Sisterhood

With a broad theme, The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is a title that deals with a very deep and complex story. What we learn in the first few minutes of the game is that Fortuna, a psychic witch, has been condemned to exile in her "asteroid home".

In order for her to escape this situation, she must learn to create her own tarot deck (which is the most important and distinctive mechanism in the game) so that she can free herself and save the fate of the cosmic society of witches.

On this journey, she makes a pact with a forbidden creature called Ábramar, who promises to teach her how to create her deck. With this, Fortuna seeks to rejoin her friends, meet new witches, and hone her tarot skills. As well as, of course, gaining her freedom and changing the course of history for her clan and the people around her.



You can combine elements, create and read cards, and be part of a group of witches. Focusing on the narrative, The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood can teach you a lot about a mystical world, the cosmos, and even clairvoyance, albeit through a simulation.

Making a deck

The main focus of The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is the story, which matches the pace of the work and the tarot's proposal. In one of his lines, Ábramar says that "witches can't exist without magic, and magic is nothing more than a deep understanding of reality that allows us to take advantage of the rules of the cosmos", which begins the understanding of the narrative.

We begin by understanding that our goal is to acquire magical energies to create images that will be used to make up our tarot deck. There are three types of cards we can create: Spheres, arcana, and Symbols.

So we also need to be able to guess, or, in other words, to be clairvoyants. It sounds like a very different proposition, but it works because the meaning of each card (according to our understanding) also varies depending on each magical element we use. So, as well as having several choices, the cards are diversified according to their powers.



Since you can change the course of the story at any time, the way you see it and what you focus on matter a lot at this stage.

Thus, the game is separated into lessons (episodes), and each episode is about a different element, about which we learn all about it and improve our tarot knowledge. Air, Water, fire, and Earth will be combined all the time.

Each time you do a reading, you collect magic based on the type of card you make. When reading the cards, I felt like I really knew tarot and was some kind of psychic. It's very interesting how this mechanic is presented and how it's inserted into each card in a unique way.

I also felt as if I needed to unravel the mysteries of that image, just as when we see a work of art and imagine the whole context behind the drawing, the brushstrokes, colors used, styles, and formats. Absolutely every element matters.

This mechanism is also very cool because we're always dealing with the creation of cards, and it's very interesting to be able to read them and share ideas with Ábramar, who comments with us on these meanings, bringing a certain resolution.



The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood takes between 6 and 10 hours to complete, depending on how long you need to create your tarot deck and what story content you decide to explore.

The game has an automatic save, but that doesn't mean you can exit at any time and reload a save slot to try new options. You should try to do it differently next time if you like because, above all, this is a game where every decision counts and teaches you a lesson about destiny.

The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood has a good, linear narrative with plenty of detail and complex ramifications, according to its themes. It also has admirable pixel art and a good setting.



Master of Elements

The art style in this game is simply magnificent and very nostalgic. 2D games with pixel art always give me a good feeling, and it's the kind of game I like best because it's mostly story-focused and simple to play, leaving the player completely free to choose what to do first.

As a result, I always tend to notice a lot about the design, the lines, the style, the colors used, and the animations. The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood has a very restrained color palette, ranging from black, purple, red, and brown, bringing a dark tone and a galaxy set.

The animations are very simple. There is little movement of the characters; what we can see are the dialog boxes, Fortuna (who goes down and up the stairs), the background, and Ábramar himself.



It's a shame, but The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is not localized into Portuguese. The game is not dubbed, but there are seven language options: English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Simplified Chinese, and Japanese.

As such, I missed the "key" sounds in the characters' speech, as in titles of this style, such as Undertale and Stardew Valley. It's a small detail, but it brings a different perspective to the pace of the game, as it shows that something is being said there and draws more attention to the information.

In this sense, what really caught my attention was the music, both positively and negatively. On a positive note, the game delivers a very nice soundtrack and music, which contain piano sounds that make it feel good to listen to while playing, like a nice background sound.

On the negative side, however, the music starts to become very repetitive at a certain point, and I'd venture to say right at the start of the gameplay. As the game is divided into lessons and you basically have to learn the four elements before changing the mechanics of the game, the music is the same every time.



That's not to say that they're bad or poorly produced, by any means. It's just that there are few options, and they don't prove to change the pace of the game, which remains slow due to the actions and, therefore, the sounds themselves. When you start a different action, the music changes very little, and there is no difference between sad, happy, joyful or melancholy sounds, etc.

What's more, while we're dialoguing, it doesn't stop playing (which can be a bit of a hindrance to understanding the lines, as it's a more elaborate theme), and it's the same sample all the time.

Bearing in mind that the game requires a minimum of 8 GB of RAM, an Intel Core i3-3240 processor, and a GeForce GT 640 graphics card, I played on a PC with 16 GB of RAM, an Intel Core i5-9400F processor, and a GTX 1050 Ti graphics card. I didn't experience any bugs or glitches; the game ran perfectly.

The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood key for PC was made available by Devolver Digital.