#card game
Commission for Eveden Card Game
Page FB Eveden https://facebook.com/Eveden.Cards
Page FB SheRio & Co www.facebook.com/SheRio-Co-101…
I discovered this new game: We’re not really strangers. Have you played? It’s basically the Truth part in Truth or Dare, in cards. It’s meant to be a “purpose driven” game that helps you break ice and get to know other people beyond the surface. It’s silly to think that we need a game to facilitate deep discussions, but this is just where we are right now. I’m not going to be one of those people who forgo things because “in principle” it shouldn’t even exist. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how you start, as long as you able to reach your objective. What’s important is the conversations you are able to have. Plus, social interaction is becoming less and less intuitive, and do we expect to just drop interactions all together? Do you not have a conversation with someone simply because they don’t speak the same language? Anyway. The game has questions on cards, from “How are you, really?” to “What’s the most pain you felt that wasn’t physical?” It helps you push boundaries, dares you to be brave, and even provides you blank note paper so that you can write secrets, confessions, to “dig deeper.”
I came across the game with that last question, “What’s the most pain you felt that wasn’t physical?” And I contemplated a long time: have I even experienced pain? Other than for professional or work-related purposes, I haven’t thought a question for that long, racking my brain for experiences, figuring out how I would find a suitable answer. And it’s likely that I don’t have a good answer, because in my mind, there is nothing more painful than loss. I think losing something you can never have back can be extremely painful, and I don’t know if I remember feeling that. I know that your brain tends to purposely block out painful experiences, so I couldn’t recall anything acute. I remember saying once, when I broke up with a boyfriend, that it felt like a deep physical cut in the upper left part of my abdomen, but I couldn’t remember howthat felt, except that it hurt a lot. The things I do distinctly remember and perhaps can still feel though, are the droning hums of ache, nothing “painful” per se, but achy and unable to pinpoint. All things that happened when I was younger: Feeling unwanted in a given context, wondering why I couldn’t love myself, feeling invisible, feeling misunderstood, grief, etc. Our lives as we live it aren’t always punctuated by tragedy, but most of us still go through important, defining, hurting moments. It made me think, how lucky I am, to not have to deal with change so suddenly. But maybe that’s not the way that we should think about pain. It isn’t as clear-cut as choosing between a second of intense pain vs. a minute of ache. Maybe the most dangerous pain is the kind in which you don’t know where it begins and ends.
The entire thought process made me wonder if we should each play the game alone, and confront ourselves with these difficult questions that often times we don’t even dare ask ourselves. Maybe I should get this game.
Happy Monday.
Edit// I think I came up with an answer.
My new Kickstarter is live! Check it out and spread the word:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/winterwolves/the-curse-of-mantras
FASHION IN ART
Hearts are Trumps - Detail (1872) by John Everett Millais
Tate Britain, London
Going through some old boxes, I found the mock-up of the card game I designed as my college degree project. It’s a game about Dreams, so it’s called simply “Sueños”
It was a graphic design project and sort of thesis at the same time, so it also involved research into new aesthetics in fantasy art (back then, around 2004) and its impact on various media.
That’s why it features a lot of digital collage and some art trends from the late 90’s going into mid 00s, particularly more than a pinch of influence from artist Dave McKean.
It had a fancy cardboard clock (sadly missed), to show the time progression of the “night” during the game occurs in.
The game has two types of cards overall, the first one is “Dreams”, divided in four kinds: Fears and traumas, Visions, Daily debris (I’m quick translating here) and Archetypes.
All of which come from different traditions or interpretation of the act of dreaming in culture: archetypes, for instance, come from Jungian theories, while “visions” were more in line with traditional magical thinking.
The second type of card was called “Laws”, and had several authors that deal with dreams in their work, writers and thinkers. Those are the cards with the yellow page.
WhileDreams were played in a simple way, similar to some traditional cards games, Lawcards permuted some rules. It was a rules light game, after all.
As a curiosity, one of the authors featured in the Law cards is @neil-gaiman, specifically due to The Sandman, which was of course a big influence for the project. He was featured in the company of Goya, Borges and Shakespeare, which I believe would please him.
It’s a lovely, pretty much complete game model, living in my old boxes. I have good memories of working on this project, and over the years I’ve even seen some similar ideas around (as it happens with all ideas in time).