DEVLOG 2 — THE FOUR-SET SLICE [5/5/2026]

Decisions were MADE.

Reverie Changes shape again.

The last time I wrote about the project (this morning) 

I was getting ready to add spells for THE IMPERIAL AUGURY, the Roman-inspired tarot set. At that point, the game was still expanding outward: more sets, more possible spell phrases, more visual identities, more directions.

Since then, a lot has happened [see the next post.] but most importantly, 

I made a decision about scope.

For now, Reverie is focusing on four active tarot sets.

✦

THE FOUR ACTIVE SETS

The current playable slice now centers on four tarot sets.

THE SILVER NITRATE DREAM

Frame. Cut. Burn. Repeat.

THE SILVER NITRATE DREAM is a silent-film nightmare of theatrical spaces, bad edits, staged rooms, collapsing sets, and worlds that only hold together while the camera keeps rolling.

This set is about unreality as construction. Sets have seams. Rooms are flats. Light behaves like a camera trick. The cards feel like old film stock trying to preserve something that should have burned away.

THE IMPERIAL AUGURY

Decree. Omen. Authority. Collapse.

THE IMPERIAL AUGURY is a Roman-inspired set about empire, prophecy, civic ritual, military divination, and the machinery of power interpreting disaster as destiny.

This set is about authority reading signs in the sky and deciding that whatever happens next must have been inevitable. It is gold, marble, banners, omen-birds, bloodless ceremony, and the collapse already written into the architecture.

THE HARVEST COVENANT

Offering. Season. Witness. Sacrifice.

THE HARVEST COVENANT is a folk-horror set about seasonal debt, communal ritual, old agreements, and the terrible feeling that the village already knows how this ends.

This set is about the cost of return. Fields, masks, bells, dusk, ash, witnesses, and offerings. Nothing is random here. The harvest comes because it was promised.

THE DISCLOSED FORM

Observation. Exposure. Structure. Inevitability.

THE DISCLOSED FORM is a clinical anatomical set built around antique medical plates, exposed structure, diagrammatic bodies, and horror through clarity rather than chaos.

The idea is not gore. It is not blood or violence. It is the discomfort of being completely visible. A body treated as a diagram. A person turned into an academic plate. Something understood too clearly.

Other sets still exist in the project. Some have art. Some have ideas. Some will probably return later.

But they are not part of the current playable slice.

The Starting Deck Customizer now focuses only on these four active sets. Older prototype sets are hidden for now instead of being shown as half-supported options. I also removed an old developer-only “Current Lineup” readout that was useful for testing but did not belong in the player-facing UI.

This is one of those small changes that makes the game feel less like a prototype and more like a game.

✦

WHY FOUR?

Originally, I wanted Reverie to have a lot of tarot sets.

adding before finishing means:

the game becomes wider without becoming clearer.

Four sets is enough to show what Reverie is trying to do. 

The player can start to recognize visual identities, spell identities, and set-specific patterns without drowning in options.

It also gives me a better target for polish.

Instead of asking, “What else can I add?” the question becomes:

How do I make these four sets feel intentional, readable, and strange?

That feels like the right question now.