The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood - Review
My name is Fortuna. I am witch. I would rather lose my pride than my sanity. I was condemned to exile by the leader of my coven. Today marks the 200th year of my millennium-long sentence. And… I can’t take it anymore. I need your help.
The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is interactive narrative experience, with strong themes around feminism, LGBTQIA+ acceptance, and general ideas around control and experience. You play as Fortuna, a fortune-teller Witch condemned to exile on her asteroid home. Breaking the codes and laws in place you summon a Behemoth, an extra-dimensional immortal beast, that gives Fortuna the ability to change her current predicament.
The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood comes from the same team behind The Red Strings Club. It’s important to understand walking into this game, that whilst there are interactive gameplay elements, similar to The Red Strings Club, The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is almost a choose your own adventure novel. Interactive narratives are made on their ability to get their story across, whilst making you feel involved in the progress of it. The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood does this in an interesting way and makes what should feel like a 7 hour reading experience, into an enjoyable and engaging game.
Fortuna is a fortune-teller Witch. Her particular forte is Tarot reading, and as a result of her fortune telling seeing the collapse of her coven, their leader has exiled her for 1000 years as punishment. What is fascinating about Fortuna’s abilities is that she has never been wrong. Every prediction she has ever made, has been correct. Whilst the cards themselves are subject to fate, her readings are always accurate. Her punishment is for the revealing of the coming destruction of the coven, as her abilities must be tempered with caution due to their extremely powerful outcomes.
Through the forbidden summoning ritual of the Behemoth known as Abramar, Fortuna aims to change her very fate itself. Having had her tarot deck taken away, Abramar reveals a new power to Fortuna. She can now create her own deck. This is where one of the more interesting elements of gameplay comes into play. The choices you make throughout the games interactions will reward you with different elemental energy. Air, Water, Earth and Fire. Using this energy you can craft your own cards, using different Arcana that you unlock throughout the game. Your cards are unique, and you get to actually place different parts of the chosen arcana onto the card to make your own artwork. For the creatives this will let them get that little artistic itch scratched and there will be countless beautiful outcomes. For the less artistic like myself, the game doesn’t actively punish you for making hideous looking cards.
The big part of this however, is the different elemental energy you use to create the card will affect the different choices you can make in readings for other character’s. This shapes how the story plays out, and changes the sequences of events that play out. Due to Fortuna’s little quirk of always being correct, your dialogue choices will directly affect the lives of other characters. Whilst the end game always appears to be the same, your choices and action throughout the story will have a direct effect on how the end of the game progresses. Creating more cards means that you’ll have more random chances of outcomes, but also leads to a greater chance to avoid cards with more negative outcomes. The randomness of the draw changes how the game plays out and allows for a decent amount of replayability.
Unfortunately, the game also has a habit of putting you in spots where the choices are very much not your own. There is only so much open-ended narrative that can be given, and some options definitely feel shoe-horned. The choices being superfluous for the direction that narrative wants to take you. The illusion of choice does play into the overall theme of Fortuna’s journey into understanding her powers, but this does cause a problematic disconnect from her as a character at times. This may be intentional as Fortuna is very much her OWN person, but it can become incredibly disorienting at times.
The character’s however are full of life. Each and every person you interact with has a deep personality of their own. The character designs perfectly reflect the kind of person each character is, and gives you a good feel for how their interactions will be. A rather varied cast, your interactions always feel fresh and never repetitive as a result. There are a few times where multiple characters visit at once, which would have been interesting to see more of. Immortal witches that are all part of the Coven, but never seen in the same place at once is a little odd. Thankfully, there is enough personality in each character to keep this oddity at bay. Particularly, Abramar, Dahlia and Jasmine add their own eccentric touches to the story in ways that may not seem clear at first.
Whilst a story of confrontation and the change of established status quo, The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood looks to analyse real world problems through the lens of the immortal. Besides Abramar, men are completely absent from the story. This is an active choice by the designers that may not sit perfectly well with everyone. It is incredibly important for women to be portrayed in this positive light, with an acceptance of non-binary and transpeople as well. The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is just that. A story about sisterhood, acceptance and working together. A conflict between the conservative past, but also using the guidance of the previous generations to help guide the future. These issues are explored through the lens of a society that is free from patriarchy. It is interesting, but may prove to be ostracizing to a substantial amount of the player base. It expects a level of understanding of societal issue, that not all players are guaranteed to have.
The story is gorgeously crafted however, and if you find yourself not caring for the lack of a secondary viewpoint, then you’re in for an incredibly powerful narrative experience. The characters are gorgeously written, and the innate conflict is held at a level of rebellion against oppression and not inner turmoil. The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood’s story asks you to ask yourself if the actions you are taking are truly beneficial, or self-serving. A far deeper story than a lot of games, that explores itself through the lens of fortune-telling and relationships over a seven to eight period.
The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is a gorgeously designed and written interactive narrative experience. There are enough twists and turns throughout to make the story far from obvious. A story that aims to explore societal issues through a feminist and LGBTQIA+ lens, without a hateful agenda is an incredibly warming experience. The choices, while not always expanding, give a lot of replay value. Particularly the crafting of the tarot deck as you wish it to be seen means that people will have many more hours of enjoyment in front of them beyond the first playthrough. The endings can be a little wild, and the game does seem to lose its tight vision towards the final act, but for the most part this is an enjoyable interactive narrative. The game isn’t devoid of gameplay elements and it continues strong as a result. A must play for fans of the interactive narrative genre.
The Score
8.5
Review code provided by Devolver Digital
The Pros
+Beautifully written story
+Fantastically designed characters
+Card creation is wildly enjoyable, even for non-creatives
The Cons
-Risks ostracizing a section of its audience for being uneducated
-Illusion of choices are deflating at times
-The ending loses the vision of the rest of the game
