Alright this is pretty dope, i love it. Can we use a set of playing cards instead for this? Sadly I lost my tarot deck years ago....but I know playing cards can be used as an alternative. Just not sure if it will work here. (I'd take a look to find out but i don't want to spoil the prompts for myself before getting the chance to play. ) TT^TT
You wouldn't be able to do the major arcana draw that comes with each prompt, but the prompts themselves could be edited for playing cards! Use the Jack as a Knight, and slide in a Joker to use as the Page. The Joker will have to be transferred to each deck but it should work fine!
My name is Dzmitry and I'm from Belarus. I discovered your game while searching for tarot deck-based roleplaying systems on itch.io.
Anamnesis interested me with its idea: I like plots where a person reconstructs his memories. I wanted to learn this game sooner rather than later and give my spouse a session.
It took me about 10 days to translate the rules and I was finally able to go on an adventure with the person closest to me. We had an interesting experience creating a story together with the tarot deck. Your game has potential for replayability, so we will continue to have sessions with each other using different characters and different decks.
Thank you for your hard work and for creating Anamnesis. Your game deserves to be known by as many people as possible!
Wow, this is wonderful! I'm honored that you took the time to translate the game. Thank you for sharing, I'm so glad you and your spouse were able to enjoy it together!
I just played act 1 as a 'warm up' to some writing I need to do for work today. I loved it and wish I didn't have to start work because I wanted to jump right into act 2! I was curious if anyone has tried it as a multiplayer? I think it could be a really fun group story telling exercise where 3 players take turns writing one prompt for each act. thoughts?
I led a couple players through a 2-player version on the podcast Planet Arcana! It worked really well - basically, each person had their own character, and they answered the same prompts but pulled different major arcana. That format should work for 3+ players, too.
Asking two questions to be sure! If I were to get one of the damaged copies, would I be able to receive it in Italy? Also, would I get all the files listed under the $8 downloadables? Or just the PDF?
I got this from IPR and noticed it said "Shuffle the three Major Arcana back into the deck." don't you mean "minor arcana"? The four decks are minor arcana. the major arcana is the other deck, which you'd only draw one of per act. It literally says in how to play "Draw one card from the Major Arcana deck." so you literally can not put away three major arcana at the end of the act because you haven't drawn three major arcana, you drew 3 minor arcana.
Based on a comment from two years ago, I think you have it backwards somehow; pentacles/swords/cups/wands are all minor arcana.
As you described, the player draws 3 minor arcana each act. They will also draw 3 major arcana each act - one for each prompt (aka, each minor arcana).
During each prompt the player draws 1 minor arcana and 1 major arcana. Thus, you should have 3 major arcana cards (not including the shadow) to shuffle back into the major arcana deck at the end of the act. The minor arcana cards do not need to be shuffled back into the deck, as they will not be used again.
Thank you for making this game! I played it on two evenings, but you can probably finish it in a single one if you don't nerd as deep into tarot symbolism as I did. The dev commentary is awesome, too!
The game appears to be intriguing. I have begun playing it, but as someone inexperienced with journaling games, I am unsure of how it will progress. I am blogging about my experience if anyone wishes to read: Blogger or RPGGeek.
Played a short (hour long) game using my own prompt list instead of the major arcana and a 52 card deck for the minors. I love how the secondary prompts shape the character and story beyond the questions, I ended up taking the game in a completely different direction than I would have because of certain prompts I got for the questions!
Very lovely, and a great addition to my collection ^-^
I’ve played through this a couple times with the 12-year old child of my best friend. He’s starting a novel and he’s using this game to help flesh out his main characters. He’s said that it’s helping him a lot as he starts to understand more about the characters as people and not just as props. He can’t wait for the next time we have a chance to play together! This game definitely gets a five star rating from me. If I knew where the rating system was!
I really loved playing Anamnesis as an exercise in helping me flesh out a character idea for an upcoming solo campaign. I made a post about it on my blog. Keep up the good work and excited to play more of your games! I actually started playing & writing about solo ttrpgs because of your fantastic TikTok posts.
I played Anamnesis over a period of more than two weeks, one entry at a time, as the game turned out to be quite an intense experience. There is something in thinking about lost and returned memories, that dredges out your own recollections of years long gone.
Anamnesis is a beautiful game that plays the theme of amnesia in a very smart way. In most of the games that I've played, you draw cards to establish a writing prompt, usually an inspiring question to answer. In Anamnesis you draw Minor Arcana to establish the question, and then you draw a Major Arcana card to establish the answer. The questions are listed in the game, but the interpretation of the Major Arcana is up to you – it can be the canonical meaning, visual inspiration, etc.
So, on one hand, you are not in control of what memory comes back, on the other, it is your decision, what the memory means. I really liked how it played out in my game. I felt like I was looking at scattered puzzles of my past life, never fully satisfied and always intrigued.
In contrast, in the fifth act, you don't draw a random card, but decide by yourself, what your future will be. It made the ending more meaningful – although I spent quite a time thinking about which card to choose.
Just came here after my first run through of the game. At the risk of oversharing, I've been working through some difficult emotional unpacking and healing lately and I think this game is actually going to be a powerful tool on my journey. It truly is a wonderful tool for self-reflection, as well as a story-telling engine that can be used for OCs, other RPGs, and more. Cannot recommend this enough for anyone wanting to do some self exploration and healing while also honing your own narrative instincts.
Anamnesis is about deciding who you are in spite of who you’ve been. Your memories, even if they’re forgotten or manufactured, aren’t as important as what you do with what time you still have. Your past is undoubtedly important, and it may follow you long after you’ve forgotten it. But it’s not some all-powerful force like gravity or destiny. With time, even the past can be re-written. And the good news is: you always have time to become someone new.
Eventually, I plan to do a recorded play through of this game. But for now, I took a VERY short look at the game for a Youtube Short.
OK, OK... I might just be posting this here now just to help Sam get a signal boost on this game, but hey... she didn't ask me to, I just think Sam deserves it for all the work she does to promote other people's games.
Found Anamnesis through the Sangfielle episode above, love it to bits. One question: at the end of each act, where it says "Shuffle the three Major Arcana back into the deck" -- shouldn't it say "Minor" Arcana?
To answer your question, major arcana is correct - putting them back into the deck allows the possibility of drawing the same major arcana cards in the next act. You can actually put the minor arcana aside at the end of the act because you won't be using them anymore. Hope that helps!
I really enjoyed this game! I love the incorporation of tarot card meanings, and I'm really excited to replay Anamnesis using different characters. (I initially played as a scumbag who has to confront his past, lmao). You can read a full review of my thoughts on this game on my blog.
I'm relatively new to solo journaling games and this is the first one I played that used the Tarot. This game was pretty cool and definitely has a lot of replay value. Going into it I wasn't sure how much each prompt should reveal, but once I just let go I fell into a pretty cool character (that ended up being spy x family inspired.)
Just finished playing through this with my Tarot of the Divine (Yoshi Yoshitani) deck, and let me tell you, it was such a cool experience. I went into this not planning on playing as my current D&D character, but my first pull matched so well and so did every pull afterwards. In the end, it basically acted as a huge in-character reflection for what my character's been through, and I enjoyed it so much that I shared the journal entries with my DM.
played this through earlier this week (with a waite-smith deck) & am about to start again with the london lore tarot. I've played a few tarot-based games but this is the first that made me immediately go 'oh I wonder how it would play with that interesting deck??' it's also just really enjoyable, elegantly structured, & the prompts are great. likely to become a go-to character generation/exploration game for me.
I JUST started playing this tonight, and I already love it! It scratches an itch I didn’t know I had, I love the mechanics, you made such a cool balance of guidance and chance without making it feel too random or too open-ended. I’m so excited to see where the game goes from here. I’m sure I’ll be back again when I’m finished to shout at you with more delighted praise!!!!
This game is absolutely fantastic! I played it for the first time last night using an audio recording, and I could never have guessed at where the story would go... I want to play it again immediately!! The prompts are open yet evocative, and the inclusion of all the Major Arcana provides so much surprising inspiration. Wow!! This game packs so much into a very slim volume, which is quite an achievement imo
This game was one hell of a game. Bought it on an impulse while having a rather emotional day, but over the course of gaming and using the tape-recorder style gameplay, I couldn't help but get lost in self-reflection and yearning for what I wanted in my life.
Played it with the Tarot of the Divine deck, and I just felt so much yearning for life and love. It was a bit heavy but that was definitely what I was looking for. A fun ride when you know what you're getting into!
In Anamnesis, you play as an amnesiac on a journey to rediscover themselves. It is a solo game played with a tarot deck, and explores the themes of loss and renewal. The writing of this game is very good and evocative!
Hi, Samantha,
I made a video right now in Spanish, explaining the game (although I didn’t translate the prompts) and narrated a story created playing loosely the game.
https://www.youtube.com/video/JQryAydllpA/
My first playthrough was with a very scattered and tricksy deck (The Alleyman's Tarot), but I got a very cohesive character from it, one I've been able to take right into roleplay with a very good understanding of who they are, what they want, why they do as they do.
Honestly loved it. You can write as much or as little as you like, and the prompts are flexible enough that a narrative emerges extremely easily. I used my Cultist Simulator deck to incorperate the lore of a different game into the story I followed, and the end result turned out beautifully.
Hello ! I've just fiinished my first game with Anamnesia and I wanted to congratulate you for bringing it to the world ! I am a writer (and a big fan of Tarot) and I think this is going to be a great way for me to create new stories and characters! I used the Modern Witch deck for this first game and ended with a story I didn't know I had in me. Such an awesome experience ! I am sure there will be many others and I will recommend the game to so many people ! Great job !
This game has been a wonderful experience so far! It makes me wonder, is it possible to use all the tarot cards to create a story cover to cover about the struggles of memory loss, followed by a sense of renewal at the end? Because I would honestly play it again to do just that. ❤
I've been a journal writer for a long time, and have been using tarot cards for a bit too. To put these two things together into an RPG is an amazingly cathartic experience, and I would definitely enjoy future games of this nature. 😊
"Anamnesis" in my playthrough, is about a girl who suffers from amnesia but finds love along the way. It's kinda like the movie "50 First Dates," with the idea that when my character goes to sleep, her memory does a factory reset. The amnesia began the night after she left an abusive relationship because her memory couldn't handle all the trauma.
I loved this game as soon as I saw the cover and read the contents, but I was not prepared for the emotional ride it was about to take me on.
Every card pull felt so significant, and the prompts were so solidly on the line between open-ended and specific that I was hit with a shock of inspiration every single time I saw my next card.
I cried playing this game, and so will you - can't recommend it enough for self-discovery and, in my case, a decent dose of catharsis. Don't sleep on this.
Anamnesis is a game of self-discovery through evocative prompts and tarot cards! I love that it encourages you to interpret the cards however you want, it reminds me of childhood games of make-believe and the best parts of Mysteruim.
The layout is clean and neat, and the game plays quickly as you delve into a forgotten character.
An incredibly intense experience. The use of the Tarot deck is wonderful, with the Major Arcana playing an inspirational role throughout the entire game rather than being just additional prompts (like the minor arcana) and really shows what a Tarot deck can do for a journaling game. Due to how the Major Arcana are often highly unique from deck to deck, playing with different decks will yield different inspirations, especially with decks that have detailed Major Arcana.
My first game I used as self reflection, remembering a point of time in my life when I was lost and walking through it to finding myself again.
My second game was entirely about a fictional character that the game built with depth as each act passed. I was not prepared to find myself playing a lawyer fired from their law firm because they walked away from prosecuting a case against a nature activist who, it turns out, was protecting an ancient tree in the city that someone wanted destroyed. It did not go well for anyone, and in the aftermath my lawyer remembered her partner, who left her an acorn from said ancient tree, and now she is going to go find a location to plant it that is more worthy than the city (which no longer exists).
I highly recommend this game as one of the best character exploration engines.
Anamnesis is a solo journaling game about memory loss. In practice, it's a mystery, but that mystery is one of self-discovery.
The PDF is 10 pages, with a relatively bare layout but a cool cover and a good structure.
You play as a person who has woken up in a state of anamnesis.
Mechanically, the game uses tarot cards to add detail and color to its story. Gameplay is divided into five acts, with each act consisting of three card draws. Each drawn card is a prompt, giving you a chance to explore another facet of your lost memory.
I think a lot of games would use this framing device to weave in some slow-burn horror, but Anamnesis resists that temptation. There's emotional intensity, but it comes from you, not from the cards. Prompts like "You realize you are crying. Why?" hit hard with an economy of motion. All of their force comes from you.
This can make the game a bit tough and intense, but it swerves in an interesting way at the end, and I don't think it's ultimately about putting the player into an intense emotional state. It's about asking the player to consider who they are.
Overall, this is a really cool solo game that explores a condition rather than a setting. If you like journaling games, emotional intensity, or introspection, I would strongly recommend giving Anamnesis a read.
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Alright this is pretty dope, i love it. Can we use a set of playing cards instead for this? Sadly I lost my tarot deck years ago....but I know playing cards can be used as an alternative. Just not sure if it will work here. (I'd take a look to find out but i don't want to spoil the prompts for myself before getting the chance to play. ) TT^TT
You wouldn't be able to do the major arcana draw that comes with each prompt, but the prompts themselves could be edited for playing cards! Use the Jack as a Knight, and slide in a Joker to use as the Page. The Joker will have to be transferred to each deck but it should work fine!
Alright, thanks so much ^^
Great thought provoking game. The person and their story that we explore become full of nuances.
Hello, BlinkingBirchGames team:
Samantha, Marx, Thomas and Victor!
My name is Dzmitry and I'm from Belarus. I discovered your game while searching for tarot deck-based roleplaying systems on itch.io.
Anamnesis interested me with its idea: I like plots where a person reconstructs his memories. I wanted to learn this game sooner rather than later and give my spouse a session.
It took me about 10 days to translate the rules and I was finally able to go on an adventure with the person closest to me. We had an interesting experience creating a story together with the tarot deck. Your game has potential for replayability, so we will continue to have sessions with each other using different characters and different decks.
Thank you for your hard work and for creating Anamnesis. Your game deserves to be known by as many people as possible!
Best regards,
Dzmitry (Avendim)
Wow, this is wonderful! I'm honored that you took the time to translate the game. Thank you for sharing, I'm so glad you and your spouse were able to enjoy it together!
I just played act 1 as a 'warm up' to some writing I need to do for work today. I loved it and wish I didn't have to start work because I wanted to jump right into act 2! I was curious if anyone has tried it as a multiplayer? I think it could be a really fun group story telling exercise where 3 players take turns writing one prompt for each act. thoughts?
I led a couple players through a 2-player version on the podcast Planet Arcana! It worked really well - basically, each person had their own character, and they answered the same prompts but pulled different major arcana. That format should work for 3+ players, too.
Asking two questions to be sure! If I were to get one of the damaged copies, would I be able to receive it in Italy?
Also, would I get all the files listed under the $8 downloadables? Or just the PDF?
Hey there! The damaged copies do indeed ship to Italy, and the $8 digital version comes with all digital files, not just the game PDF.
Thank you!
I got this from IPR and noticed it said "Shuffle the three Major Arcana back into the deck." don't you mean "minor arcana"? The four decks are minor arcana. the major arcana is the other deck, which you'd only draw one of per act. It literally says in how to play "Draw one card from the Major Arcana deck." so you literally can not put away three major arcana at the end of the act because you haven't drawn three major arcana, you drew 3 minor arcana.
Based on a comment from two years ago, I think you have it backwards somehow; pentacles/swords/cups/wands are all minor arcana.
Thanks for asking!
As you described, the player draws 3 minor arcana each act. They will also draw 3 major arcana each act - one for each prompt (aka, each minor arcana).
During each prompt the player draws 1 minor arcana and 1 major arcana. Thus, you should have 3 major arcana cards (not including the shadow) to shuffle back into the major arcana deck at the end of the act. The minor arcana cards do not need to be shuffled back into the deck, as they will not be used again.
Hope that helps clarify!
I love this game
Really enjoyed the game! I can't wait to play again, it's the kind of game with endless possibilities for stories you could create.
Thank you for making this game! I played it on two evenings, but you can probably finish it in a single one if you don't nerd as deep into tarot symbolism as I did. The dev commentary is awesome, too!
The game appears to be intriguing. I have begun playing it, but as someone inexperienced with journaling games, I am unsure of how it will progress. I am blogging about my experience if anyone wishes to read: Blogger or RPGGeek.
Played a short (hour long) game using my own prompt list instead of the major arcana and a 52 card deck for the minors. I love how the secondary prompts shape the character and story beyond the questions, I ended up taking the game in a completely different direction than I would have because of certain prompts I got for the questions!
Very lovely, and a great addition to my collection ^-^
I’ve played through this a couple times with the 12-year old child of my best friend. He’s starting a novel and he’s using this game to help flesh out his main characters. He’s said that it’s helping him a lot as he starts to understand more about the characters as people and not just as props. He can’t wait for the next time we have a chance to play together! This game definitely gets a five star rating from me. If I knew where the rating system was!
I really loved playing Anamnesis as an exercise in helping me flesh out a character idea for an upcoming solo campaign. I made a post about it on my blog. Keep up the good work and excited to play more of your games! I actually started playing & writing about solo ttrpgs because of your fantastic TikTok posts.
I played Anamnesis over a period of more than two weeks, one entry at a time, as the game turned out to be quite an intense experience. There is something in thinking about lost and returned memories, that dredges out your own recollections of years long gone.
Anamnesis is a beautiful game that plays the theme of amnesia in a very smart way. In most of the games that I've played, you draw cards to establish a writing prompt, usually an inspiring question to answer. In Anamnesis you draw Minor Arcana to establish the question, and then you draw a Major Arcana card to establish the answer. The questions are listed in the game, but the interpretation of the Major Arcana is up to you – it can be the canonical meaning, visual inspiration, etc.
So, on one hand, you are not in control of what memory comes back, on the other, it is your decision, what the memory means. I really liked how it played out in my game. I felt like I was looking at scattered puzzles of my past life, never fully satisfied and always intrigued.
In contrast, in the fifth act, you don't draw a random card, but decide by yourself, what your future will be. It made the ending more meaningful – although I spent quite a time thinking about which card to choose.
All in all, it was a great experience.
You can find my playthrough here.
Just came here after my first run through of the game. At the risk of oversharing, I've been working through some difficult emotional unpacking and healing lately and I think this game is actually going to be a powerful tool on my journey. It truly is a wonderful tool for self-reflection, as well as a story-telling engine that can be used for OCs, other RPGs, and more. Cannot recommend this enough for anyone wanting to do some self exploration and healing while also honing your own narrative instincts.
Anamnesis is about deciding who you are in spite of who you’ve been. Your memories, even if they’re forgotten or manufactured, aren’t as important as what you do with what time you still have. Your past is undoubtedly important, and it may follow you long after you’ve forgotten it. But it’s not some all-powerful force like gravity or destiny. With time, even the past can be re-written. And the good news is: you always have time to become someone new.
Eventually, I plan to do a recorded play through of this game. But for now, I took a VERY short look at the game for a Youtube Short.
OK, OK... I might just be posting this here now just to help Sam get a signal boost on this game, but hey... she didn't ask me to, I just think Sam deserves it for all the work she does to promote other people's games.Found Anamnesis through the Sangfielle episode above, love it to bits. One question: at the end of each act, where it says "Shuffle the three Major Arcana back into the deck" -- shouldn't it say "Minor" Arcana?
I'm so glad you're enjoying it, thank you!
To answer your question, major arcana is correct - putting them back into the deck allows the possibility of drawing the same major arcana cards in the next act. You can actually put the minor arcana aside at the end of the act because you won't be using them anymore. Hope that helps!
Oh! Of course! That makes much more sense, thank you.
No problem! 😊
I really enjoyed this game! I love the incorporation of tarot card meanings, and I'm really excited to replay Anamnesis using different characters. (I initially played as a scumbag who has to confront his past, lmao). You can read a full review of my thoughts on this game on my blog.
I'm relatively new to solo journaling games and this is the first one I played that used the Tarot. This game was pretty cool and definitely has a lot of replay value. Going into it I wasn't sure how much each prompt should reveal, but once I just let go I fell into a pretty cool character (that ended up being spy x family inspired.)
Just finished playing through this with my Tarot of the Divine (Yoshi Yoshitani) deck, and let me tell you, it was such a cool experience. I went into this not planning on playing as my current D&D character, but my first pull matched so well and so did every pull afterwards. In the end, it basically acted as a huge in-character reflection for what my character's been through, and I enjoyed it so much that I shared the journal entries with my DM.
Fantastic game.
I also played with the Yoshi Yoshitani deck! It's perfect for this game - adds a lot to the storytelling aspect, and is visually very satisfying.
played this through earlier this week (with a waite-smith deck) & am about to start again with the london lore tarot. I've played a few tarot-based games but this is the first that made me immediately go 'oh I wonder how it would play with that interesting deck??' it's also just really enjoyable, elegantly structured, & the prompts are great. likely to become a go-to character generation/exploration game for me.
I JUST started playing this tonight, and I already love it! It scratches an itch I didn’t know I had, I love the mechanics, you made such a cool balance of guidance and chance without making it feel too random or too open-ended. I’m so excited to see where the game goes from here. I’m sure I’ll be back again when I’m finished to shout at you with more delighted praise!!!!
This game is absolutely fantastic! I played it for the first time last night using an audio recording, and I could never have guessed at where the story would go... I want to play it again immediately!! The prompts are open yet evocative, and the inclusion of all the Major Arcana provides so much surprising inspiration. Wow!! This game packs so much into a very slim volume, which is quite an achievement imo
This game is fantastic. I wrote a full-length review on my website! It's not an amazing read, but my journal is posted here.
This game was one hell of a game. Bought it on an impulse while having a rather emotional day, but over the course of gaming and using the tape-recorder style gameplay, I couldn't help but get lost in self-reflection and yearning for what I wanted in my life.
Played it with the Tarot of the Divine deck, and I just felt so much yearning for life and love. It was a bit heavy but that was definitely what I was looking for. A fun ride when you know what you're getting into!
This game is amazing, I’ve not played games that use tarot cards before but I love how they work in this.
In Anamnesis, you play as an amnesiac on a journey to rediscover themselves. It is a solo game played with a tarot deck, and explores the themes of loss and renewal. The writing of this game is very good and evocative!
This is a beautiful, well put together game. Highly recommended!
Hi, Samantha, I made a video right now in Spanish, explaining the game (although I didn’t translate the prompts) and narrated a story created playing loosely the game. https://www.youtube.com/video/JQryAydllpA/
This is so wonderful, thank you so much for sharing!!
My first playthrough was with a very scattered and tricksy deck (The Alleyman's Tarot), but I got a very cohesive character from it, one I've been able to take right into roleplay with a very good understanding of who they are, what they want, why they do as they do.
Really useful tool. Lots of fun to use. Thanks!
Honestly loved it. You can write as much or as little as you like, and the prompts are flexible enough that a narrative emerges extremely easily. I used my Cultist Simulator deck to incorperate the lore of a different game into the story I followed, and the end result turned out beautifully.
Hello ! I've just fiinished my first game with Anamnesia and I wanted to congratulate you for bringing it to the world ! I am a writer (and a big fan of Tarot) and I think this is going to be a great way for me to create new stories and characters! I used the Modern Witch deck for this first game and ended with a story I didn't know I had in me. Such an awesome experience ! I am sure there will be many others and I will recommend the game to so many people ! Great job !
Hey there, i was wondering what deck of tarot to use best? Is there a special one recommended?
I live in germany and tarot is not a big thing here.. 🤔
Any tarot deck would work! When designing the game, I used the Rider-Waite deck designed by Pamela Coleman Smith, but any tarot deck is fine.
do you know when the physical copies will be ready? :)
I think they'll be on sale in April!
This game has been a wonderful experience so far! It makes me wonder, is it possible to use all the tarot cards to create a story cover to cover about the struggles of memory loss, followed by a sense of renewal at the end? Because I would honestly play it again to do just that. ❤
I've been a journal writer for a long time, and have been using tarot cards for a bit too. To put these two things together into an RPG is an amazingly cathartic experience, and I would definitely enjoy future games of this nature. 😊
"Anamnesis" in my playthrough, is about a girl who suffers from amnesia but finds love along the way. It's kinda like the movie "50 First Dates," with the idea that when my character goes to sleep, her memory does a factory reset. The amnesia began the night after she left an abusive relationship because her memory couldn't handle all the trauma.
I loved this game as soon as I saw the cover and read the contents, but I was not prepared for the emotional ride it was about to take me on.
Every card pull felt so significant, and the prompts were so solidly on the line between open-ended and specific that I was hit with a shock of inspiration every single time I saw my next card.
I cried playing this game, and so will you - can't recommend it enough for self-discovery and, in my case, a decent dose of catharsis. Don't sleep on this.
Anamnesis is a game of self-discovery through evocative prompts and tarot cards! I love that it encourages you to interpret the cards however you want, it reminds me of childhood games of make-believe and the best parts of Mysteruim.
The layout is clean and neat, and the game plays quickly as you delve into a forgotten character.
An incredibly intense experience. The use of the Tarot deck is wonderful, with the Major Arcana playing an inspirational role throughout the entire game rather than being just additional prompts (like the minor arcana) and really shows what a Tarot deck can do for a journaling game. Due to how the Major Arcana are often highly unique from deck to deck, playing with different decks will yield different inspirations, especially with decks that have detailed Major Arcana.
My first game I used as self reflection, remembering a point of time in my life when I was lost and walking through it to finding myself again.
My second game was entirely about a fictional character that the game built with depth as each act passed. I was not prepared to find myself playing a lawyer fired from their law firm because they walked away from prosecuting a case against a nature activist who, it turns out, was protecting an ancient tree in the city that someone wanted destroyed. It did not go well for anyone, and in the aftermath my lawyer remembered her partner, who left her an acorn from said ancient tree, and now she is going to go find a location to plant it that is more worthy than the city (which no longer exists).
I highly recommend this game as one of the best character exploration engines.
Anamnesis is a solo journaling game about memory loss. In practice, it's a mystery, but that mystery is one of self-discovery.
The PDF is 10 pages, with a relatively bare layout but a cool cover and a good structure.
You play as a person who has woken up in a state of anamnesis.
Mechanically, the game uses tarot cards to add detail and color to its story. Gameplay is divided into five acts, with each act consisting of three card draws. Each drawn card is a prompt, giving you a chance to explore another facet of your lost memory.
I think a lot of games would use this framing device to weave in some slow-burn horror, but Anamnesis resists that temptation. There's emotional intensity, but it comes from you, not from the cards. Prompts like "You realize you are crying. Why?" hit hard with an economy of motion. All of their force comes from you.
This can make the game a bit tough and intense, but it swerves in an interesting way at the end, and I don't think it's ultimately about putting the player into an intense emotional state. It's about asking the player to consider who they are.
Overall, this is a really cool solo game that explores a condition rather than a setting. If you like journaling games, emotional intensity, or introspection, I would strongly recommend giving Anamnesis a read.
This is such a kind and thoughtful review, thank you!