❖ Version History ❖

January 1st, 2023 – January 1st 2024
Today’s post to the Librarium Games Design Journal is going to be a bit of a special occasion, because we are going to talk about a project that has already begun, a project that has not yet been finished at the time that this entry is being written, and one that still gets worked on every day for the whole of this year.

This post is not something that has happened in my journalling here before. I normally finish something completely before adding it to this catalog. But this situation is a bit unique by comparison to anything else that we have done thus far as well.

So, what is the Loretext Game? And what purpose does it serve? Well ~ from our perspective, this game is the harmonization of all things “Librarium Games” has to offer: it is a story that tells the mythological background of Phoenix Farm, and it is encrypted with an easy cipher, making the story impossible to read unless you take the time to unravel the secrets that we have hidden. In short, it is a small book that is a game! Here is an example of the first page of the first chapter:

For anyone who purchased a copy of our Celtic Card Game: Calendra, you will likely recognize this foreign font pretty quickly, as, this is the exact same text that was used in making the “Phoenix Farm Prophesy Card”.

Additionally, if you happen to be one of the special shoppers who grabbed a Librarium Games Velvet Spellbooks from our online store, you will have also been gifted some hints behind how to read the text up above.

Clearly, it had been our plan for a very very long time (all of 2022 in fact) to utilize this cipher in the creation of our future products. We wanted to do this as a way to draw in longer-term fans of our games. The Secret Librarium Loretext font helps to bridge the gap between our products, making it so that there is a harmony that develops between games which otherwise contain no similarities in theme or design in any other way.

Also! We wanted there to be a bit of a mythology about the idea of the “Librarium” itself. When we established the company in 2021, the name derived from the harmony of Library & Museum, and the purpose of our content from the very beginning was to create an interactive history & culture to our games alongside the gameplay. This “Lore Text” is one of many many fun ideas that we plan to utilize into the future to help expand upon that mythos (and it won’t be the only one).

…But how is the story behind Phoenix Farm going to work in this way? Well, here is the event schedule breakdown of our narrative, and what you can expect as we get into the months to come:

Phoenix Farm Loretext Historia Project:

The Phoenix Farm Lore Story is going to be released one page at a time on every Sunday of 2023. This means that there will be approximately 52 pages to the book (with a special release of the tenth chapter all at once on the first day of 2024). The narrative will be broken down into 10 short chapters of 4-8 pages each, and each chapter will feature one illustration about what is going on in the story!

Chapter Release Date Schedule:

Chapter 1 :: Memoir of the Firebird
January 1st – February 26th

Chapter 2 :: Tale of the Town
February 26th – March 26th

Chapter 3 :: The Family Business
March 26th – May 7th

Chapter 4 :: Forged From Fire
May 7th – June 25th

Chapter 5 :: Pressures of Parenthood
June 25th – August 6th

Chapter 6 :: Keeping the Flame Alive
August 6th – September 17th

Chapter 7 :: Tools of the Trade
September 17th – October 29th

Chapter 8 :: Transcendence
October 29th – November 26th

Chapter 9 :: Many Wonders of the Fireflies
November 26th – December 31st

Chapter 10 :: From Myth to Master
January 1st 2024

As of the writing of this post, there are already a few chapters that have been posted!

My favorite piece of this process is designing the illustrations for the story. They get to be as genuine, raw, and unedited as my art comes! The entire idea behind this project is that the narrative is hand written by the main character in the story, as, the whole story is going to be shown as if it came from photographs of his personal journal in the format of an autobiography. As a result, these are a few examples of the art:

It is our hope that this works out to be a fun experience for all of our fans as we take the time necessary this year to develop new product, expand on our sales, and prepare for the next release! It is a very long and very time consuming process to get a game all the way through the production pipeline. It requires months of development for the artwork, years of play testing, and countless hours of planning to make sure that everything goes okay in the end when we are finally ready to move forward.

While all of that work gets done in the background, we genuinely want to keep feeding our community with fun activities, and this is the kind of easy project for us that we hope to always be able to offer those who support us in the lag time between release dates!

If everything goes good and this story is well received, we definitely hope to one day release it as a physical production too! So, if you are a big fan of this project, please stay tuned for Phoenix Farm’s Crowdfunding release date sometime in the distant future! This will be our best opportunity to make a small production of these in a way that you can keep on the shelf alongside our other games!

For the time being though, I’ve got to get back to work! It is time to concentrate our effort toward assembling a rule book and a box design for Phoenix Farm, so stay tuned for more interesting updates in our production process! Till next time, my friends!