In elementary school, I remember filling in worksheets full of frustrating math problems. I know that "practice makes perfect" and all, but as long as you understand the basic concept of addition, solving 1 + 2 works the same as solving 3 + 4. The elements may be a little different, but you don't approach one problem differently than another. The alien faces part of the same problem; this first person puzzle game gradually introduces new ideas, but emphasizes each fatigue by repeating it, without escalating it to make you feel like your consciousness is evolving.
Sojourn's main gimmick involves moving between the light world and the dark world (and exchanging places with images) to reach the end of each challenge. You start off only one way into a dark world, but that is expandable – as well as what you can accomplish there. The magic harps, the rehearsal rooms, and the power bars all start to work, making your journey from point A to point B difficult. The most satisfying solutions come from combining together a series of steps; you enter a dark world, use a harp to play a song that builds a bridge, and then swap places with a picture to reach and skip the bridge ahead of your time in the world of darkness.
Separately, these machines are consistent and well made, with a few tricky situations that left me feeling particularly triumphant. However, the issues with The Sojourn are not limited to its individual challenges; boredom accumulates through the combined experience of cracking with many similar puzzles. Instead of sounding like a crooked and deliberate journey through hardships and difficulties, many of the challenges play out like previous returns. Structures and solutions are technologically different, but the movement from one to the next often sounds sequentially, with many of the same elements and ideas being re-integrated into a new configuration. Unless the puzzle introduces a new (unusual) mechanic, you are not forced to look at situations in new or exciting ways, making a large part of the puzzles feel like a busy activity rather than a show of clever ideas.
While boundary conditions can be found in optional puzzles, the problem is one of complexity. Yes, you can get involved in difficult puzzles if you want, but you still have to plow through a very large sequence of compelling developmental obstacles. That sense of repetition is where Sojourn dropped me.
The story and set doesn't add much depth to the process. The narrative progresses with a series of graphic novels appearing from time to time, but the story is so advanced that it fails to discover any real mystery or investment. And while art is stylish and beautiful, don't expect to stumble upon important details in nature; the world, though beautiful, sounds like a practical stick from one challenge to the next. You enter a cool room with columns, solve some puzzles, and take the elevator up to … a room with exactly the same columns … and then another. The same thing happens in a black well and in a dark room, walking you through almost copied and pasted paths that only lead to different puzzles.
A good puzzle game requires more than just a cool mechanic and a few satisfying solutions. Those are important things, but they should be built into one, teaching you to use and integrate your available tools in exciting and surprising ways. Sojourn has moments when they accomplish this, but the space between them is soft, leaving you shocked in a fragile world of rhythmic rhythm.