Exegenesis

thoastbot 2026-04-29 05:31

Wow, that is one full tabletop game - didn't get to playing it yet but i read the booklet and like the idea a lot. Normally i collect tabletop games and then play them at my next tabletop-day with friends, but i guess that doesn't quite work for this one :D Might get back to it when i wanna do tabletop but got no one to come around. Will post my score as soon as i got to play a full round o7

Love the design of the sources, the game sounds fun and interesting, looking forward to playing ^^

cazik21 2026-04-29 18:08

Can you export the game to macOS? If so, I'll come back here to test your game!

cataclysmicknight 2026-04-30 15:22

Oh hey @thoastbot, thanks so much! There's no pressure to play it anytime, I'm pretty close to the 20 rating threshold now 🧡 I do hope that, whenever you play it, you have fun with it though! And if you have any issues or anything, and you let me know, I'll do what I can to fix it :D

Have a lovely day!

cataclysmicknight 2026-04-30 15:24

@cazik21 This is a PDF, so it should be usable on Mac, I think. I'm not familiar with Mac, but from what I'm aware of, PDFs aren't exclusive to PC. If you can't use PDFs on Mac, what file format is used for documents there? I use Canva to make our games, so I may be able to export it as that file type :D

ciaranw 2026-05-01 11:33

I intend to give this a play and I'm looking forward to it! You don't mention in the description, but I assume I also need a standard deck of playing cards?

2026-05-01 14:12

I have to say that the story setting of this game is very complete. I didn't expect that such a large-scale game could be produced within such a short period of time, and it is highly subjective. The randomness adds to the playability of the game. The graphics also use the familiar playing cards. It's very easy to get started and it's a very interesting game!

cataclysmicknight 2026-05-01 23:19

Oh whoops, thanks @ciaranw, somehow I forgot to mention the deck of cards 🤦‍♀️ I was terrified I forgot to mention it in the actual PDFs, too, but luckily I didn't 😅 That's fixed now, thanks :D

cataclysmicknight 2026-05-01 23:20

@zhangzhimu thank you so much for saying so!!! Admittedly, it's a lot easier to make something on paper than to code it: I have to word things properly, but code won't break if I miss a period or semicolon or something 😅

I really appreciate you checking it out and playing it!

vidarn 2026-05-02 14:23

This was a lot of fun! I hadn't played a journaling game before so the whole concept was new to me. I really liked it though. I liked how it's writing for your own enjoyment, and how the game encourages your imagination.

Apparently we don't own a regular deck of cards, haha. I searched the whole house. So I had to revert to using an online deck. It worked well but it meant I couldn't sort the cards as instructed. So I had to play the "full chaos" version :laughing:

In the end, my character (a reporter) didn't fulfill their goal. But it turned into a good story nonetheless. And all the more mysterious when the signal wasn't fully decoded.

The production is top notch, with nice looking layout and well written rules. It felt very professional and approachable. I'm happy to have had such a nice introduction to the world of journaling games!

wendel-scardua 2026-05-02 16:05

Hi, I'm still reading the PDF (and the whole game looks interesting so far - I'd never think I'd ever be interested in the journaling aspect but I kinda wanna try it now), but I paused just to tell I found a typo (I think):

> If you didn’t fully comprehend the Snippet, total up the value of the cards that **weren’t** removed from the Snippet, then total the cards still in the Snippet. Is the total of the cards removed less than the Snippet total

I think that *"weren't"* was supposed to be *"were"*, right? (because the cards that weren't removed are the same as the ones still in the Snippet, unless I misunderstood something)

PS: why did you opt out of the "graphics" rating? Surely the PDF counts as graphics, and it's very well illustrated.

ciaranw 2026-05-03 20:33

I'm glad I spent the time to play this. Very different ludum dare game (given its a tabletop game) but it felt really polished, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Great job, I'm sure its really difficult to put together a complete experience and then get people to actually play it, given that most ludum dare games take something like 5-30 minutes to check out.

This took me about 3 hours from opening the book to finishing my final journal. I got a score of 463 by the time of my final breakthrough. And I think I was *really* lucky for a few of my turns! I think the rules were simple enough to understand, but a few bits of feedback on the wording:

I think "If you didn’t fully comprehend the Snippet" section could probably be reworded a bit, I think its incorrect and it would be clearer if you maybe gave clear names to cards that are "still in" the snippet, and those that have been removed from it. Maybe there are "solved" snippet cards and "unsolved" cards. Or something like that

Furthermore, it seems there is a bit of a hack there that I'm not sure is intentional - the "remove an equal or greater total than the remaining cards" suggests that you can discard down as many extra cards of less-important suits as you want. You don't get that benefit when you fully comprehend, but I guess there is the score trade-off. I chose to not use this 'hack', and instead would make sure I didn't expend 'additional' cards past what was needed to cancel out (but overshooting by was fine as long as all of the cards were needed to cancel out the snippet)

I don't think the wording of how you win with two purpose suits was quite clear (but I only had one suit, so it didn't affect me).

I really enjoyed the journalling aspect, it made this game quite unique in LD. I've played "thousand year vampire" before, and I felt this gave me a similar vibe, to channel some creative energy in a directed way. I ended up being an author trapped in a cycle of publishing books that he didn't care about in order to get by... and driven by a mad urge for power. He learned how power was just as much about being smart and knowing your strengths as it was about brute force. He also learned that he was stronger with other people and they could be worked with or manipulated into his own benefit... which worked to great effect, although when all was said and done - was there anything more?

If I was going to provide some feedback on the journalling, I think I messed up a bit by basically rewriting the breakthoughs in my own words (through my own lens) in the journal, which was maybe a bit time consuming. I think I either should have just sucked it up and copy-pasted them (then focussed on my character's reaction to them). Or it might have been nice to have less-wordy versions of them, so I could flesh them out on my character's journey. I guess that wouldn't have given the same vibe though, because I enjoyed reading your 'influence' on my character's journey. Maybe it would be nice to have a suggestion on how you envisaged this working.

Interestingly, I seemed to get a breakthrough on almost every round, which didn't lead to my character struggling much. Perhaps the balance could be tweaked a bit to make the game a bit harder? I did like the breakthrough texts though, you did a nice job of twisting them around the theme of the different tracks (I especially liked the final club breakthrough, nice twist!)

Mechanically, I liked learning about the rules. They were fun, with a good balance between chance and strategy. I have never played "Shut the box", so I don't know what was original and what was a tweak. It was a simple hook that kept me thinking and planning ahead, without being too stressful. I recorded a mechanical log too which I'll post in a follow up comment because it doesn't fit in the character limit.

ciaranw 2026-05-03 20:34

Also one final comment, I used a d12 for the initial setup rolls, so that I wasn't biased to land in the middle of the roles - I guess it doesn't really matter for a single playthrough though.

Mechanical log (My purpose was clubs):

(rolled 2x 1s on my second throw, and the snippet didn't seem relevant anyway) (0)

(got a great balance hand, managed to get 2x clubs, 2xdiamonds and 2xspades in my 'solved' piles after discarding the final bits. Spades & Clubs drew win) (28)

(Fully comprehended. Hearts won.) (37*2 + 28 = 102)

(Fully comprehended. Used 2 insights. Clubs won) (51*2 + 102 = 204)

(reshuffle) (204 > 25)

(Used one insight, got a partial comprehension. Hearts won with 5 cards - 2 breakthroughs!) (42 + 204 = 246)

(wow... lucky! Fully comprehended with no insight. Clubs won. breakthrough) (44*2 + 246 = 334)

(Bit less lucky this time. Used 3 insights, but finished with an unsolved 9. Clubs won but I think thats all from my deck!) (27 + 334 = 361)

(Fully comprehended, one insight used, Diamonds won. Breakthough) (39*2 + 361 = 439)

(reshuffle) (439 > 100)

(I think I played this hand well, arranged my deck to only have an Ace left in the snippet, so I could remove a nine of hearts and make it so Clubs could win. Clubs won. Final Breakthrough, game won!) (24 + 439 = 463)

cataclysmicknight 2026-05-04 21:52

@vidarn I'm so glad to welcome you to the world of journaling games! And I love that you ended up crafting a good story, even if you didn't fulfill your goals. Thank you so, so much for such lovely words and compliments, they really mean a lot 🧡 Thanks so much so sharing about your gameplay!!! In the TTRPG world, there's a huge issue of people reading games, but never actually playing them 😅

cataclysmicknight 2026-05-04 21:56

@wendel-scardua OMG that's a nasty typo, thank you so much for pointing it out!!! Ugh lol that's the major part of the rules, too 😅😅😅😅😅 I went ahead and fixed it now, I'll just wait til the rating period ends to upload the file :D

If you're interested in journaling games, but want a shorter one, there are LOADS of them on Itch. I would be happy to recommend some if you're interested :D

As for not being in the graphics rating, we opt out each jam because we don't create the graphics ourselves. The rules when you enter a game say "Opt-out of categories here if you and your team didn't make all of your graphics, audio, or music during the event." I would love if there were a separate, like, "UI/layout" category because I've absolutely seen games that do a great job with their UI but didn't make their graphics, and I think that using other art in a way that looks good is a skill of its own too. But also, thank you for saying it's well-illustrated! That's all on Angel lol, it would've been a very plain PDF without her 😅

cataclysmicknight 2026-05-04 22:18

@ciaranw Yeah lol, we always approach our Ludum Dare creations as "okay, we need to use as few items as possible and make it SUPER easy to understand! Maybe a page of rules at most." And then we write 15-40 pages 😅 I assume a lot of people just read the rules and assume how the game will play, then rate that, but honestly a LOT of TTRPG creators do that to each other too... so it's not exactly unordinary 😅😅😅

Congrats on 463! I love that you got to feel the swing of luck like that. It's always one of the hardest things to aim for in anything tabletop: trying to hope for luck to influence the game, but then not make it feel less fun when luck goes too well or not well enough.

I LOVE the idea of "solved" cards. That whole section was overly wordy and repetitive due to not having a defined term, and I definitely agree that going back and defining them separately makes a lot more sense. I'll see what I can do for defining those next week, after the rating period ends.

YES!!! That hack with removing cards is absolutely intentional. It makes it a bit of a struggle to choose whether you want to go for a score or for your suit. Early in the game, it's probably best to maximize score (and also get more of the easier-to-grab Breakthroughs), but later on you may sacrifice score by playing "less well" so you'll fail to solve the entire Snippet, but score a lot of your suit. But if you play too badly, then you just lose all of the cards anyway 😅

I LOVE your story!!!!! That's absolutely perfect, honestly, and you went above and beyond on fleshing that out. Really fantastic work, that's kinda the best I can hope for from players tbh. 🧡

I never even considered how people would journal the Breakthroughs, that's a good point. In my head, it was like "I saw this thing, I'll write down the parts that pertain to my goals." But you're right: if you were truly experiencing all of this, you'd want to write it all down to reflect on later. I'll see what I can do about that. Honestly, that aspect was never playtested: when I journaled in playtesting, I BARELY wrote anything, I was just testing mechanics 😅😅

And yeah, I can see the current form being too easy. Honestly, my last playtest had like 4 more circles to finish the game, but I worried that would be too long (it's already too long as it is lol), so I cut it down by 1 circle for each Breakthrough.

What I plan to do, once the rating period ends, is go back through and playtest again to see if I can tighten up the length and difficulty. Then work on the few things you pointed out: defining cards that are still in the Snippet vs those that are removed; add a "gameplay hint" text block about sacrificing score to focus on your suit (to make it clearer that you can do that); figure out how to encourage people to journal their breakthroughs more easily; and then re-proofread everything again. I usually proofread what we do at least 3-4 more times than I did here, that's usually the biggest struggle point for Ludum Dare games lol is that we don't have enough time to polish up the writing. And since it's not a video game that handles rules on its own, the writing is vital.

Also, thank you so much for sharing your log, and also for all of the detailed feedback! It really means a lot, and helped so much! 🙌

allax 2026-05-05 08:42

Love it!

alexandr-gerya 2026-05-05 14:23

never played a journaling game before but this hooked me rules took a minute to click but once they did i couldnt stop rolling cards