Verso
PublishedCreator, developer, corpus writing
A desktop application for drawing cards: it runs on your machine, and nothing leaves it. The seventy-eight cards are those of the 1909 Rider edition, recoloured for a dark setting. Cutting and shuffling are not decoration: you decide where to cut and how many times to shuffle, and that determines which cards come out. Each card is written for the position it occupies, so the same card does not say the same thing in Situation and in If nothing changes. On every draw the software also states what came out, and gives the calculation behind it so you can redo it by hand. It predicts nothing and does not know you. The application itself is in French only.
What this project proves
Two editions published on itch.io · Windows · offline
Current state
Two editions on itch.io · Windows 10 or 11 · free edition available
Design stance
Context
The initial request was for Chinese tarot reading software. Research established that no such historical object exists: tarot is Italian, first documented in Florence in 1440, and the eight Chinese tarot decks published since 1989 all apply the Western skeleton to Chinese iconography, without exception. The product is therefore a classic 78-card tarot. The misconception is neither hidden nor claimed: it is avoided.
Constraints
Keeping interpretation indexed on position, not only on the card: every card is written for every position it can occupy, and every description was checked against its own image, one by one. Making the journal genuinely the user's own: a reading reopened six months later returns exactly as it was, and correcting a text does not rewrite what had been read. And sourcing the iconography away from commercial scans, which carry publisher rights the public domain does not cover.
Results and lessons
Two editions published on itch.io. The free edition is complete and costs nothing. The practitioner edition adds writing your own meanings on the cards, designing your own spreads, and recording a reading made with your paper deck; it activates inside the application, with nothing to reinstall, and closes none of the above.
Tech stack
Features
- ▸Cutting and shuffling decide which cards come out
- ▸Every card written for the position it occupies
- ▸A statement on the whole draw, with its calculation
- ▸A card of the day, its sentence, and your previous draws of it
- ▸A plain-text journal on your disk that nothing takes back
- ▸Offline, no account, no ads, no subscription
Production note
Every design decision lives in a single document, D1 through D333, each with its date and its reason. The repository rule is that you do not code against a decision without reopening it in that document first. That document is why the phosphor halo was halved, and why one journal token does not yet have its final value.