Every morning I wake up and read my tarot cards. Okay so usually I first have a coffee and get dressed and take my kid to daycare, but still, THEN (almost) every morning, I sit down and shuffle and see what I draw. I don't think it predicts anything exactly, but it's always interesting to see how my mind wants to interpret the symbol that comes up. Today was the 4 of Wands, a card of celebration and festivities, which is an easy one to read when everything's going well. For example, we announced in December and here only two months later we can see we're at almost 10,000 wishlists! Thanks so much! [h2]Jammin'[/h2] We took a break for the winter holidays and even did a winter solstice jam for fun -- check it out whether you're feeling [url=https://kitfoxgames.itch.io/campfire-chat]chatty[/url] or [url=https://kitfoxgames.itch.io/feast]beastly[/url]. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44779548/961234247bfca12d47446e0ec1547a2599387e59.png[/img] [h2]The Tarot Reveals Itself...[/h2] Since January 3 we've been working hard on building out our little prototype into a full vertical slice -- a game development term that means making a full chunk of the game fully shippable, so that we can iron out any problems and iterate on the core experience. Finishing the 'vertical slice' will take us some months to be honest, and we're in the thick of it now! We have working brewing and we can write dialogues and flip tarot cards but... tying it all together into a sensible, easy-to-use, robust experience is another challenge. The creative director Thea started her concepts for our little custom tarot deck last week -- as you can see in the trailer, each card needs its own little 3d world inside, so we have to be careful in the design, to make them evocative but also not too busy and not take weeks to produce. Right now our Loose Leaf deck has Major Arcana (which includes the only familiar cross-overs from the usual tarot deck), and 3 suits: Leaves (a suit of physicality and life essence), Eyes (a suit of perception and intellect), and Teeth (a suit of conflict and struggle). [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44779548/128abf21c4473fc965151de5bdaea3d44ef69592.png[/img] [h2]Tools of the Tea[/h2] Meanwhile, our programmer Charly (who you may have seen/heard in the Day of the Devs announcement video) just made an awesome custom tool so I can see how the different dialogues, orders, and guests fit together to form a single "night" in the game. We're not totally sure how many nights long the game will be (5? 10? 28?), but even if it's only a few, tools like these help us work faster and make fewer mistakes along the way. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44779548/9cd9df39cd95fcd86f2686d7628df23cb27e7cea.png[/img] We won't be taking any long vacations for the lunar New Year, but we'll be thinking about how best to use that Dragon energy to boldly fly forward in production and make the most beautiful game we can in the time we have. We'll also be chatting with fellow witchy tea enthusiasts on [url=https://discord.gg/kitfoxgames]our Discord channel[/url], so maybe we'll see you there! Blessed be, Tanya & Alexandra & the Loose Leaf team