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There are too many questionable topics in this game

4K View2023-08-19

The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood

7.7

Pixel GraphicsInteractive FictionVisual NovelCasualAdventureFantasySingleplayerMagic

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The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood (Reviewed)

Developer: Deconstructeam

Publisher: Devolver Digital

Released: Aug 16th, 2023

Price: $16 USD

The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is a deck-building interactive novel in which you play in the shoes of Fortuna, a witch exiled because of her power to influence the destiny of everyone she reads their Tarot fortune to, due to the fear of her leader.

The game looks great on the surface, but as you advance through and pay more attention to the dialog, it becomes less so. It becomes... excessively questionable.

Story

Imprisonment
Fortuna is the protagonist of the story. A once mortal turned witch is exiled for a millennium owing to her ability to predict the futures of others through Tarot Card readings. She becomes tired of her penance after many decades and consults the forbidden summoning magic causing a Behemoth to appear and heed her pleas.

Years away from her beloved Tarot cards and her friends have taken their toll on her health. The behemoth grants her the capacity to design her own cards, not Tarot, but something much more powerful and dangerous.

Sacrificing portions of herself to achieve this power, which results in many outcomes, forge the route forward for her and her redemption, but at what cost?

Presentation

Fantastic Pixel Art
The game looks fantastic visually, with no flaws in terms of sound or appearance. It offers a simple UI that displays what you can accomplish in the current scenario.

While displaying tidiness through the usage of a split screen animations rather than constantly fading in and out or switching to multiple screens in conversation with a potential patron or behemoth. Overall it's all wonderful to look at.

Multiple Choices
You will come across choices that will vary dependent on your actions based on specific patrons and pals. I'm not sure how far down the rabbit hole these choices go, but depending on the types of cards you create and which elements you prioritize, options and dialogue change. The course of the story remains the same, with or without certain characters reappearing if you irritate them enough.

It's important to pay attention to what is being said so you take the intended route with them rather than accidently saying something or doing something you regret.

Issues

I understand the warnings
But one important warning is missing. There’s also no photosensitivity warning.

There is, crude dialog, racism, hatred, nudity, suicidal ideation. There are numerous subjects that will be addressed during the game. While I understand this, I don't understand why it isn't displayed as the first thing that appears when you open the game. To see what the game has, you must go out of your way to click the warning.

However, as you can see, it is not clearly highlighted, nor does it appear to be all that essential in the way it appears on the menu screen, which begs the question, how vital is it to them that they notify their player-base before the topics appear in game?

Here is an example:

The first few hours, I was playing blind and really enjoying what the story was building into. Suddenly there was a lot of discourse about girls and being ejaculated on by many men from a woman's perspective, and how much of an orgasm she was having, and it was... It didn't set well with me, and it wasn't even the worst of it.

I don't want to delve into other problems, but preconceptions of people of color as criminals, violent, dirty, muscular, and so on. It's a daring and controversial addition to a game with otherwise excellent writing and content being thrown in for no reason.

Some grammatic errors
It's not unusual. It happens, and it happens a lot with interactive book games; it's not a big deal, but it can throw you off when you least expect it.

Gameplay

Less gameplay more dialogue
The gameplay is you reading fortunes and designing your own creative cards infused with aspects of your choosing. It makes no difference what they look like. It is the creative section for individuals who want to be creative, completely ignorable.

Options
Different alternatives may be available if you return to the game a second time to see alternative conversations, depending on how powerful the card is, but as previously stated. It doesn't really matter because the tale will move in a linear fashion with the illusion of choice for the most part outside of some of the more important options.

Unlocking new styles
The more helpful you are in solving peoples problems, the more likely you are to be rewarded for your actions. You ultimately control their fates in the palm of your hand.

How will you decide what to do with them?

Conclusion

Mixed feelings
The game does an excellent job at keeping the reader interested in the plot. However, I frequently find myself viewing this game in a bad light when new themes come up that irritate me. I was fully invested in the story, characters and dialogue between each of the characters and looking forward to the later sections.

However...

The later sections were filled with contentious language in between the better, more gameplay-focused dialogue then back to sex, racism, suicide, and other topics and then back to the gameplay to very poorly done transgender introductions.

I don't think this has any reason to be in this game as it feels extremely alienating in terms of racism and gender essentialism among other things.

This concludes my views of this game; while my opinions may be met with criticism, that is what distinguishes gamers; you don't have to like the same things as others, nor do you have to agree with them.

If you want to catch me on one of my streams or locate me on social media, you may do so at the following locations, I'm always playing something new.

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- Pawkt