Signs of the Sojourner is a narrative deck-building game about connecting and communicating with others. Unlike card-battlers, it challenges you to understand different perspectives and navigate social situations.

Your deck is your character, shaped by your experiences and relationships. Different decks will lead to different narrative paths as your cards impact your ability to communicate with various characters. Rather than building the most "powerful" deck, you will have to make decisions about who you want to be in this world and how you relate to others.

Set in a near-future earth-like world, you take over your mother's store after her death, traveling to diverse locations in order to acquire goods for the shop. This is a world where communities are more insulated, where travel is difficult, and where climate change has made life hard, but you'll still encounter optimistic stories, compassionate characters, and delightful surprises.

Ultimately the tone we're going for is melancholy but hopeful, relaxing and introspective. The world is filled with moments of humor and tenderness, while presenting realistic hardships and conflicts to overcome.

The core of the card game is about matching symbols with the NPC in order to build a connection and have a conversation. Complete a sequence successfully, and the conversation will move forward in a positive way, though ending in discordance will still move your story forward with a meaningful experience. Not only that, but different symbols represent different personality traits and communication styles.

Special ability cards will allow you to manipulate and drive the conversation and provide strategies to deal with symbols you may not yet have in your deck. These also represent character traits and manners of speaking--one character might chatter endlessly, while another diplomatically qualifies and clarifies their statements.

The patterns you form with the NPC will also impact the direction and outcome of the encounter. Agreement and concordance earlier in the exchange can lessen the consequences of later disagreements, while certain misdirections may open up new opportunities.

After each conversation, you are given the opportunity to gain a card from the other character, essentially learning from each experience. Eventually, you'll have even more ways to grow and change your deck, and discover what that means for your character.

Beyond what's in the demo, we have a number of additions planned to add depth without upping the complexity too much. While conversations will always be the central focus, you'll encounter several other event types--surprises while traveling, pit stops on the map, and environmental or communal events that use your deck in different ways. 

Your mother has recently passed away, and you must step into her shoes, traveling and collecting goods to stock in the family store and keep it afloat.

Depending on who you meet and how you interact with folks on the road, your perspective of who your mother was can play out in dramatically different ways. That understanding will trickle down to your relationship with your home in general.

A central theme of the game is that connection to your home and community, and your relationships with Elias and other neighbors:

After each trip, you'll return home with your goods and reconnect with your community. You'll see how your neighbors react to the things you've brought home and potentially attract new visitors to Bartow if you stock the right items.

Will the shop remain a pillar of the community? Will the town remain on the caravan route? Will you remain there at all?

Including your hometown of Bartow, there will be 10+ locations to explore. Each location hosts a small cast of characters with their own communities and stories to uncover. You'll meet fast-talking salesmen, feuding brothers, swindlers, and grouches, but also other young adults just leaving home for the first time, a mother struggling to support her child, spice farmers doing their best in a world that's leaving them behind, and many others.

For the final game, we're planning:

• 15+ locations to explore
• 35+ characters to meet
• 30+ snacks to discover
• 5+ trips out from home

We will release Signs of the Sojourner no matter what, but flexible crowdfunding will allow us to make it bigger and better based on however much we raise. The sections above describe the minimum of what we plan to add to the current demo. Below is what we'd love to add, but can't on our own. 

We're asking for $50,000 in order to add:

• Larger main story/more content
• ~20 total locations
• ~45 total characters, including some special types
• Expanded deck-building mechanics
• New card types
• New event types
• Store skins and customizable flyers
• Truck interior--your home on the road
• Gibberish-style VO for all characters
• Additional music - every character has their own musical layers

Many of these goals were drawn from the community, and we want your input to help us make it a game you want to play and the best that it can be. The community has already been incredibly supportive and bursting with ideas we want to make happen--and we're excited to hear from all the new folks we hope will join us on this development journey.

We appreciate any support in making this happen, and have prepared a variety of rewards:

We've been working on the game for 9 months and have put more than we're asking for into the project already, but we need this last bit to make it the best possible version.

We had said we would release the game in 2019, but the addition of these goals will push it into early 2020--well worth a short wait.

Echodog Games is a three-person indie company based in Los Angeles, California. Signs of the Sojourner will be our debut game. Besides the core team, we're very lucky to have found amazing and talented collaborators. Read below for more insight into the team and scroll even further for some audio sneak peeks!

Echodog Games is just the three of us, but we’re collaborating with some really talented people. We have previous experience together as a team, hitting deadlines, shipping games, and using the tools. There can always be unforeseen problems that come up, but at worst Signs of the Sojourner may be delayed, never cancelled.