DEVLOG 3 [5/6/2026]
THE BOOK STARTS TO ANSWER
FROM ROMAN SPELLS TO 39 SPELLS
The first update was around the point where I was preparing the Imperial Augury spell batch.
That batch is now implemented.
Since then, two more set-specific batches have also been added:
THE HARVEST COVENANT
and
THE DISCLOSED FORM
The game now has 39 total spells, including first-pass identity batches for all four active sets. This is part of the previous post, I just wasn't able to post the entire thing in one go.
That number sounds bigger than it feels in play, which is important.
The goal is not to overwhelm the player with a huge checklist of effects. The goal is to make the table feel like it has a language.
A card is not just a value.
It is a word.
A casting is not just a hand.
It is a sentence.
Some sentences answer immediately.
Some linger.
Some return later.
That delayed return has become one of my favorite parts of Reverie.
There is something very right about a tarot roguelike where the table remembers what you did one casting ago.
✦
THE SPELLS ARE STILL DELIBERATELY SIMPLE
A lot of the new set-specific spells are conservative mechanically.
Most of them still use existing scoring effects:
- adding Sigils
- adding Confluence
- or setting up a payoff for the next casting
That restraint is deliberate.
I do not want every new set to immediately require a brand-new mechanic. That is how a prototype turns into a pile of half-finished systems.
Right now, the more important goal is to make each set start speaking its own language inside the systems that already exist.
THE SILVER NITRATE DREAM should feel like frames, cuts, burns, and staged unreality.
THE IMPERIAL AUGURY should feel like decree, omen, authority, and collapse.
THE HARVEST COVENANT should feel like offering, season, witness, and sacrifice.
THE DISCLOSED FORM should feel like observation, exposure, structure, and inevitability.
The mechanics can deepen later.
First, the language has to become readable.
✦
THE GRIMOIRE IS BECOMING A REAL SYSTEM
The Grimoire also got a major pass.
Earlier versions were closer to a basic spell list: useful, but not especially elegant. At 39 spells, that was no longer enough.
So I added an in-book filtering system.
The Grimoire now has filters for:
- recorded spells
- unread spells
- Quick spells
- Rituals
- Cast-triggered spells
- Banish-triggered spells
- before-reveal effects
- after-reveal effects
- rarity
This matters because the Grimoire is not just a menu.
It is one of the main ways the player understands the game.
Reverie is built around discovery. You are not supposed to know every phrase immediately. You learn the deck by playing it, noticing what happens, and slowly filling in the book.
The current Grimoire is still not the final version.
Eventually, I want the book to have a richer recipe language: more symbols, more readable glyphs, less plain text, and more of the feeling that the player is deciphering something.
The current labels are functional, but not final.
Long term, recipes should become more symbolic. A set might be represented by its own sigil. A card identity might have a small readable icon. Wildcards and flexible recipe slots should have their own visual language. Hovering those symbols should explain them without turning the whole book into a wall of text.
That is the direction.
But this pass was important because the spell list has become large enough that the book needs structure now.
The Grimoire is no longer just a list of discoveries.
It is becoming an instrument.
✦
THE DISCLOSED FORM
The newest active set is THE DISCLOSED FORM. I posted about it in my previous 4slice Devlog.
This set is built around anatomical study, old medical illustration, exposed structure, and calm clinical horror.
The idea is not gore.
It is not blood.
It is not chaos.
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.
Its first spell batch includes:
- THE DISCLOSED FORM
- THE OPENED STUDY
- THE TABLE REMEMBERS
- THE RIBS ALIGN
- THE SECOND ANATOMY
The batch leans into ordered exposure, study, mirrored structure, and delayed payoff.
Mechanically, it gives the set a place in the current spell system without asking the rest of the game to change around it.
That has become the current rule for new set content:
Use the existing systems well before inventing new ones.
✦
CURRENT FEATURE SNAPSHOT
Reverie is still unfinished, but the playable slice is much more coherent now.
Current implemented features include:
- Playable three-round run structure
- Spread selection
- Starting Deck Customizer
- Four active tarot sets
- 11-card focused Major Arcana scope
- 39 implemented spells
- Quick and Ritual spell system
- Set-specific spell batches for all four active sets
- Persistent Grimoire discovery and cast counts
- Grimoire filtering
- Pattern Tells for known Quick spell phrases
- Relic shop
- Offerings economy
- Omen round pressure
- Kinetic scoring reveal
- Queued payoff travel
- Current Sigils to Round Total handoff
- Settings persistence
- Deck, Ashes, Backpack, and Grimoire inspection tools
There is a lot of structure here now.
But structure is not the same as polish.
That is the next problem.
✦
THE NEXT PHASE: POLISH, NOT EXPANSION
The next phase is about polishing the four-set slice.
- Making the Grimoire easier to browse.
- Making Pattern Tells helpful without becoming visual noise.
- Making scoring reveals clearer when multiple spells and delayed payoffs fire.
- Making the four active sets feel distinct mechanically and visually.
- Keeping the run playable while the presentation improves.
There are still many planned systems:
- deeper relics
- hidden resonances
- enhancements
- seals
- richer score effects
- more tarot sets
- stranger occult layer