The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood made me cry. The latest game from Deconstructeam is a narrative driven adventure with a mixture of tarot readings, card creation, and witch politics sprinkled about. I know very little about astrology or the cosmos, but that didn’t keep me from enjoying the narrative’s exploration in themes of community, isolation, LGBTQ+ issues, and mental health. Reading the cards before us, I can tell you that The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is an enjoyable narrative, with a beautiful art direction, memorable characters, and some of the strongest writing I’ve seen in 2023.
Players take on the role of Fortuna, a witch who has been exiled to a house on an asteroid by her Coven for foreseeing their demise. At the start of the game, Fortuna has already served 200 years of her 1000-year exile. She’s been stripped of her tarot deck and abandoned by her witch family. Her mental well-being is on the outs when she decides to summon Abramar, an ancient behemoth who promises to help her build a new tarot deck and gain her freedom. All it will cost Fortuna is her immortality. A lot of the early game is spent chit-chatting with Abramar about the cosmos and the events leading up to Fortuna’s exile. Players can decide how to respond to Abramar throughout these conversations. I chose to keep things on the playful side but could never escape the feeling that the behemoth was hiding something from me or leading me down a dark path.
When not chatting with Abramar, Fortuna will head to her basement to create new tarot cards. These are created by combining a sphere card (background), an arcane card (character), and a symbol card (some extra details). These cards all cost magic energy which corresponds with one of the four elements. Early on magic energy is sparse, but once the game opens up, you’ll find multiple sources to fill your magic needs. The unique cards you can make are in the hundreds. Once you’ve selected your three cards to combine, players can mix-and-match elements from all three to create a new card. Controls in this section aren’t as precise as I thought they could be. Using my mouse to spin and shrink objects felt clunky, especially when dealing with smaller objects. Other than that, the only real limitation to making cards is the player’s artistic ability, of which I have very little. I still enjoyed my time with the card creator, even if my creations were too ugly to even end up on my parents’ fridge.
After 200 years of good behavior, Fortuna is permitted visitation from her witch friends, and by golly, your friends take full advantage of this new freedom. You are instantly swarmed by friends looking to chat, share their problems, and get divination readings from Fortuna. These witches come from all walks of life, from your seventeenth century inspired witch to your spider witch of the new millennia. The dev team goes all in on these characters. Each pixelated sprite and full profile look colorful and full of life, especially juxtaposed to the drab brown and black of your space prison. They not only look interesting, but they’re also all really well written. Each witch comes in with their share of problems, each one unique from the others. My personal favorite being a friend of a friend who needs help banishing a behemoth that has partially possessed her. It’s an exchange made more interesting by your own secret behemoth and the choices you have while conversing with this character.
A lot of your friends’ problems can be solved with a simple divination reading. The number of cards pulled depends on the context of the situation, but most of these sections play out pretty much the same. Fortuna pulls the cards, gives her reading and everybody moves on. Most folks coming for a reading are pretty open to what you have to say, good or bad. I was surprised at the range of responses throughout the readings. I was even more fascinated to see how some of these readings would come back to either help or hurt me later in the game. I did find myself wanting some kind journal to track these conversations, especially for those who would visit multiple times or for those in conflict with another character I may have just met with. The choices you have during these readings are based on the magic energy required to make that card. For example, leaning heavy on fire energy will result in more negative readings. The game does a real good job of explaining the different elements and how they correspond to certain aspects of cards. Abramar is an encyclopedia of information, but Fortuna can also check her study materials up to three times a day.
The game contains seven chapters and will take anywhere around 5-7 hours to complete. Between chapters, players are given a little more background about Fortuna. These moments cover life before she was a witch and focus on her familial issues before and during her time as a witch. These are a nice break from the table conversations that mostly end in tarot readings. They also serve as a quick breath following some big revelations throughout the story. I was honestly surprised just how many gut punches The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood threw at me. On more than one occasion I let out a “what” in disbelief. I was also surprised by some of the humor. A particular conversation revolving around politics and video games brought a smile to my face. Another moment had me wondering if Deconstructeam was poking fun or commenting on a controversial reaction to one of their previous games.
There’s a late addition to the gameplay in The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood that reminded me a lot of the decision making in Fable III. Eventually your Coven finds itself in the middle of a leadership vacuum. Decisions you make heading into this later section can find you in the running for head witch. At this point, the game goes all in on running a political campaign. You send your campaign team out to rally for your cause, talk down other candidates’ policies, dig up dirt, and find you additional allies. Tarot readings kind of get lost in the shuffle here, but you do get random opportunities to complete readings for allies and foes alike.
The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood sticks the landing at the end. Things get pretty heated in a big exchange and a culmination of your decisions throughout the game come to fruition at this moment. Watching the consequences of my decisions play out before me, it was fascinating to see how my divination readings for an individual would come back to seal my own fate. The responses didn’t always play out the way I thought they would, which really got me wanting to go through the campaign again to see how a different reading would play out. There’s a total of seven different endings. While I don’t believe I got what is considered the ‘best’ ending I did find that all the threads tied up neatly in my ending.
On its surface The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood feels like a bunch of different ideas tossed into a narrative game. The deeper you get into Fortuna’s exile, the more you realize this is not the fact. You start to realize the behemoth, the visits, the tarot readings, the political race. Fortuna’s isolation, everything, it’s all connected. To quote one of Fortuna’s books, “Everything is intertwined and in constant relation.” By the time you’ve reached the end of The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, you’ll be satisfied with the time you put into it. You’ll also be ready for another divination reading.
