Cartomancy Anthology

A mystery box of 22 indie games ranging from 5 minutes to about 1 hour in length - most of them have a narrative twist or a unique take on the gameplay deconstruction. Almost every game here has a theme of self-discovery, introspection, or self-reflection, even when the game is not a visual novel (most of them are), there is generally a story being told as you play. You don't get to choose the order in which you discover the games, but you can skip them once you see the title artwork. With that in mind, the game hub gives you a reading with the tarot deck, in my example, I believe it says "you will play all the bad games first". I guess you could say most of these have a feel of a student project, but I would argue that some of them come from very talented individuals that were pushing their creative limits - perhaps 8 games or so, very thought-provoking, very immersive experiences. Ironically, I do recognize some of my favorite developers here who made more substantial games, but thi...

Boring and immature beyond belief. Most of the games barely work and those that do are full of pseudo-new age nonsense for people that think they're deep. Can't believe I wasted time and money on this.

Cartomancy Anthology is a beautiful compilation of 22 games connected to each of the Major Arcana cards and allows for further continued use in single card or past, present, future three card pulls. Overall, the deck is very inclusive (lots of LGBTQA+ and pronoun affirming narratives) and beautiful for daily mindfulness and self-reflection. Overall: 4.5/10 Individual game ratings: The Fool: The Fool is about opportunity, potential, and new beginnings which didn't feel as though it was translated well into the game. Overall the storyline and changing allegiance felt altogether unimportant and uninteresting (though the dog, Soliloquy, somewhat made up for it.) 3.5/10 The Magician: This is one of the more beautiful games with a genuinely beautiful narrative as well, while short that really pulls from the meaning of the card even though it is primarily visual. 5.5/10 The High Priestess: This game contains many dot based puzzles that you must complete in order to perform tarot readings f...

Oh my god that was my favorite game ever (Thanks, come again)

I have been very excited for this collection and so far the games are very fun! One major issue im running into is weird vsync stutter on moving objects on screen, so far the fix is to disable full screen optimizations but this has only worked on the main client excluding individual games that so far all seem to have similar issues.

I haven't played all of the games yet, but what I've seen so far was of great quality and made by some notable designers, like Tanya X. Short of Kitfox Games. This is not amateur hour. In one game I had to cook for a very picky emperor, another was a queer visual novel with a dancing mechanic and gorgeous perfume ad fonts, "Tonight, Together". Buying the anthology was worth it for that one alone already. Like the store page mentions, these games are made for introspection, not for raw thrills, although quietness can be thrilling, too... I had my reservations at first, because personally I have no connection to divination and / or Tarot cards [i]at all[/i] (and in my opinion the store page makes this collection a harder sell than necessary) and probably would not want to play 22 games with a [i]direct[/i] thematic link. But it's not like that. Each game is very different and the Tarot theme is only used as a loose thematic bracket where every title follows a certain theme (also in a l...

This is a collection of small indie games inspired by the Tarot. Many of them aren't really games, just click-through cinematics and/or text. Many of the games are minimal, foolish, and full of bugs. Some of them are intriguing just the same. Some are pretty cool. Some don't work at all. I get the sense most of these games were made by very young designers; they lack maturity. My favorite is the Emperor; my least favorite is The World.

I haven't played all the games but this is already a great experience. It's a really unique experience ! Congrats to all the devs for this anthology !!

So I never leave reviews but this project really deserves some love! I don't remember how I found this game or why I bought it (I'm not even that into tarot!), but I have no regrets because it's probably the coolest thing I've ever purchased on Steam. If you're someone who appreciates game design as an artform and the experimentation that indie games allow for, then this shouldn't be overlooked. These games are meant to be experiential rather than gameplay-heavy. Every one of these bite-sized experiences won't be for everybody (there were certainly a few I put down early because I didn't enjoy their genre), but every one of them will make you think. I was also under the impression from some of the other reviews that this would be far buggier than it was; really, there was only one game in the whole bunch that was buggy to the point of being unplayable. Special shoutouts to my top five games, in no particular order: The Emperor, The Empress, The Hierophant, The Hanged Man, and The M...

After trying out all the cards, here's a list of some notable games without spoilers (treat it as some kind of personal ranking): [b] S tier: [/b] Empress - overall great puzzle game, level difficulty is just right, concise story and to my surprise there's also voiced lines Fortune - this fishing game is just adorable to its core, also it's made by only one person, it's really impressive, I just wish that my luck wasn't so bad that it took me so many tries just to get the correct weather I wanted High Priestess - cute art and story, the puzzles are quite challenging and I appreciate that there's an optional easy mode, do also note that you need a mouse to play the game Emperor - I'm probably biased because I love cooking games, but I still think it's great because even though the game is short, the story and message are still solid, and definitely need some thinking to interpret what the emperor desires Hanged Man - I just find the concept of this really interesting, you have to...