❖ Version History ❖

May 13th, 2022
As always with the Librarium Games Design Journal, we have some interesting gaps in the timeline. It has been nearly six entire months since our previous post for Phoenix Farm.

During all that time, we had been putting the important finishing touches on Calendra for its publication debut. A full graphical redesign had happened, and almost all of the negotiating about manufacturing had taken place as well. During that negotiating process however, there was one very critical magical moment that featured Phoenix Farm…

With the design layout of the card stock for Calendra in the Manufacturing sheets, there were five unused slots. We of course had no need for five more cards, but before I sent my confirmation to begin printing, I had the exciting idea to hide an advertisement for Phoenix Farm. Here’s the story behind what we decided to do:

The Librarium Games Prophesy Card:

By the time that Calendra is coming through the production pipeline, we are fairly certain that our next publication objective is to get Phoenix Farm created.

Additionally, we have already begun the process of putting encrypted hints about our company into the layout of the website by adding this to our sketchbook products.

Now, the next big move is to start fleshing out the importance of this encrypted puzzle. To do this, we want to implement it into an advertisement card… but there are some obstacles here too. We don’t want to make the card completely unsolvable for those who get it in the Calendra Box, but we also don’t want to give away more hints than the sketchbook product provides when someone purchases one of those as well.

As a result…
We decide to make it so that one side of the promotional card is a hint at our sketchbook product: highlighting the the book & the key visually, alongside a singular hint letter. The reverse side of the card is going to be a short nursery style rhyme about Phoenix Farm, as a cute little hint about the strategy to win.

The Letter hint side of the card is the image featured at the top of this post, and the encrypted nursery rhyme came out like this:

~:: Spoiler Alert in the Next Paragraph ::~

Direct Translation of the Card:

Librarium Prophesy

Visions of a village
High upon the hill
Soil rich with ashes
Of fire feathered will

Tend these fields aflame
To get the gilded feather

But.

Foster family over fame
To realize fortune forever

The card is simple.

Our goal was to make this a fun and easy puzzle for people to solve, with the hope of expanding upon this idea later. The purpose of the message is to give people the heads up that winning Phoenix Farm is not only about greedily hunting for gold, but also making sure to keep your family of phoenixes healthy in order to win.

While this doesn’t give a ton of insight into the game or the gameplay, it is a genuine truth about the core of the game play that we are certain will never change about it (specifically because at this point in time we still only have hand-drawn prototypes of the game).

This is still only a very tiny step forward for progress on Phoenix Farm, but this is the first piece of a very big and important project that will come later on down the line.