up, so you have to strategically pick which ones to keep and which to dump. Dump too many of one symbol and you won't be able to talk to your friends at home. Keep too many of the symbols from your home area, and you won't be able to talk to people in far-out towns.

As you go on, you get special card actions like “shuffle hand” or “match the previous symbol” (my favorites). You'll also start picking up fatigue cards the longer you travel– which can't be matched with ANY cards, will immediately tank a convo, and which can only be removed by resting, petting your dog, or going back home. There are other special moves (like matching 4 symbols in a row gives you a one-time mismatch protection) but that's the main set-up.

I was very frustrated for the first few conversations, since I had no idea what I was doing and kept flubbing them. You get a few chances to keep the convo going after a mismatch, but depending on the character/conversation, you could only have ONE chance. Flub that convo and you've lost a whole plot point. You don't get a rematch.

Very annoying to flub convos that I wanted to go well! I really liked the characters I ran into, and I wanted to be friends and buy their stuff to stock my store. It killed me to have those conversations go so badly!

But sometimes you NEED to flub those convos– I accidentally became accomplice to a criminal because I wanted to “win” the match. Whoops. However, on the whole it's encouraged to match up to people, to empathize with them! Otherwise the story will be very boring and your store will fail ASAP.

And it's not just conversations that cause plot changes. If you keep ditching the caravan to go explore other towns (towns that have info about your mom), the caravan will eventually ditch you. Or if you take too long traveling, you'll miss important dates in your hometown and your best friend will be sad.

Balancing different plot points/story choices along with trying to complete a conversation successfully was highly entertaining. I definitely plan on playing again, and trying to get further into certain conversations (pickle man!). It took me about 7 hours to get through the first time, and I'm pretty sure I haven't even gotten into half of what's in this game.

Price: $19.99

Available for Windows, Mac, and Nintendo Switch. I played the Mac OS version.