There are journaling games that lean into the game, with familiar mechanics borrowed from role-playing games, and there are ones that lean into journaling, providing a light scaffold for introspection. For me, the most rarefied journaling games do both. I appreciate a game that lets me sneak up on the difficult issues that prevent me from head-on journaling. The River Spirit hits that bullseye for me.
As a fan of drawing games, I’m predisposed to like the River Spirit. It resembles The Quiet Year in using prompts from a deck of cards to draw a map of the world progressively. And like other games in the genre, unexpected patterns emerge that propel your story forward and events transpire to break expectations.
While you do build a world in the River Spirit, the map that emerges is more a projection of your character than a geography. (The rules don’t tell you who “you” are, but I took Paul Czege’s advice and occupied an “approximate self” – me, in an alternate universe.) Each location ties to something intimate about you: “where you had your last kiss,” for example. Likewise, you populate the place with people by dint of their relationship to you, not to the locale.
The resulting map, then, is a biography. So when the final chapter comes and the River washes most of it away, I felt it profoundly. Gone from my memory was my lover, but not the place where we last kissed. Gone was the wished-for heroine, but not her counterpart. The game describes these as “sacrifices” to the River Spirit. I experienced these moments as baptism – permission to let the past flow out of my life. I emerged from the game renewed.
And that’s where the game leaves you at the end, with the words, “Your journey is just beginning.” As a man who turned 50 this year, I choose to believe these words. I believe them because the River Spirit made me earn them.