Signs of the Sojourner Critic Reviews

It’s a game I want to play again and again, exploring all the possible variations, behaving in different ways, experimenting with deliberately antagonising particular characters by purposefully playing bad hands. I want to make friends with those I lost before, and infuriate those I previously befriended. I want to live inside it for as long as I can, in as many ways as I can.

Signs of the Sojourner feels like life. It gets hard when you least expect it, sometimes returning home is a blessing and other times it feels like a burden. People change, life moves on and you just have to try to keep up. It takes something as impersonal as cards and creates an entire world full of personality.

This is a game of rare thematic consistency and mechanical brilliance.

Signs of the Sojourner by Echo Night Games has my definite seal of approval to those looking for a fresh deckbuilding game. At the end of my first playthrough, it felt like I only scratched at the surface of the game. With multiple endings and a variety of decks to try out, this is a title I’m looking forward to diving into once again.

Signs Of the Sojourner is a colorful puzzle-game, with a rich cast, fitting OST and a good story. It mixes a card system with management and narrative choices, in a chill and exotic environment.

Signs of the Sojourner is clever and charming. While the game mechanics can put a dampener on the laid-back feeling of the game, you’ll probably be too engrossed in the touching story to care. In a time where everyone in the world is being forced apart, a game about making connections and appreciating what you have feels like the perfect antidote.

With real travel compromised right now, tagging along with Signs of the Sojourner’s caravan is one way to experience the sights and smells of new streets.

Short, thoughtful games — including Signs of the Sojourner — are necessary, so it’s easy to look at a call for more with suspicion. Do the mechanics and dev-hours support the variety that a call for more locations, more characters, more stories would entail? Where does the call for more feed into the call for excessive commodification of personal projects? Despite these concerns, more Signs of the Sojourner would glorify an already compelling game. By the time its rhythms fall into place, the game is already over. Teasing out its secrets enhances its replayability, but it’s exciting to think of a future with more opportunities to jam out in Aldhurst and be a catalyst for social change.

Despite of its certain lack of freedom, Signs of the Sojourner is the perfect metaphor in a card game about building relationships.

Signs of the Sojourner is one of the most cohesive narrative games I have ever played. The interplay between mechanics and storytelling is absolutely brilliant, which makes it a shame that it misses the mark in terms of actually being enjoyable to play. The inclusion of a frustrating "fatigue" mechanic is at odds with the general laid-back design approach to deckbuilding. There is something truly beautiful here that is worth experiencing, it's just a shame that the game seems to fight itself at every turn.

Signs of the Sojourner is a slice of life deck building narrative game. If that was more than a mouthful for you, you may consider steering clear of this game as the conversation based game-play will careen you down a narrative driven path rife with haggling and sometimes fleeting relationships. For the right gamer, Signs of the Sojourner will provide the kind of unique game play that you can't find anywhere else. For deck builder fans, you may find it hit or miss to your tastes, but if battling is more your speed, this might not be up your alley.

It's a worthwhile pickup for fans of the genre and those who go in with the expectation that it just isn't the same kind of replayable that they might otherwise become accustomed to in deckbuilding titles. It's also a beautiful story at its core, one that is accentuated by hit-or-miss drawings and a sparse, compelling world. Signs Of The Sojourner is worth your time - just don't expect it to take up too much of it.

Signs of the Sojourner has an excellent premise, an incredible soundtrack, and solid writing, but this jars with an often punishing and frustrating difficulty. All signs point towards this being a light-hearted narrative Indie, but the balance undermines that core identity, making it a struggle to fully enjoy.

There’s a lot to love here, but I don’t think the main mechanic works very well. Which is sad, because I wish it did. I want to love it, but ultimately I just found it frustrating, and watching the credits roll felt like a compromise. So be fairly warned before giving it a shot.

But the thing is, and maybe this is me just not being good enough at card games, that eventually all the conversations get too hard. On the one hand this is fine, because Signs Of The Sojourner is sort of about life, and you can’t win at life, nor should you think of it that way. But on the other hand, the bittersweet story – meeting people, making new friends, losing old ones – is a lot of this game’s appeal, and I got the sense I was missing out on loads of it because I wasn’t getting through conversations successfully.