A downloadable game.
I've gone through about half of a year for this game, and while I intend to finish out my witch's year on the road, I'm fairly sure that I have enough under my belt to give this game a review.
First things first, I love the world built up by this game. A solarpunk sort of world, where people help each other and where the last year of schooling is a road trip specifically designed to help people, I love that. I love the magic and the witchy-ness of it, and it's so much fun. I love the fact that it's flexible enough to have all sorts of witches, and all sorts of worlds, and all sorts of stories that can be told within it.
However, I find a few things frustrating about the game, and while I don't know if it's because of the Epistolary system, or because of this game in particular, it's made it almost frustrating at points to create. To start with, you create a character sheet that's mostly a description of a character, along with a few of their belongings. Very little guidance is given as to their inventory and storage, and where the play-through shared on the game page suggests stats that can be used at points...there's otherwise no mention of stats or anything along those lines in the rules to download. I don't know if that was a previous version or not, but that was somewhat surprising. Further, no guidance is given as to when to create a Settlement (when it's brought up by the cards? At the start of a season? Do I shuffle the cards after I create the Settlement or not?), or when to make NPCs (just...when it's appropriate?). It's hard at points, too, to be able to have the prompts fit into the story arc, particularly when using a seasonal arc for each season.
If I had specific things that I'd want to change and adjust:
- Have more prompts specifically tie into using the witch's magic, or even just the van. While it's nice that the prompts are so flexible, it almost feels as though I could play this game without a witch, and without a van. I feel like it's almost a missed opportunity, especially as only one card's prompt references witchcraft at all, and none seem to mention the van.
- Possibly having three sets of prompts for the cards to help them fall more into the "Cause"/"Contradiction"/"Resolution" stages of the story arc for each season. It would help keep from almost tonal whiplash that might arise between having a prompt that seems to work more as a cause (the 9 of spades seems to fall into a cause, rather than contradiction or resolution; Jack of Spades seems to fall into a contradiction; 4 of diamonds seems to fall into a resolution more than anything else). By having prompts for each phase of the arc, it might help guide a bit of a smoother story? But it could be that this game's prompts work better as a 5 phase arc instead? I'm not sure, it's a bit rough at points to try and craft that sort of story
- Mostly, I'd love a way to have the prompts tie more closely with the Van Witch as an idea. I'd love prompts that talk about working rituals to help the community, to talk about the van breaking down, to discuss the importance of the grimoire and the storage space versus the inventory space (as of right now, I basically...ignore inventory and storage, since nothing involves them). Things along those lines to more overtly tie the story of the game with the prompts that are generated from the card pulls.
I don't know if I'm asking for too much from what's a clearly rules-light, journaling game. Perhaps my issues with the game (particularly the difficulties I have with the story arc aspect of the game) have more to do with the Epistolary system than it does this game? I know one of the play-throughs seen on this game page imply actual tarot cards are used to create themes for each step of the arc? I'm not sure, and I just wish that there might have been a bit more guidance included in the rules of this game.
I do genuinely enjoy many aspects of this game, even despite some of my frustrations with it. I love the world, I love the focus on helping the community, and the road trips, and I love many of the ideas with the prompts. Perhaps if I keep playing, I'll get a better sense of the flow of the game and enjoy it more, and perhaps I'll lean a bit more into the loose nature of the game, since I do genuinely love the idea of this game so much. I hope the Developer takes these comments as a letter to how much I do enjoy what I've played so far, rather than just being entirely annoyed with it. If I didn't like it entirely, then I wouldn't be taking the time to review it and simply leave it behind, so I hope they realize that I do enjoy it.
