Now you’ve secured its future and lost your connection to your past. If you hadn’t joined the caravan, your shop would have collapsed. You may end the game having nothing in common with the person who used to be closest to you. If you’re gathering cards to help you on the road, you’ll be left with fewer things to say to your friend Elias. But after a few painful attempts, you can build up enough matching cards to see things their way, and the thrill of finding common ground is as great as slaying any RPG dragon.Īt the end of each trip in Signs of the Sojourner, you return home. The first time you talk to some people, it’s impossible to win - you just don’t have the perspective to connect with them. Before long, new symbols start to appear. On your first few stops, people are like the ones you grew up with, and conversations are fairly easy. Each one has its own local drama, from dueling picklers to homesick androids. Your journey takes you across a vibrantly illustrated map to towns you’ve never seen. The life of your shop, and your entire tiny town, depend on you. You’re joining a caravan to gather products for the shop you inherited from your mom and run with your best friend, Elias. The story of Signs of the Sojourner involves leaving home for the first time. But when that growth moves us further from the people we care about, it can be painful, even if it’s the only way to move forward. That’s not a bad thing! It’s how we grow.
Just like in life, picking up new perspectives and attitudes necessarily means leaving some behind. You can’t choose not to take a card, because you can’t choose which experiences change you. Each time you finish a conversation, no matter its outcome, you replace one of your cards with one from your partner’s deck. Match enough cards and you both walk away happy otherwise, the person you’re talking to is unsatisfied. The conversation system isn’t made to be mastered. From there, it’s up to you to make the conversation work. You’re shown which symbols a person has in their deck, not how many there are of each or in what order. Signs of the Sojourner gives you only a tiny amount of information about your next conversation. These symbols aren’t just shapes - each one represents a conversational tone or perspective, like empathy, logic, and creativity. It’s a simple system with a lot of thematic depth.
To have a conversation, you match your card’s left-hand symbol to the right-hand symbol of the card your conversation partner just played, forming a chain. Each card has a symbol on the left and right. Here, you start and end with just 10 cards. Your deck in Signs of the Sojourner is pathetically small compared to sprawling games like Slay the Spire. Here, there’s no attacking or defending, only listening and being heard. Games like Griftlands mechanize conversations with cards, but in that case, a conversation is just another kind of battle. Signs of the Sojourner is a deck-building card game, but not the kind you’re used to. And since it’s leaving Xbox Game Pass at the end of August, you really need to get to playing it as soon as you can. Signs of the Sojourner tells the story of a road trip with a purpose primarily through conversations, and in the process, it becomes one of the best games ever about the joy and pain of human connection. But few games dig deep into making conversations meaningful, and even fewer are actually about those conversations. Whether you’re recruiting a gang of sexy aliens to your cause or haggling with a merchant over some life-saving elixir, talking to people is a core part of embodying your role.
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