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What if you could change everything on the turn of a card?
The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood starts 200 years into a millennium of exile, and our main protagonist, Fortuna, has done all she can to counter the loneliness of being stuck on an asteroid in an infinite definition of space. As a former, forcefully retired Tarot reader, her exile began with her reading of the falling of her coven and the fear it instilled with its group. With nothing but time and interactive fiction to keep her busy, it was not enough to drive her to near madness. As her last resort, Fortuna recites a forbidden poem that summons a Behemoth: a mammoth entity with unfathomable powers in exchange for the unfathomable.
When Ábramar seals their deal with Fortuna, the agreement comes with the power of the 4 elements: Earth, Water, Air, and Fire. These elements come with questions, questions that will hold great value and potential consequences through Fortuna decades long journey. As each question is answered, pacts are made and formed to acquire the ability to gather material from each of the four elements. Once all pacts are sealed and all questions are answered: you will begin to create your brand new Divination Deck.
Your Divination Deck carries the foundation of your standard Tarot deck, where cards are shuffled and pulled at random and each card carries a meaning that relays the intention of what was pulled. The kicker with your new deck is you’ll be making it yourself. With the power of the four elements, you can spend pieces of each element to grab the three vital pieces to each card: the Sphere, Arcana, and Energy Symbols. The Sphere consists of the large background piece, the Arcana is your main foreground piece, and the Energy Symbols are the “pizazz” details to round the card out.
Each piece of the Divination puzzle provides a backstory to the part chosen to give an understanding of where your piece came from within the cosmos. When all three are combined, your artistic side will gleam with the Clip Art-style customization when creating your cards. Pick which parts suits the card the most, piece together your foreground and accessorize to your heart’s content. They’re your cards, so you can decide on how intricate you get with details. I had a blast making some really goofy cards and some that really felt like they told a story.
And telling a story these cards will do, as each part of the card provides Meaning. These buzzwords attached to the card will unlock certain options when pulled for whichever scenario you are in. With a max deck number of 22, your deck provides many ways a scenario can go: based on how many material you possess, how you want to style your cards, and what level of Feeling is provided to the card in hand, all left to the luck of the draw. The scenario you decide has the very real possibility of never happening again due to the sheer amount of branching paths each card can take you. It’s quite an audacious task on paper that is put together beautifully and very creatively instills the urge to replay the game just to see what other ways Fortuna can go.
And with 200 years of solitude behind you, there are a lot of Witches who are dying to meet you. The cast is a vast and diverse group, ranging from bulking warriors, petite alchemists, silver-tongued savants, and pseudo-angelic entities. Having a brand new Deck that holds the power it does reaches ears from all around the coven and quickly, so the meat and potatoes of each chapter has witches sending letters from their familiars requesting a visit to your prison-turned quickly into-office. Friends coming by to relive the past few centuries missed from exile, new members of the coven intrigued by the hottest topic, and leaders hoping to collect solace and understanding from the infancy of your punishment.
These scenarios once again shows Deconstucteam flexing the writing muscles that have won them praise and awards. It was not hard to absolutely lose myself in each character and slowly piece together the coven that felt like it abandoned me, but shared many a common issue with the politics and socio-qualities of immortal beings with purposes dictated by the ones much older and wiser than the common folk. You’ll meet with each witch, going over lost time, describing first interactions, feeling the spark missed from centuries of isolation. After small talk and exchanged pleasantries, you’ll be asked to put your deck to the task.
Each witch comes with different wants and needs, and this is where the bread and butter of the Deck building comes fruitfully into play. As you build your deck through gathering materials, which is done by helping witches out and doing other oddities around your area, questions from each Witch will be displayed on your board. Questions will range from trying to find unmarked territories in the cosmos from Explorers, the fate of one’s future when the lifespan of a witch eventually depletes, whether the mortal boy they’ve secretly been seeing will be cool with their witchly duties and extra appendages. From here, Fortuna will shuffle her deck, and will pick a card. You don’t get to pick again, you must play what is drawn: but where you play it brings an additional layer of intrigue. You may get asked 2-4 questions and it is up to you as the deckbuilder to place the card where you feel is right, and from the Meanings embedded into the card, must choose a path for where that question will be answered. I almost guarantee you’ll never play the same scenario twice and the scale of that statement is astronomically impressive.
Fortuna will help guide futures, rebuild pasts, and create opportunities to make or break stories. My favorite, which I will try not to dive into much to avoid spoiling it all, was a newly ascended witch meeting Fortuna for the first time by request of one of Fortuna’s friends. This witch ascended to a place where only females can become witches, but though she wasn’t biologically made to be a witch, the want and the desire provided passage. She doesn’t know what she wants to be, but she knows what she is. Your cards help provide clarity, purpose, and a step forward. With grace and care, the cards build her into not only the witch she became, but the woman she knew she was. I shed tears during this segment, and even thinking about it now gives me goosebumps. It is without a shadow of a doubt the best piece of writing I’ll lay eyes on this year.
I did run into some very small nitpicks during my playthrough. Deconstructeam dips into a familiar bag of tricks with their near-patented, “Juggle a multitude of tasks with not enough time to do them all,” during the game’s third act but having to rest multiple days in a row waiting for events to happen can be a tad tedious when a button to progress forward would’ve been much more user-friendly. The other feels more of a personal gripe but I can see its intention, but trying to acquire specific elements can steer your card’s decisions in a direction you don’t want to go and you have to be cool with what you pick to get what you want, and it made it hard to really go after the cards I wanted without having to be rude.
But y’all. All I’ve thought about for days now is this game. The mind-bending range built into its Divination Deck mechanics to allow near limitless replayability. The crystal-clear writing that has been demonstrated time and time again by Deconstructeam. The overflowing riches of memorial set-pieces, emotionally draining yet fulfilling stories, and the perfect range of character-building sequences. The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood may circle around the Luck of the Draw, but make no mistake that this is as perfect of a narrative-driven story you will experience this year.

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