Desert Journey is a roleplaying guide where one player takes the role of a Journeyer who is wandering through a wasteland (symbolizing a force that is holding the character back) and seeking a city (represending the character's drive to escape the desert) in the distance. The other players take the role of the Journeyer's Guide, and a chorus of Voices that can add opinions and vote on results. The game is played as a number of scenes where the Journeyer relives things that happened, or that could have happened, in their life; and ends with the Journeyer either escaping or being perpetually trapped. Desert Journey can also be played as a metagame in roleplaying games where death and resurrection are common events.

From the introduction:

You are walking through the desert. The land itself clings to you, sapping your strength, heat and sand urging you to lay down and join them.

In the distance is a city. It shines like a jewel, more solid than the shifting sands. It is the only evidence that you are not alone in this world.

But perhaps the desert isn't truly a desert. Perhaps you are merely trapped in a nightmare, searching for a way out. Perhaps you walk through the wilderness of your own mind, seeking a way back to reality. Perhaps you're dead.

Will you make it?