PT-BR Version: https://recantododragao.com.br/the-cosmic-wheel-sisterhood-artesaos-atraves-do-espaco/
"The universe is big, but thought can be even bigger" - A wise witch in outer space.
I had that conversation with my critique teacher where we talked about "critical play", videogame language, and media in general; and he came up with a question - how can you say that videogames are about interaction if in other media we're also interacting with it? We're interacting with our brains; and sometimes with ears and eyes.
On that day, I couldn't argue against him. In videogames, we're interacting in the material sense, with our hands, modulating and shaping the experience, literally. We do the same with movies and books but… not exactly?
If you put that dialogue with my teacher on paper, it looks dumb. Neither of us is wrong - we were just stating obvious things from our individual perspectives. But it turns out that it's impossible to analyze art in a "material" or "literal" way.
Thinking about it later, I changed my mind. Interactivity is not the "essence" of gaming. It's tangibility. We are artisans.
And this was what I felt playing this game. An artisan, creating cards with my own hands, shaping reality.
The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood proposes a bold premise - a text-adventure game with a branched narrative and impactful decisions in the story through fortune-telling with cards based on tarot. A narrative structure consciously and openly arbitrary, with choices that are generally decided by your interpretations of the cards - and with certain decisions, questions come right after: If I can choose one interpretation among others, then, the others would also be correct (even if drastically different), so is what I did really divination? If my card reading has the same result as another card, do my choices really matter?
In any story-driven game with a branched story, these points are inevitable; reasonable or not, the player likes a lot of freedom and utilitarianism, so, no surprises so far. And even though these questions are brought up one way or another, the game makes a commitment with the cards, with its arbitrary narrative structure over player agency - and it assumes that I wasn't reading the past or the future, I was writing it.
Through these powers, the metalanguage permeates the whole game. From the main card-creation mechanic to the dialogues and puzzles; the game is a big collage. Collage of figures, collage of the narrative, political collage, and even culinary - you're always crafting with your own hands, changing the universe with your own thoughts, but with it, as a player, comes great responsibility.
The power of recreating events in spacetime is really unusual to an artisan, since, at first, I was just doing the basic things of an artisan - a collage of representative figures with the sauce of the four essential elements of nature was enough to make my fortune-telling stuff. But… reality-altering powers?
And then, I remember the conversation that I had with my teacher. We were all the time shaping our game's experience, with our brains, ears, eyes… and with our hands. Shaping reality is natural for an artisan, and this game makes an excellent comment about the conditions of one.
The main point of handicraft in the game matches very well with the theme of "fate" in the story - the way the protagonist is chained to her fixed fates and shapes the reality of others (all the time) to make the universe better, doing everything in order to re-write those fates and unchain herself from such circumstances, even if that means "sacrifice". The sacrifice of micro for macro.
The happiness I felt seeing other witches making their dreams come true and achieving the high points of their lives through my handicraft - - it's immeasurable.
In the end, I finished The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood sad because of the conclusion, happy because of the journey as a whole. This game blessed me with a genuine faith, it was almost like an epiphany - faith for those who don't believe in their capabilities as artisans, faith for those who blessed us with the cards, faith for the universe, faith for our fate.
POST-TEXT
I decided to scope the text in that way (short, philosophical, kinda abstract) because of some divagations I had in my thoughts. The game has a lot of themes, it's rich in worldbuilding with a lot of stuff to discuss about - BUT… a bigger text means more time, spoilers and interest on the part of the readers who possibly (probably) didn't play the game. The game is really very open to a lot of discussions and I'm very happy about it, but FOR NOW it wouldn't satisfy me to dedicate myself, forcing interpretations from the sensations, just to cover more content in the text.
"The universe is big, but thought can be even bigger" - A wise witch in outer space.
I had that conversation with my critique teacher where we talked about "critical play", videogame language, and media in general; and he came up with a question - how can you say that videogames are about interaction if in other media we're also interacting with it? We're interacting with our brains; and sometimes with ears and eyes.
On that day, I couldn't argue against him. In videogames, we're interacting in the material sense, with our hands, modulating and shaping the experience, literally. We do the same with movies and books but… not exactly?
If you put that dialogue with my teacher on paper, it looks dumb. Neither of us is wrong - we were just stating obvious things from our individual perspectives. But it turns out that it's impossible to analyze art in a "material" or "literal" way.
Thinking about it later, I changed my mind. Interactivity is not the "essence" of gaming. It's tangibility. We are artisans.
And this was what I felt playing this game. An artisan, creating cards with my own hands, shaping reality.
The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood proposes a bold premise - a text-adventure game with a branched narrative and impactful decisions in the story through fortune-telling with cards based on tarot. A narrative structure consciously and openly arbitrary, with choices that are generally decided by your interpretations of the cards - and with certain decisions, questions come right after: If I can choose one interpretation among others, then, the others would also be correct (even if drastically different), so is what I did really divination? If my card reading has the same result as another card, do my choices really matter?
In any story-driven game with a branched story, these points are inevitable; reasonable or not, the player likes a lot of freedom and utilitarianism, so, no surprises so far. And even though these questions are brought up one way or another, the game makes a commitment with the cards, with its arbitrary narrative structure over player agency - and it assumes that I wasn't reading the past or the future, I was writing it.
Through these powers, the metalanguage permeates the whole game. From the main card-creation mechanic to the dialogues and puzzles; the game is a big collage. Collage of figures, collage of the narrative, political collage, and even culinary - you're always crafting with your own hands, changing the universe with your own thoughts, but with it, as a player, comes great responsibility.
The power of recreating events in spacetime is really unusual to an artisan, since, at first, I was just doing the basic things of an artisan - a collage of representative figures with the sauce of the four essential elements of nature was enough to make my fortune-telling stuff. But… reality-altering powers?
And then, I remember the conversation that I had with my teacher. We were all the time shaping our game's experience, with our brains, ears, eyes… and with our hands. Shaping reality is natural for an artisan, and this game makes an excellent comment about the conditions of one.
The main point of handicraft in the game matches very well with the theme of "fate" in the story - the way the protagonist is chained to her fixed fates and shapes the reality of others (all the time) to make the universe better, doing everything in order to re-write those fates and unchain herself from such circumstances, even if that means "sacrifice". The sacrifice of micro for macro.
The happiness I felt seeing other witches making their dreams come true and achieving the high points of their lives through my handicraft - - it's immeasurable.
In the end, I finished The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood sad because of the conclusion, happy because of the journey as a whole. This game blessed me with a genuine faith, it was almost like an epiphany - faith for those who don't believe in their capabilities as artisans, faith for those who blessed us with the cards, faith for the universe, faith for our fate.
POST-TEXT
I decided to scope the text in that way (short, philosophical, kinda abstract) because of some divagations I had in my thoughts. The game has a lot of themes, it's rich in worldbuilding with a lot of stuff to discuss about - BUT… a bigger text means more time, spoilers and interest on the part of the readers who possibly (probably) didn't play the game. The game is really very open to a lot of discussions and I'm very happy about it, but FOR NOW it wouldn't satisfy me to dedicate myself, forcing interpretations from the sensations, just to cover more content in the text.