The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood preview – the game that’s impossible to 100%
The Red Strings Club was the breakout hit for Deconstructeam back in 2018. While you played as a bartender mixing drinks for their various customers, it was really more about the human connection between each of the characters. The team hopes to take this one step further in its next game, which has been in the works since Red Strings was released.
The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood carries the theme of human connections, but otherwise it’s completely new. A tarot reading witch has been alone on an asteroid for the past 200 years, without her deck, and with 800 more lonesome years ahead. She decides she is no longer able to accept this fate and forms a gruesome pact in exchange for a new tarot deck.
During a recent Cosmic Wheel preview event, I get an hour with the game. A significant amount of this time is invested in designing my own deck. Each card is made up of three parts that mash together to create the card’s meaning. I try to design each card so it’s as aesthetically pleasing as possible. You spend a lot of time with your cards, and I want something I am proud to look at.
“The only thing that matters with the combination is the elements, and the keywords,” narrative designer and creative director Jordi de Paco explains. “The aesthetics are just for your own pleasure. We saw that including creativity into an art design makes you feel part of what's going on. So having your own cards and knowing your own cards makes you feel like a part of the game because this is my art and it's there.”
Deconstructeam
Deconstructeam spent a lot of time learning about tarot, taking part in readings and understanding the process to build something from it for Cosmic Wheel. “We wanted to reflect the experience that you get with fortune telling,” de Paco says. “You delve into it a bit blindly at the beginning and you stumble your way through and eventually you grow. You get to know your own deck and it's like, ‘OK I'm comfortable with what this feels like and what this does.’”
Not all cards are created equal, and I wasn’t happy with some of my earlier cards – the ones I made before I found my groove. I ask if I can toss my bumbling first attempts away and continue on with a stronger deck. “I cannot really get into the mechanics,” de Paco says. “But there are going to be many more [cards] than the 22 [major arcana].” This matters. The cards that you have in your deck determine the ending you achieve.
Deconstructeam
While the ending is “modular”, each reading that you make constructs a part of how the story unfolds. You are given the choice of how to read each card, and whatever you choose will become the in-game reality. It’s like a choose-your-own-adventure book, except the decisions you make are limited by the random selection of cards.
There are several readings even within our limited preview, and Cosmic Wheel is apparently “four times bigger” than The Red Strings Club. I wonder if completionists would be able to see everything the game has to offer. “It's going to be pretty hard for anyone to see all the content of this game,” de Paco admits. “Even if they play several times. Even if you take different routes, it's a building game. There's some randomness to it and you're not going to be able to fully control the narrative where you want it to go. We are planning to have secret endings and extra stuff for people who really want to go the whole way.”
Discover the heart of the cards when The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is released later this year.
