- I like the 1 day 1 night page gimmick! It might work to have one neutral panel on each side for the non-map info? (see next point)
- The title logo is fire! Looks amazing on the itch cover art, so a little sad it can't fit on the trifold (but totally get why!) If you're intending to print/sell this as a paper trifold, you might want to rework the front page to include it.
- The day observatory art is cut off on the left. There's a white line at the top of the night page that seems odd?
- Front page text is hard to read with how dense and small it is. "[Current core tenets in bold]" is way too small!
- The day layout seems like it needs to be read bottom-up which doesn't feel right (e.g. the crew landing is handled at the bottom of the page; the plateau references the entry underneath.)
- How often do Rifts make the check to disappear?
- I don't understand the Time Duplication ability. Whose self? What consequences?
- When does a Fighting Fate roll trigger?
- The map could afford to be bigger / more noticeable!
- I'm a little confused about why altering the future (night) affects the past (day) and not vice versa (maybe I'm misreading?), but I love the concept.
Great feedback on the content and game mechanics - I've got a good idea of what now needs tightening and pruning, and everyone's comments have been really helpful!
That's given me a great idea on the logo - if I printed it, I think I'd have it in a plastic slip with a full-logo sticker.
On the design layout, I tried putting the landing area at the top, and also flipping the left and right columns so the relic would be mentioned first (comment from Deadnought). In short, it was a bit of a disaster, so I'll share how it worked out and what guided the choices. (see below - I'll go back to the before and tidy things up from there... )
Putting the Landing Area at the top messes with the feel of exploring into the jungle/ruins - you feel like you're descending, not going deeper. It also means that the Plateau at the top of the Stairway is underneath it in the text, which is a bit jarring. The map also feels very bottom-heavy once flipped, even after some adjustments. The solution here was to highlight the starting area on the map and draw attention to it at the bottom. I might try and get a visual cue on the title page or draw a bit more attention to it on the map/key spread.
The left/right flip was a bit more of an aesthetic choice, but the images and text simply balanced well in the current locations. As is, there's a lot of text on the center panel, but because it's in the middle, it doesn't feel overbearing. I think I'll put in a few more crossreferences like "the relic found in the sealed relic chamber", etc. to make it clearer instead.
A word of warning: the above is partially due to the way I wrote it up into the layout, figuring which bits needed images and using a pseudo-grid to balance things out, which kinda locked me into the current state. I can see an alternative layout which is more corner-structured than ascension-based, but it would take too much work at this point. A way to avoid this would be to sketch out and test the possibilities a bit more before committing to any one path early in the process. 