Welcome to the Habitrails
"Welcome to the Habitrails” is scratched into your living room wall. You didn’t write it. You’ve never thought to clean it off, either. It was here before you.
You arrived here a few days ago. You don’t remember how. The neighborhood is a simulacrum of a community. All the houses look the same, or close. All the houses look wrong. All the houses are broken.
Welcome to the Habitrails is a one-player, tarot-driven journaling game. It is a surreal horror game about self-examination and surviving in a place that is hostile, ever-changing, yet uncomfortably familiar. It is heavily inspired by the ongoing pandemic and deals with themes of isolation, paranoia, grief, and mental illness.
Welcome to the Habitrails uses a minimalistic system inspired by games like Anamnesis and the Wretched & Alone SRD. There are no stats or character sheets, just you, a deck of cards, some prompts, and some questions.
If you are unable to pay for this game for any reason, you are welcome to download the TXT version for free or claim a community copy. More community copies will be added in the future.
The font used for the title is HC Gleam by Mitch Proctor
Physical Zines Available Now:
Physical zines are available now from Knave of Cups!
Official Playlist:
If you play the game and are interested in some music to get you in the right headspace, I've curated a playlist of ambient and vaguely unsettling vibes to help immerse you in the world of the game.
Purchase
In order to download this Solo Tarot Game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $5 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Community copies
Support this Solo Tarot Game at or above a special price point to receive something exclusive.
Community Copies
If you can't pay for this game for any reason, feel free to take a community copy. More community copies will be added regularly. To find out when new community copies are added, follow me on Twitter.
Download demo
Comments
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Welcome to the Habitrails tarot based game about living in a strange neighborhood. Everything is provided for you, food, shelter, neighbors, but something here isn’t quite right and you can’t seem to remember how you got here and you don’t know how to leave.
You start by creating a character by answering some questions about yourself and how you feel about the neighborhood. Then you move onto the prompts for the days.
Each day you pull 2 tarot cards, answer one and discard the other. For each suit the 10-Ace are Royal Cards, i.e. major plot elements. You can still choose to discard these cards, but you may never fully resolve the plotline.
This game has some of the most clear instructions I’ve seen in a game. It tells you what to expect for Royal Cards, what happens if you decide not to play them and some general ideas on how to write out the events in prompts. It also includes how long a typical session is and how many hours you can expect to be playing.
My game was pretty short since I pulled most of the royal cards for the Pentacles in a row, so I mostly wrote about finding a strange vehicle and repairing it. But there was also a very good large dog. You can find my playthrough Here
I did a super quick flip through of the physical edition last week on my Twitch channel. Can't wait to give this a closer look.