Hi, first of all the game is amazing!!!! Played through it once and fell in love ngl. I really had to restrain myself from playing it til 3 am.
I bought the game through the bundle for racial equality and was wondering if that still allows me to get a steam key? I'm a completionist at heart and I really want to 100% the game. Thank you for such an amazing game!!!
Weirdly enough I'm getting an unhandled page fault on read access to 0x24 at address 0x69885BD5 (and consistently so, the only variable is the thread ID) when running it under wine. Removing dxvk from the equation didn't change anything either.
If anyone gets version 4 to run under Linux (or some other version I'd have access to), please do let me know, since from what I've seen so far this does seem pretty nice & I'd like to at least be able to give it a proper try beyond a few seconds into it (it crashes a few seconds after clicking "Begin Story" / after the last card in the first round was played; whichever happens first).
I just recently made a video on my top 50 recommendations for the Palestine bundle and included yours in the first video as its one of the best Indies I played in the last year:
I would love if you could tweet/mention your inclusion on social media/newsletter/discord if you enjoy the video. :)
oh this game! oh! this game really did swell like a triumphant score in me as i played; the card matching is a very unique, frustrating and analogous bedrock to the game mechanics. i'd say it mimics the rhythm and cadence of a conversation well, and all its lil aggressions and the like. i deeply enjoyed just going around and talking to people and trying my damnedest to talk to people and not at or past them--or, in the game-specific terms, having the right cards at the right time in the right positions. the worldbuilding and the WRITING is MWAH MWAH i was really excited to go places, read the little vignettes, and feel like the traveler. and i did. what a delight. a joy. will be replaying
Downloaded this exactly one year ago and played it a couple of months after but, gosh, I just keep coming back to it. What a good, special game. Lovely story, interesting endings, amazing characters. Overall a fantastic experience. Really, really fond of it.
i very rarely write reviews of things, but this game is just too good for me to not say anything about it. i first acquired it in 2020 through the racial justice bundle, but its such a good game i decided to buy it again today.
it really is a wonderful cozy game, every time i replay it (which is often) it feels like returning to my hometown. the game play fits the atmosphere and story really well, and the structure of the story makes it so that the game mechanics never get too easy. even when you fail conversations it doesn't feel like a disappointment, just a consequence of the changing experiences of the main character. the dev team pulled the conversation/card game format off in such a beautiful, poetic way.
This is a really great example of how to match story with gameplay. Everything meshes together so nicely, and even though there are no words on the cards they really get across the idea of navigating your way through a conversation a lot better than the charisma/speechcraft systems in most RPGs that involve that kind of stat.
I'd love to see a Linux version of this if you ever find you can spare the time and effort to produce one, but I played through the whole thing using WINE and didn't run into any problems at all.
Thanks so much for contributing this game to the itch.io bundle for racial equality and justice. I've been having such a fun time going through the bundle, and this was such a gem to play!
just saw that there's an update??? thank you to the devs for giving me another excuse to replay this. love this game, its artstyle, music, and overall vibe are incredibly comforting to me :)
right off the bat, i need to say: get this game. even if you dont like card/deck-building games. trust me. theres also a dog. hes perfect.
i think the fact that i found this game frustrating and difficult at times says more about me than it does the game. youre told by nadine fairly early on: "you can't please everyone, and trying won't do you any good." and like... she's right? and i trusted her on that, but still didn't value her advice. like, watch me! so i spent the whole game trying to do everything for everyone and have them all like me. and for mediocre results across the board, i got a mediocre ending. spreading yourself too thin to please everyone is a fools errand, both in this game and real life.
theres so much that can be said about how perfectly this game encapsulates interpersonal relationships and interactions. but there's not much point, because it's all revealed to you as you play. every new mechanic or card type you encounter makes you go "oh- ooohh, that's clever. oh that translates perfectly from real life." i always found myself imagining the actual conversation as every card was played, 100% sucked into the world.
i have a lot to say about this game (as does everyone it seems like lol) but honestly, just play it for yourself and you'll see what people mean. its a really good game.
i have so much thoughts and feelings about this game, i will try to make sense but won't promise anything. tldr: i think this game achieves everything it sets out to perfectly; the gameplay is fun though hard at times, it enriches how you see the whole game; it's beautiful in art and music.
at first i thought that i wouldn't like a card game, but i saw a few people recommend it, and decided to give it a try. first time i liked it a lot, and saw a lot of replayability potential. a few months later i played it again, and then again, and i will play it more. i noticed more and more how interesting the world is, which makes me try my best to try to get to know all of the characters and communities over the course of several playthroughs.
the gameplay is amazing. the choices you make affect your experience A Lot. and the conversation mechanics are unique because you cannot just choose the best answer, you have to struggle and be careful to connect to other people and gain their trust and friendship. and at the same time it doesn't feel like you're playing against them, just as you're trying, you can see that these people are making an effort to connect to you too. and if you don't succeed it's not always because you said the wrong things, sometimes it's because you're very different, or it's just your bad luck today, or they're distressed and you don't have the right thing to say to them. it feels so real, and it works incredibly well with the overall feeling of this game.
the characters are very diverse in design, culture, character, identities, values etc. all of the locations and their communities are unique and alive too, and soundtracks add to their atmosphere. i also loved the cooperation and kindness themes in this game. even when there's injustice and inequality, the game doesn't focus only on the bad. instead of the usual gritty powerless and hopeless anti-capitalist narrative, i would call this a pro-worker narrative. people care about each other, they help and comfort each other in time of need, they fight together.
i haven't seen everything this game has to offer, and maybe i never will, because i am human and i make mistakes in conversations, and that's okay. but all of the time i've spent playing signs of the sojourner was worth it. i found it just challenging enough, fun, exciting, touching, healing, inspiring.
10/10, easily made it's way to the list of my favorite games. i know i will think about it a lot, and i will not shut up about it to my friends so they play it too.
A game about the linguistic katamari we pick up as we roll along life's paths. How we change as we grow, and our ability to communicate with old friends changes too. How communication facilitates connection between people and cultures, for good and for ill. Loads to unpack in this one. Just a really interesting experiment in narrative design that I enjoyed a great deal. Highly recommend.
This is exactly the sort of game I needed to help me live through a pandemic year. :) The more I play it, the more ways I find to use strategy in the card system instead of being at the mercy of luck. The deeper you dig, the weirder the world of the game turns out to be. And I really love the art style - the choice of color palettes and just the wonderful exuberant whimsy of it.
i can't recommend this enough. really likable characters, great art, amazing music, and SUCH A GOOD DOG.
one of the best aspects of the whole experience is the way that the gameplay plays into the themes. everything aspect fits together so well, and it creates a very distinct feeling of cohesion.
keep coming back to this game bc its just so comforting, love the cozy feel :))
if anybody's reading this: USE ELIAS'S CARDS !!! the ones that copy the last card the opponent played i mean - those are insanely useful. personally i found the game pretty easy when you get the hang of it, just focus on having around half a deck of those copy-cards (i forgot the name whoops) and having the rest be cards that have two symbols on each side. this allows you to adapt to whoever you're talking to the easiest. i usually had one card that was kind of the card i had to cycle out, since you have to replace a card after each conversation.
if you have certain people you want to talk to, then for that playthrough definitely focus on keeping cards with their symbols - it's okay if you fail conversations with other people you don't care as much about. though i could never do that without feeling bad, so i think that's why i focused more on trying to be able to adapt to whoever i was talking to even if it ended up with me always being on thin ice haha.
luckily for most situations you're able to make one or two mistakes in a conversation before completely failing it, so it's okay if you're unlucky with fatigue or something. if i have more free time on my hands i might create a more in depth guide though i dont think anyone would read it anyway heh
Deck-building game about communities, travel, trade and climate issues. Very well-crafted in all regards, from writing to art to mechanics - though some players may find card swaps tricky. 5/5 - outstanding.
Nice storytelling and characters, and some interesting options in approaching your expeditions and exploring. The conversation mechanics are a fresh approach to building conversation into a game, with a co-operative system of matching styles with NPCs and anticipating what they may bring to the conversation.
However I found the deck management (or lack of it) to be a massive source of frustration. It becomes incredibly difficult to try and develop a deck that can provide what you need when there is no option to store cards for later use or experiment with different strategies. Gaining and losing a card after each conversation usually leaves you with a lot of dead weight in your deck, which combines with the fatigue cards and your small hand to frequently rob you of any chance of success.
In terms of the narrative, this essentially locks you into just a couple of areas based on how the people there talk - which doesn't really gel with the story of exploring the environment, building business connections, meeting new people, and learning about the past.
Perhaps an option to change the difficulty with things like the rate of fatigue accumulation and number of cards allowed in your hand could go towards balancing the game better. Even just to allow people a level of challenge they can enjoy while also experiencing the wider story.
Incredible replay value for me. The game mechanics are addicting and the story is compelling enough that I found myself playing it over and over to find new snippits of stories and new characters. Easy game to learn, very difficult to master. Frustrating at times because of random card draws and I wished sometimes there was an option NOT to get a new card from a conversation, but overall I adore this game.
Really unique mechanics, nice ambient music, a lovable style, I like this game for these reasons.
Gameplay wise, I appreciated how it represented how difficult actual conversation and connecting people can be, but at a certain point it went beyond my threshold. As I neared the end of my first playthrough, I found it hard to adjust to nigh-constant failure (sometimes just from a poor initial hand!).
The fatigue card system just discourages exploration, they come too fast and means that I end up constantly cutting myself off from the beautiful worldbuilding, as everyone cooly dismisses me.
this game is so gorgeous i've already replayed it three times so far and i adore the different towns to explore and the different characters to interact with!! the colors and the art of the game is so stunning and i love how the cards affect how u interact with them as well! 10/10!!!
As much as people say that this game is great, I can't say that I enjoy it. In fact, this game made me incredibly anxious and sent a message that I don't think you were intending. To me, this game said that trying to make new friends will only hurt your ability to keep the friends you already have, and working to keep the friends you have will hurt you in the long run. I put this game down halfway through my first playthrough, because that isn't the type of world I want to occupy.
Do you mind explaining on why you think this way? To me, the way you are building your deck, it tries to accomodate everyone, yes, you will sometimes lose conversations due to RNG or being tired but you cant win them all in real life too.
Honestly? It's about personal experience and psyche. It's not the game's fault, it's just that in real life the only people I've not had solid positive interactive with at least 90% of the time (aside from my mom, who I've had more conversations with than I can count, so ups and downs are expected) have simply been caustic people, so a game where learning to talk to more people could make it impossible to talk to someone you've known your whole life is abjectly terrifying to me. Meeting more people should make you better at communicating, not worse. :/ And I actually was being fairly rigid, as I was trying to maintain effective communication with the best friend, but even still it led to me being unable to meet my obligations to my village and the shop.
If this is something that you don't think is the game's fault, you probably shouldn't leave a negative review that initially makes new players believe it is. I'm halfway through my first playthrough now and have a great relationship with Elias (the childhood friend) while also meeting my shop obligations. It's definitely possible to do both in a lot of different ways, including when trying to accommodate to everyone (which is what I'm struggling to do - and is not the game's intention, because trying to accommodate to everyone definitely makes the game harder and more anxiety-inducing, just like in real life) or when picking and choosing who to talk to.
It's a valid point of criticism? Like I don't actually think this myself, since I like having interesting discussions, but... "if you don't like this review, why did you leave a negative comment on it?"
purrsonally, I don't think it's about being better or being worse at talking to people, although I haven't played this game. One thing I have noticed in my actual real life is that often I just... grow as a person. And that people don't grow, sometimes, or they grow apart from you. I don't want to have to stagnate to maintain a friendship with someone. I don't want to have to copy someone else's personality to be friends with them.
I'm just annoyed and hoping you don't take it too personally -- it's okay to leave negative or mixed reviews on a game. No matter what game it is. It's okay to express your feelings even if you don't understand them or others find them disagreeable. That is why I am hoping you don't take this too personally -- your feelings are including when I say this: everyone's feelings matter.
That being said I am not one of those people who thinks everyone's feelings are automatically valid or like what the ... beep... ever.... sometimes your feelings are not valid i guess. i don't know you well enough to actually assess that so im just guessing.
also the part where you were like all "i have a great relationship with elias and im meeting all of my shop expectations. its definitely possible" came across as... how do i put this. dismissive? bragging, and not the fun kind?
also like it's okay to be sheltered. parents are... parents are supposed to do that. i figure if the world actually is cold and hard and cruel then like,,, your family and friends are supposed to be warm and soft and nice? to make up for it?
sheesh. sorry if i came across as scolding you in this reply. i don't know you well enough to do that. Oops. I was mostly just trying to express that this reply annoyed me.
(wow this got long. please reward yourself with a cookie if you actually took the time to read this. Yes, you!)
I know you left this review months ago, but I just wanted to let you know that I understand what you mean! I think this is an interesting, innovative game, but I agree that the conversation theme can have some unintended negative implications. In spite of all the complexity built into the system, it still has to depend on a reductive model of communication. That can't be helped, of course, because human communication is incredibly complicated, and it's a game, not real life--but I found I had to remind myself to keep a "this is just a game" mindset sometimes, because it doesn't feel great to be yelled at for no good reason, even by cartoon characters.
In my first play-through, I ended up acting like an insular, cowardly person (repeatedly going to the same places and buddying up to the same characters regardless of whether I liked them), not because that's who I wanted to be, but because I felt the system rewarded me for doing so. If I do another play-through, I'll lean even harder into "this is just a game" and just make the opposite choices I did before so that I can explore the rest of the map, even if it means acting like a jerk.
Basically, I think this is a fascinating game, but it's not always fun for me to play it. (Does a game have to be fun to be considered successful? Getting into game philosophy here...) So I just wanted to tell you, random stranger on the internet, that I hear where you're coming from!
I've done two playthroughs of this and I'm looking forward to a third. This has such a clever fusion of narrative point and gameplay, plus so many interesting paths and characters. It's really great. I love how the story deepens the more I play through it.
Only thing I'd change - it would be great to have a new game + mode to explore the world more fully.
Just finished my first playthrough of this game. Great game! Especially the moments of heartbreak as I failed to communicate something I desperately wanted to help with.
The one comment I'd suggest as an improvement is some sort of log that would allow me to review who I connected with, what my deck looked like and what story lines/endings I completed in my previous playthroughs as I look forward to replying this game again. Something like the Run History in Slay the Spire would be the example of what I'd like to see.
Really captures the difficulty of talking to people in real life.
(For a real review, the game has a great artstyle and writing, and an interesting system of gameplay that slowly feeds the player new complexities over time. Would definitely recommend giving this a try)
This is looking like my favorite game of 2020, absolutely an all-time great. Gorgeous aesthetic, fantastic writing, a novel and super interesting core mechanic that's surprising, challenging, and emotionally charged right up to the end. I love this game!
This game is trully amazing. The mechanics are so well integrated with the story that i always feel that i'm engaged in a true conversation about past times, free will and sorrow, creating a community or rebuilding it from the ashes.
Is amazing how the traveling and the deck building mechanics synergize to bring a message of self change, experience, adaptation, but also of connection and empathy.
I enjoyed all the way, and i can't wait fotr your next game!
This is such a lovely little game!! It is relaxing but still has narrative stakes and it's very easy to get attached to the characters. Would definitely recommend! My only complaint is, as a few people have said, a lack of ending galleries. It would have more replayability if I knew how many endings there were!
This game is absolutely amazing! Though if I could add one thing it's that maybe after you've completed it a few times you can keep your deck, it would make it easier to unlock all the endings. But absolutely love it and it has such heartfelt dialogue!
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Hi, first of all the game is amazing!!!! Played through it once and fell in love ngl. I really had to restrain myself from playing it til 3 am.
I bought the game through the bundle for racial equality and was wondering if that still allows me to get a steam key? I'm a completionist at heart and I really want to 100% the game. Thank you for such an amazing game!!!
Weirdly enough I'm getting an unhandled page fault on read access to 0x24 at address 0x69885BD5 (and consistently so, the only variable is the thread ID) when running it under wine. Removing dxvk from the equation didn't change anything either.
If anyone gets version 4 to run under Linux (or some other version I'd have access to), please do let me know, since from what I've seen so far this does seem pretty nice & I'd like to at least be able to give it a proper try beyond a few seconds into it (it crashes a few seconds after clicking "Begin Story" / after the last card in the first round was played; whichever happens first).
This seems to be a bug introduced *somewhere* in wine 6.x; 5.22 runs the game without issue.
Hey!
I just recently made a video on my top 50 recommendations for the Palestine bundle and included yours in the first video as its one of the best Indies I played in the last year:
I would love if you could tweet/mention your inclusion on social media/newsletter/discord if you enjoy the video. :)
Thanks a ton for making a fun game!
Regards,
Marco
oh this game! oh! this game really did swell like a triumphant score in me as i played; the card matching is a very unique, frustrating and analogous bedrock to the game mechanics. i'd say it mimics the rhythm and cadence of a conversation well, and all its lil aggressions and the like. i deeply enjoyed just going around and talking to people and trying my damnedest to talk to people and not at or past them--or, in the game-specific terms, having the right cards at the right time in the right positions. the worldbuilding and the WRITING is MWAH MWAH i was really excited to go places, read the little vignettes, and feel like the traveler. and i did. what a delight. a joy. will be replaying
Downloaded this exactly one year ago and played it a couple of months after but, gosh, I just keep coming back to it. What a good, special game. Lovely story, interesting endings, amazing characters. Overall a fantastic experience. Really, really fond of it.
i very rarely write reviews of things, but this game is just too good for me to not say anything about it. i first acquired it in 2020 through the racial justice bundle, but its such a good game i decided to buy it again today.
it really is a wonderful cozy game, every time i replay it (which is often) it feels like returning to my hometown. the game play fits the atmosphere and story really well, and the structure of the story makes it so that the game mechanics never get too easy. even when you fail conversations it doesn't feel like a disappointment, just a consequence of the changing experiences of the main character. the dev team pulled the conversation/card game format off in such a beautiful, poetic way.
easily one of my favorite games of all time
This is a really great example of how to match story with gameplay. Everything meshes together so nicely, and even though there are no words on the cards they really get across the idea of navigating your way through a conversation a lot better than the charisma/speechcraft systems in most RPGs that involve that kind of stat.
I'd love to see a Linux version of this if you ever find you can spare the time and effort to produce one, but I played through the whole thing using WINE and didn't run into any problems at all.
Thanks so much for contributing this game to the itch.io bundle for racial equality and justice. I've been having such a fun time going through the bundle, and this was such a gem to play!
Full review is up on my website! https://knavegaming.com/?p=75
just saw that there's an update??? thank you to the devs for giving me another excuse to replay this. love this game, its artstyle, music, and overall vibe are incredibly comforting to me :)
right off the bat, i need to say: get this game. even if you dont like card/deck-building games. trust me. theres also a dog. hes perfect.
i think the fact that i found this game frustrating and difficult at times says more about me than it does the game. youre told by nadine fairly early on: "you can't please everyone, and trying won't do you any good." and like... she's right? and i trusted her on that, but still didn't value her advice. like, watch me! so i spent the whole game trying to do everything for everyone and have them all like me. and for mediocre results across the board, i got a mediocre ending. spreading yourself too thin to please everyone is a fools errand, both in this game and real life.
theres so much that can be said about how perfectly this game encapsulates interpersonal relationships and interactions. but there's not much point, because it's all revealed to you as you play. every new mechanic or card type you encounter makes you go "oh- ooohh, that's clever. oh that translates perfectly from real life." i always found myself imagining the actual conversation as every card was played, 100% sucked into the world.
i have a lot to say about this game (as does everyone it seems like lol) but honestly, just play it for yourself and you'll see what people mean. its a really good game.
We are excited to discuss Signs of the Sojourner on Indie Game Club!
Twitch: https://twitch.tv/potionsandpixels
i have so much thoughts and feelings about this game, i will try to make sense but won't promise anything. tldr: i think this game achieves everything it sets out to perfectly; the gameplay is fun though hard at times, it enriches how you see the whole game; it's beautiful in art and music.
at first i thought that i wouldn't like a card game, but i saw a few people recommend it, and decided to give it a try. first time i liked it a lot, and saw a lot of replayability potential. a few months later i played it again, and then again, and i will play it more. i noticed more and more how interesting the world is, which makes me try my best to try to get to know all of the characters and communities over the course of several playthroughs.
the gameplay is amazing. the choices you make affect your experience A Lot. and the conversation mechanics are unique because you cannot just choose the best answer, you have to struggle and be careful to connect to other people and gain their trust and friendship. and at the same time it doesn't feel like you're playing against them, just as you're trying, you can see that these people are making an effort to connect to you too. and if you don't succeed it's not always because you said the wrong things, sometimes it's because you're very different, or it's just your bad luck today, or they're distressed and you don't have the right thing to say to them. it feels so real, and it works incredibly well with the overall feeling of this game.
the characters are very diverse in design, culture, character, identities, values etc. all of the locations and their communities are unique and alive too, and soundtracks add to their atmosphere. i also loved the cooperation and kindness themes in this game. even when there's injustice and inequality, the game doesn't focus only on the bad. instead of the usual gritty powerless and hopeless anti-capitalist narrative, i would call this a pro-worker narrative. people care about each other, they help and comfort each other in time of need, they fight together.
i haven't seen everything this game has to offer, and maybe i never will, because i am human and i make mistakes in conversations, and that's okay. but all of the time i've spent playing signs of the sojourner was worth it. i found it just challenging enough, fun, exciting, touching, healing, inspiring.
10/10, easily made it's way to the list of my favorite games. i know i will think about it a lot, and i will not shut up about it to my friends so they play it too.
Just had a little session on the game, so much fun!
A game about the linguistic katamari we pick up as we roll along life's paths. How we change as we grow, and our ability to communicate with old friends changes too. How communication facilitates connection between people and cultures, for good and for ill. Loads to unpack in this one. Just a really interesting experiment in narrative design that I enjoyed a great deal. Highly recommend.
This is exactly the sort of game I needed to help me live through a pandemic year. :) The more I play it, the more ways I find to use strategy in the card system instead of being at the mercy of luck. The deeper you dig, the weirder the world of the game turns out to be. And I really love the art style - the choice of color palettes and just the wonderful exuberant whimsy of it.
i can't recommend this enough. really likable characters, great art, amazing music, and SUCH A GOOD DOG.
one of the best aspects of the whole experience is the way that the gameplay plays into the themes. everything aspect fits together so well, and it creates a very distinct feeling of cohesion.
9/10, one of my all time favourites.
keep coming back to this game bc its just so comforting, love the cozy feel :))
if anybody's reading this: USE ELIAS'S CARDS !!! the ones that copy the last card the opponent played i mean - those are insanely useful. personally i found the game pretty easy when you get the hang of it, just focus on having around half a deck of those copy-cards (i forgot the name whoops) and having the rest be cards that have two symbols on each side. this allows you to adapt to whoever you're talking to the easiest. i usually had one card that was kind of the card i had to cycle out, since you have to replace a card after each conversation.
if you have certain people you want to talk to, then for that playthrough definitely focus on keeping cards with their symbols - it's okay if you fail conversations with other people you don't care as much about. though i could never do that without feeling bad, so i think that's why i focused more on trying to be able to adapt to whoever i was talking to even if it ended up with me always being on thin ice haha.
luckily for most situations you're able to make one or two mistakes in a conversation before completely failing it, so it's okay if you're unlucky with fatigue or something. if i have more free time on my hands i might create a more in depth guide though i dont think anyone would read it anyway heh
Deck-building game about communities, travel, trade and climate issues. Very well-crafted in all regards, from writing to art to mechanics - though some players may find card swaps tricky. 5/5 - outstanding.
its too hard and stresful lol i love this game but at what cost
oh my stars, this is a gem! I beg you for a card inventory for an option to swap out at least 1 card so I can finally beat ms. border patrol
Nice storytelling and characters, and some interesting options in approaching your expeditions and exploring. The conversation mechanics are a fresh approach to building conversation into a game, with a co-operative system of matching styles with NPCs and anticipating what they may bring to the conversation.
However I found the deck management (or lack of it) to be a massive source of frustration. It becomes incredibly difficult to try and develop a deck that can provide what you need when there is no option to store cards for later use or experiment with different strategies. Gaining and losing a card after each conversation usually leaves you with a lot of dead weight in your deck, which combines with the fatigue cards and your small hand to frequently rob you of any chance of success.
In terms of the narrative, this essentially locks you into just a couple of areas based on how the people there talk - which doesn't really gel with the story of exploring the environment, building business connections, meeting new people, and learning about the past.
Perhaps an option to change the difficulty with things like the rate of fatigue accumulation and number of cards allowed in your hand could go towards balancing the game better. Even just to allow people a level of challenge they can enjoy while also experiencing the wider story.
Incredible replay value for me. The game mechanics are addicting and the story is compelling enough that I found myself playing it over and over to find new snippits of stories and new characters. Easy game to learn, very difficult to master. Frustrating at times because of random card draws and I wished sometimes there was an option NOT to get a new card from a conversation, but overall I adore this game.
Is the game still in development (like the itch page says) or is it released fully now?
its released fully now!
Really unique mechanics, nice ambient music, a lovable style, I like this game for these reasons.
Gameplay wise, I appreciated how it represented how difficult actual conversation and connecting people can be, but at a certain point it went beyond my threshold. As I neared the end of my first playthrough, I found it hard to adjust to nigh-constant failure (sometimes just from a poor initial hand!).
The fatigue card system just discourages exploration, they come too fast and means that I end up constantly cutting myself off from the beautiful worldbuilding, as everyone cooly dismisses me.
I must agree!
It looks like an amazing game... yet no Linux version. :')
Wish you all the best!
im on ubuntu and it runs fine for me with wine :)
I confirm the Wine workaround. :)
this game is so gorgeous i've already replayed it three times so far and i adore the different towns to explore and the different characters to interact with!! the colors and the art of the game is so stunning and i love how the cards affect how u interact with them as well! 10/10!!!
This game is so beautiful! I quickly got very attached to the characters xD Can't wait to play though it again and see what I can do differently!
As much as people say that this game is great, I can't say that I enjoy it. In fact, this game made me incredibly anxious and sent a message that I don't think you were intending. To me, this game said that trying to make new friends will only hurt your ability to keep the friends you already have, and working to keep the friends you have will hurt you in the long run. I put this game down halfway through my first playthrough, because that isn't the type of world I want to occupy.
Do you mind explaining on why you think this way? To me, the way you are building your deck, it tries to accomodate everyone, yes, you will sometimes lose conversations due to RNG or being tired but you cant win them all in real life too.
Honestly? It's about personal experience and psyche. It's not the game's fault, it's just that in real life the only people I've not had solid positive interactive with at least 90% of the time (aside from my mom, who I've had more conversations with than I can count, so ups and downs are expected) have simply been caustic people, so a game where learning to talk to more people could make it impossible to talk to someone you've known your whole life is abjectly terrifying to me. Meeting more people should make you better at communicating, not worse. :/ And I actually was being fairly rigid, as I was trying to maintain effective communication with the best friend, but even still it led to me being unable to meet my obligations to my village and the shop.
Maybe I'm just sheltered? It's worrying.
If this is something that you don't think is the game's fault, you probably shouldn't leave a negative review that initially makes new players believe it is. I'm halfway through my first playthrough now and have a great relationship with Elias (the childhood friend) while also meeting my shop obligations. It's definitely possible to do both in a lot of different ways, including when trying to accommodate to everyone (which is what I'm struggling to do - and is not the game's intention, because trying to accommodate to everyone definitely makes the game harder and more anxiety-inducing, just like in real life) or when picking and choosing who to talk to.
It's a valid point of criticism?
Like I don't actually think this myself, since I like having interesting discussions, but...
"if you don't like this review, why did you leave a negative comment on it?"
purrsonally, I don't think it's about being better or being worse at talking to people, although I haven't played this game. One thing I have noticed in my actual real life is that often I just... grow as a person. And that people don't grow, sometimes, or they grow apart from you. I don't want to have to stagnate to maintain a friendship with someone. I don't want to have to copy someone else's personality to be friends with them.
I'm just annoyed and hoping you don't take it too personally -- it's okay to leave negative or mixed reviews on a game. No matter what game it is. It's okay to express your feelings even if you don't understand them or others find them disagreeable. That is why I am hoping you don't take this too personally -- your feelings are including when I say this: everyone's feelings matter.
That being said I am not one of those people who thinks everyone's feelings are automatically valid or like what the ... beep... ever.... sometimes your feelings are not valid i guess. i don't know you well enough to actually assess that so im just guessing.
also the part where you were like all "i have a great relationship with elias and im meeting all of my shop expectations. its definitely possible" came across as... how do i put this. dismissive? bragging, and not the fun kind?
also like it's okay to be sheltered. parents are... parents are supposed to do that. i figure if the world actually is cold and hard and cruel then like,,, your family and friends are supposed to be warm and soft and nice? to make up for it?
sheesh. sorry if i came across as scolding you in this reply. i don't know you well enough to do that. Oops. I was mostly just trying to express that this reply annoyed me.
(wow this got long. please reward yourself with a cookie if you actually took the time to read this. Yes, you!)
I know you left this review months ago, but I just wanted to let you know that I understand what you mean! I think this is an interesting, innovative game, but I agree that the conversation theme can have some unintended negative implications. In spite of all the complexity built into the system, it still has to depend on a reductive model of communication. That can't be helped, of course, because human communication is incredibly complicated, and it's a game, not real life--but I found I had to remind myself to keep a "this is just a game" mindset sometimes, because it doesn't feel great to be yelled at for no good reason, even by cartoon characters.
In my first play-through, I ended up acting like an insular, cowardly person (repeatedly going to the same places and buddying up to the same characters regardless of whether I liked them), not because that's who I wanted to be, but because I felt the system rewarded me for doing so. If I do another play-through, I'll lean even harder into "this is just a game" and just make the opposite choices I did before so that I can explore the rest of the map, even if it means acting like a jerk.
Basically, I think this is a fascinating game, but it's not always fun for me to play it. (Does a game have to be fun to be considered successful? Getting into game philosophy here...) So I just wanted to tell you, random stranger on the internet, that I hear where you're coming from!
I've done two playthroughs of this and I'm looking forward to a third. This has such a clever fusion of narrative point and gameplay, plus so many interesting paths and characters. It's really great. I love how the story deepens the more I play through it.
Only thing I'd change - it would be great to have a new game + mode to explore the world more fully.
Just finished my first playthrough of this game. Great game! Especially the moments of heartbreak as I failed to communicate something I desperately wanted to help with.
The one comment I'd suggest as an improvement is some sort of log that would allow me to review who I connected with, what my deck looked like and what story lines/endings I completed in my previous playthroughs as I look forward to replying this game again. Something like the Run History in Slay the Spire would be the example of what I'd like to see.
Really captures the difficulty of talking to people in real life.
(For a real review, the game has a great artstyle and writing, and an interesting system of gameplay that slowly feeds the player new complexities over time. Would definitely recommend giving this a try)
This is looking like my favorite game of 2020, absolutely an all-time great. Gorgeous aesthetic, fantastic writing, a novel and super interesting core mechanic that's surprising, challenging, and emotionally charged right up to the end. I love this game!
This game is trully amazing. The mechanics are so well integrated with the story that i always feel that i'm engaged in a true conversation about past times, free will and sorrow, creating a community or rebuilding it from the ashes.
Is amazing how the traveling and the deck building mechanics synergize to bring a message of self change, experience, adaptation, but also of connection and empathy.
I enjoyed all the way, and i can't wait fotr your next game!
This game is fantastic! Lovely art, great soundtrack, and a very engaging story that is very well tied into the mechanics. Easy to get hooked into it.
This is such a lovely little game!! It is relaxing but still has narrative stakes and it's very easy to get attached to the characters. Would definitely recommend! My only complaint is, as a few people have said, a lack of ending galleries. It would have more replayability if I knew how many endings there were!
Absolutely LOVED this game. The artwork is beautiful and the game mechanics is unique. So underrated.
P.S. I would LOVE some kind of endings gallery for the ones I've unlocked
What a lovely game! Travel the land, talk to new people. You won't get along with everyone, but that's not unheard of!
This game is absolutely amazing! Though if I could add one thing it's that maybe after you've completed it a few times you can keep your deck, it would make it easier to unlock all the endings. But absolutely love it and it has such heartfelt dialogue!
Really love this game, some of the best and most lively NPC dialog, easy to get invested in the characters