u/GameMasterDesign

Trying to reimagine one of my older fantasy decks

A few years ago I created a dark fantasy playing card project called “Angels & Demons”.

The idea behind it was that the deck existed in two separate color identities:

a darker corrupted edition and a lighter celestial counterpart.

Every card was designed around the contrast between light and darkness.

Even the mirrored top and bottom halves of the court cards were intentionally different — representing imbalance, duality, temptation, transformation, and the constant struggle between opposing forces.

Looking back now, I still love the raw atmosphere of the project… but I also feel the visual style is becoming outdated.

So now I’m thinking about rebuilding the entire deck from scratch in a more modern direction while keeping the original dark fantasy identity alive.

The problem is:

I honestly still don’t know what the new visual language should become.

More minimal?

More gothic?

Cleaner collector aesthetic?

Or something even darker and stranger?

Curious what direction people here would take with a remake like this.

Been experimenting with a darker Norse-inspired playing card concept lately.

I wanted this one to feel less like “historical Viking art” and more like an old mythological artifact mixed with dark fantasy aesthetics.

Still searching for the right balance between:

• clean playable faces
• detailed collector-style artwork
• and a back design that feels iconic without becoming too noisy.

Right now I’m testing two directions:
more ornate deck presentation vs cleaner character-focused cards.

Curious which direction people here respond to more in fantasy decks:
the overall deck atmosphere or the individual court card artwork?

I still can’t decide what I like more here

The actual Ace card…or the back design.

Originally the back was supposed to be much simpler, but while working on the Egyptian symbols and mirrored shapes we kept adding more and more details until it turned into this strange artifact-looking thing.

Now the deck almost feels like two different personalities: clean white engraved faces
and dark chaotic backs.

Curious what other people notice first when looking at a deck: the face cards or the backs?

Been experimenting with how more detailed, engraving-style artwork behaves during movement. One thing I didn’t expect while working on this deck was how much contrast, line density, and symmetry affect the visual flow during cuts and fans.

Some designs look great statically but completely fall apart in motion, while others almost come alive once they start moving. Still trying to figure out the balance between:

- readability
- atmosphere
- and clean visual motion.

Curious what kind of deck aesthetics you guys think work best for cardistry:

minimal / geometric, or more detailed illustrative styles?

Been experimenting with an Egyptian-inspired playing card project lately.

Trying to preserve as much of the original hand-drawn engraving texture as possible while still making the cards feel readable and playable in hand.

Curious what people here usually prefer:
raw illustration detail,
or cleaner simplified card layouts for gameplay?

Working on an Egypt-inspired deck and ended up exploring two slightly different directions.

One leans more minimal and graphic, the other goes deeper into detailed mythology and character design. Trying to understand what actually feels better in hand — not just visually, but as a playing experience.

Which direction would you personally pick?

Do you ever go too far with tracking randomness in games? I came across someone logging every roll and every result… and it made me wonder - at what point does it stop being part of the game, and become its own game? I’ve caught myself doing something similar, just in a different way - thinking about balance, patterns, even when designing cards. Curious where people draw the line:

do you just play… or do you start analyzing everything?

The version on the right was manually refined by hand as part of a neon reinterpretation of Rider-Waite. I’m curious whether this still reads as tarot to you, or more as a collectible art deck. Would you be more drawn to this as a reading deck, a collectible deck, or both?