The Sojourn's statue-swapping puzzles launch September
I hope those bridges are stable
You know that feeling where you’re not quite sure what’s going on, but you’re happy to be here anyway? That’s the impression I get from the trailer for The Sojourn, a pretty puzzly thing that’s scheduled to come out in a couple of months. I don’t exactly know what kind of tasks it'll be asking me to do, or why. But I probably wouldn’t mind just hanging out in that lovely Santorini-like spot to do ‘em. Take a look at the trailer, you’ll see what I mean.
A full-size set of those lovely whittled-looking sculptures would make good merch.
As I said, It is a little bit difficult to see what’s going on here beyond all the gorgeous shots of architecture crumbling into place and wiry trees stretching to the sky. Fear not, though, because Alice B got a better look at it at Gamescom last year. That statue-swapping you see forms the main challenge, complicated by the fact that you, too, are a statue.
You can also see a little bit of the light-dark complication she describes:
In The Sojourn you can look at the world normally, or through a kind of field of darkness that makes sinister jellyfish monsters appear in the sky, but also opens up different obstacles or walkways that will disappear to you once your dark-o-vision wears off. The interaction between the real world and the dark side of it are the key points of puzzling. There are pads that power up the dark sight ability in you for a set amount of time, statues that you can swap places with while you’re powered up, gates that only open if said statues are in the right place, harps that play magic notes to sustain walkways – that kind of thing. As you go you have to build more of these together in different steps.
What are all these puzzles building towards? Nothing less than “to uncover the nature of reality,” according to the game’s website.
It is, as Alice points out, a little bit Witness-y, for those who like a think-o-wander under a lovely blue sky.
The Sojourn is scheduled to release on the Epic Games Store on the 20th of September.