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Divinuet: a musical tarot reading game

Divinuet: a musical tarot reading game

Divinuet: a musical tarot reading game

Divinuet: a musical tarot reading game

Divinuet: a musical tarot reading game

An interactive experience for PC and Mac that generates unique music based on tarot readings.

An interactive experience for PC and Mac that generates unique music based on tarot readings.

An interactive experience for PC and Mac that generates unique music based on tarot readings.

An interactive experience for PC and Mac that generates unique music based on tarot readings.

Megan Carnes
Megan Carnes
Megan Carnes
Megan Carnes
1 Campaign |
Los Angeles, United States
$4,281 USD by 170 backers
$3,952 USD by 152 backers on Nov 8, 2019

We reached our initial goal! Now it's stretch goal time!

$3000- I'll hire sound designer M Gewehr to make some sound effects. These will really bring the game to life!

$3750- extra programming help. Being able to hire someone (possibly prototype programmer Sol Lutze or possibly someone else, depending on Sol's schedule) to do some of the programming will mean the game can get released faster!

 

This campaign replaces the Kickstarter I launched in September and then canceled a few days later due to their union-busting practices. If any of the videos or anything mention Kickstarter, they actually mean Indiegogo!

 

Hi, I'm Megan, and I'm a composer and indie game developer. I'm making a musical tarot reading game called Divinuet, in which the unique combination of cards in your reading generates unique music.

 

You might know me from my other interactive music game, inter-view, which I successfully funded on that other crowdfunding site a few years ago. Once I released it, it got a lot more downloads than I was expecting and even ended up getting featured in the itch.io recommends blog! I had only wanted to make inter-view as a way to show potential game developer clients that I knew how to make interactive music for video games. Instead, I ended up discovering a passion for making my own games.

 

It's inter-view!

 

Right after I released inter-view, I knew I wanted to make another game, one with a more complex interactive music system. Tarot reading is something I love to do. The card art is so beautiful, and I love all the symbolism and meanings behind the cards. I'd been knocking around the idea of making some kind of tarot album for awhile. So I figured why not take that idea and make it interactive? Thus, Divinuet was born.

 

(Side note: the title is a combination of the words "divination" and "minuet." Our sound  designer M Gewehr came up with it, so props to them for being ridiculously clever!)

 

How Divinuet will work

Divinuet will be available on both PC and Mac via Steam and itch.io. I am going to try to explain how the game works best as I can, but I would definitely recommend either downloading and playing the prototype at the link below or watching the playthrough video below.

 

Divinuet has two phases: a reading phase and a generative phase. If you've ever done a tarot reading, or had someone do one for you, you'll have a basic idea of what the reading phase is like. You'll start by shuffling the cards, then the cards will be dealt, and each card will have its meaning revealed. Since music is the main focus of the game, there will be music playing throughout this. Most notably, I will be writing a little theme for each of the 78 tarot cards. Those will play when the card meanings are being displayed.

 

You can listen to some of the tracks I wrote for specific cards here (all cups, because cups are often about creativity, so it feels right to include them).

 

That's cool and all, but the second phase is where we get into the really fun stuff. Once you exit the reading phase and go into the generative phase, Divinuet will generate some music and art for you based on your unique combination of cards. Using magic! And/or math! The order of the cards even matters, so the music and art for a Fool, Magician, Priestess reading will be different from the music and art for a Magician, Priestess, Fool reading.

 

I plan on making two game modes. One will do the reading for you. The other will let you manually choose which cards you want. With the second option, you can do a reading with physical cards and then plug in your results to see what sort of music they'd make, or you can just play around and listen to the music for specific cards that you want to hear.

 

Try it out

 

Since experiencing the game is a million times more valuable than just reading my attempts at explaining it, I've made a prototype for you! When you're playing it, just keep in mind that the full game will be a full-on experience, whereas the prototype is more of a "hey, let me show you the basic functionality of this game" type thing.

 

You can download the prototype (for free, of course) via DropBox or itch.io. There's both a Mac and a PC version. Download the ZIP file of the version you need. The Mac version will have an app file, and the PC version will have an exe file. Feel free to email me (megan@megancarnesmusic.com) if you have any problems getting it to run!

 

If you'd prefer not to download anything, here's a playthrough video of the prototype. To skip the instructions and just see gameplay, skip to 1:17 in the video.

 

 

How your contribution will help

 

The majority of the budget will go towards the production of the game, including (but not limited to) programming, art, and hiring instrumentalists to play some of the music parts. If we meet our initial goal, I will add some stretch goals to hire a sound designer, writer, and maybe even more people to help out! Other costs will include marketing costs such as website costs and application fees for indie game conventions and such, taxes, Indiegogo fees, and miscellaneous costs like Steam fees.

Very professional budget chart

 

Rewards

 

The rewards are listed on the right (click each one for more details on what's included), but I want to go more in depth about some of the less self-explanatory ones.

 

Digital copy of the game: Divinuet will be available for PC and Mac. You can choose to get either a Steam key or an itch.io key.

 

Digital copy of the OST: You'll get a Bandcamp download code for the Divinuet original soundtrack. The soundtrack won't contain all the music from the game, because that'd be a TON of music for one album. Instead, it will have a selection of music from the game, including extended editions of some of the card themes. If you want all the music from the game, the $50 tier (and above) will get you that.

 

Music files: You'll get every music file used in the game and a creative commons non-commercial attribution license to use them. What does that mean? It means you're free to use them for your non-commercial projects as long as you credit me. So remix away! (If you want to use them for a commercial project, contact me and we'll work something out).

 

Choose artwork color: while the generative music is playing, there's also going to be some artwork happening. The color of some of that art will be determined by the cards. You'll get to pick one of those colors, so you can choose to associate your favorite color with your favorite card or something along those lines.

 

There's hardly any artwork yet, but I feel like I should have something arty here, so here's something I'm having my artist use as a reference for the generative art phase.

 

Choose soundtrack track: As mentioned above, the soundtrack will have some extended versions of some of the card themes. You'll get to choose one of the themes for me to do an extended version of.

 

Custom music: I'll write instrumental music in the style of your choice! Want a mighty fanfare for when you enter a room? Relaxing music to paint to? Horror music to play when your cat is stalking a bug? You got it! You'll get 30 seconds, 1 minute, or 2 minutes of music depending on which tier you choose. You'll also get a license to use your custom music in whatever way you'd like, including using it in commercial/for-profit projects. Here and here are some demos of theme songs I've written for people in the past!

 

Custom musical tarot reading: I will do a custom Divinuet style musical tarot reading for you. You can either choose 3 cards you like or I'll do a 3 card reading for you, then I'll write new custom music in the style of your choice for your combination of cards. This will include both the 35-45 second music pieces for each card and a longer piece based on the combination of them (similar to the generative music section of the game). I'll send you all the songs, and if you choose to have me pick the cards, and explanation of what your reading means.

 

You can also get a sticker as an add-on item when you pledge at any tier! It looks like this:

 

 

The team

 

Core team:

 

Megan Carnes- game designer, producer, composer, additional programming

 

Solomon Lutze- programmer

 

Noé Charron- artist

 

The tarot art and many of the assets used for promo art are from the Pixel Tarot Deck asset package by Sarah Seekins.

 

Stretch goal team:

 

M Gewehr- sound designer

 

Other Ways You Can Help

 

If you can't back Divinuet, that's okay! If you'd like to help out in a different way, sharing the campaign (especially with people who are into tarot reading, music, and/or indie games) helps a ton. You can also follow @divinuetgame  on Twitter to stay up to date on the game's progress.

 

Thanks a ton!

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