Isolation can push us to do things we never would have dreamed of doing before. It changes our outlook on life, and lets us hyper-focus on all our past mistakes. As a result, our personality aꦚnd behaviour often changes, sometimes pushing us to drastic measures. Would you ever consider casting a forbidden spell to summon and make a pact with a behemoth? Well, you haven’t met Fortuna yet.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood follows this young witch after she is cast out by her coven for prophesying its downfall. Have they never heard the saying, ‘don’t shoot the messenger’, or the more modern version ‘we don’t talk about Bruno’? As punishment, Fortuna is sentenced to me▨ditate for a millennium in order to learn the reason for her coven’s downfall, and she’s forced to spend those days in exile on a small asteroid traveling through the void of space without even the company of her fateful tarot deck.
Only 200 years 🧸in, Fortuna understandably gets a little restless and decides to form a pact with Abramar the Behemoth — a big no-no in the witchy world. With his help, she can create a new type of fortune-telling card deck, and that’s where things get inter🦹esting.
You can easily get lost in the gam🌟e’s card making it for hours. You select a different background, character, and additional items — or, as the game calls them, sphere, arcana, and symbols — and you’re let loose in a card editor. You can select your frame of reference for the background🐼, then resize, flip, and re-order the remaining elements at your disposal as much as you like.
Each card will have certain aspects you must include. For example, you can&rsqu🐓o;t omit the main arcana character on the card, but you can swap in and out many of the elements and fine-tune the card exactly how you want. For my first card, I chose the opera house as a background, the shaman arcana, and wing symbols. I put the shaman center stage, added a mask to his face, and then added three different wings that I cloned and flipped on either side of him, resizing them to create wings that range in size behind him, and for finishing touches, I put a sceptre in one hand🦋 and a bone in the other. I managed to create some strange shaman biblical mash-up masterpiece that I was proud of.
Each card you make is𝐆 unique. It’s clear that the little details don’t really matter in terms of gameplay and how the cards will be used, it’s just allowing us to get creative and put our stamp on our decks. Upon completion, you’ll see what your card means, but only the keywords and elements used really matter. The flavour text and how cards look don’t impact gameplay, they’re just extra flair for us to enjoy.
Deconstr🦹ucteam narrative designer and creative director Jordi de Paco tells me that the team discovered they enjoyed allowing players some creative freedom in past titles, such as having players create flower arrangements in Essays on Empathy, and that creativity is part of the inspiration behind The Coꦅsmic Wheel Sisterhood.
“We know the tarot card [inspiration] came from how we felt challenged by how many people that we love and respect were really into magic and tarot,” de Paco tells me. “We were sceptical at the beginning, [but] we started digging deeper into these themes, and we discovered that we l🧸oved it.
“It's not like actual magic or shooting beams or anything. It's a different channel to connect with your subconscious and to get to conclusions that you wouldn't reach in a logical way, or maybe a different interface to interact with the feelings of your friends. We really like that part. We happen to really like the mechanics of tarot — of asking questions and having cards answer them — and we decided to build a whole narrative system surrounding the building of tarot.”
The tarot card foundation was the perfect tool for the team to put creativity into players' hands, but it also allowed them to create a deep and meaningful narrative that tackles important issues and themes. When people start thinking about their future, their deepest desires and fears emerge, and The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood certainly leans into this.
Deconstruct team got together to have tarot readings as part of their research into the game, with de Paco telling me, “You can get a bit deeper into what's going on. Suddenly, everyone really opens up about what they want and what they feel. And we ended up crying with friends we'd never seen cry before, just because of the powerful interface that comes between the two of you. That was an important impact for us to develop the narrative of the game.”
As part of Fortuna’s journey, you’ll be revisiting her past as much as looking to her future, touching on sentimental and heart-wrenching moments that shaped who she is today and how her community responds to her and readings. “The game is going to get extremely political,” de Paco warns me. “It will tackle politics in a matter of how it af🧔fects our community. It’s a major theme in the game.”
Before playing, we were told that community, identity, and personal responsibility are three of the core themes of The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, but the team didn’t stop there. “The game tackles sexuality,” de Paco says. “It's not as much as being a pivotal point, but an attempt of wanting to naturalise sex in video games.”
He explains that w🐬hile games with sex scenes, you don’t get the normalisation of sex where it’s casually brought into the conversation between characters. Having the scene of Fortuna and her friends travelling to the beach and shooting the shit about their sexual experienc💟es would be a normal thing to happen in real life, or even TV shows, but you don’t typically see conversations like this in games.
The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood has seven different endings, but de Paco explains that the team didn’t want a game where each decision boiled down to ‘this character will remember this’ or ‘this is going to affect the story’. The decision making in The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is far more modular. For example, there is a part where you can choose to put cheese ✤and pepperoni on a pizza you🐭r vegan friend has to eat, and that choice affects the subsequent conversation you have. They’ll be surprisingly understanding about your utter failure to remember their preferences, what kind of friend are you?
You make decisions often throughout the game. Not only dictating your own desires when answering questions 🔯as part of your pact with Abramar, but also when reading cards for others, and the fates you foretell will impact the narrative. If you say that humanity will travel to🍰 space, you will see that unfold. If you say that humanity will be ruled over by a non-human entity, that will come to pass instead.
The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is not a typical decision-based game where one choice sets you down one particular path rather than the other, with de Paco explaining our choices will “shape the coven and the cosmic society you will be inhabiting, and this will eventually lead out to several endings, buꦑt it’s not going to be massive 🎐changes.”
I’m eager to see what the rest of the game has in store, as Fortuna’s story promises to be an emotional rollercoaster told in a gorgeous pixel style with gameplay mechanics that will keep me occupied for days. I’m keen to return to unleashing my cre🎉ativity in the card edi✤tor, and de Paco promised there would be additional features to play around with in Fortuna’s home.
The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is set to launch for PC and Nintendo Sw🍷itch later this year.