Grief as a Game Mechanic

Signs of the Sojourner has an environmental grief system that both breaks us down and ties us together.

[Spoilers] Partway through this game about conversing with merchants in a climate-changed future using four distinct flavours of communication, a natural disaster strikes that unexpectedly adds a fifth – “distressed and grieving”. At first, grief can throw off any conversation – but it also becomes the only thing that ties almost all characters together if they can meet it with their own grief.