May 2, 2025 • 14 mins
Tarot Interviews proudly brings you a bonus episode about Mama Nyah's House of Tarot with creator Devin Reid, who has crafted a magical combination of New Orleans mysticism and nostalgic gaming.
Unlike tarot apps that display card definitions, Mama Nyah creates personal readings where your intention shapes every interpretation. The cards aren't randomly generated, they're shuffled and laid face down, preserving the experience of a real tarot reading. When Mama Nyah speaks, she weaves together all three cards of your past-present-future spread into a cohesive tapestry of meaning, just as a reader would do in person.
The game's pixelated aesthetic pays homage to the Windows 95 era, with careful adaptations of Rider-Waite symbolism that maintain the cards' essential meanings despite the constraints of pixel art. What truly sets this project apart is it is soulborn from Reid's immersion in New Orleans culture, where tarot readers line the streets and witches are valued community members rather than outsiders. As Reid explains, "New Orleans has historically been a haven for those who didn't fit the strict religious norms of the American South," creating perfect conditions for magical practices to flourish.
Whether you're a tarot enthusiast, a gaming nostalgist, or simply curious about this unique blend of technology and spirituality, Mama Nyah's House of Tarot offers something different. Look for it on Steam, and perhaps enjoy it with a traditional New Orleans Sazerac in hand for the full experience!
Get Mama Nyah's House of Tarot from Steam here
Tarot Interviews credits
- Host and producer: Finbarre Snarey
- Theme music composer: Amelia Lawn
- Additional music: Nicola Snarey
- Cover art: Rein G
If you enjoy Tarot Interviews, you may also like Tarot DMs by Finbarre Snarey. a companion series where guests chat entirely by messenger apps and draw three cards to shape the conversation.
If you're curious about the cards we use and want to find out more, visit our Tarot Interviews podcast page
Disclaimer:
The Tarot Interviews podcast is intended for entertainment purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by the hosts and guests are their own and do not constitute professional, legal, financial, medical, or psychological advice. Listeners are encouraged to seek guidance from qualified professionals where appropriate.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Fin (00:05):
This bonus episode of Tarot Interviews came about as
unexpected fortune allowed me tointerview Devin Reed about a
new tarot card based computergame he's been working on.
Devin Reid (00:16):
The game is called Mama Naya's House of Tarot and
it's a digital tarot cardreading app inspired by New
Orleans and old school computergames.
Unlike other digital tarot cardapps, the readings are personal
and no two readings are everthe same.
You know, we had a lot of funbringing Mama Naya to life, so
we're excited to share this withthe community.
Fin (00:37):
So I was desperately curious what was the main
inspiration behind Mama Naya?
Was it a family member, someoneyou know?
Devin Reid (00:43):
So I live in New Orleans and I moved here about
two years ago.
You know New Orleans has a richhistory that blends cultures
from all over the earth, butit's also like a huge I don't
know if you've ever been here,but it is a huge center for
magic and witchcraft and tarot.
It's literally all over thecity.
Mamma Naya was basically justinspired by all of the witches
(01:03):
in town and all of the tarotreaders that are just litter the
streets in the French Quarter.
They have like card tables setup just doing readings
everywhere in the city.
If they don't have their ownbrick and mortar location,
there's just all over thestreets doing readings
everywhere.
Also, that means that, like,the witches live among us as New
Orleanians, if that makes sense, and so they're not just like
(01:24):
these estranged group ofcounterculture people.
They are our neighbors.
We wanted to create a witchy,multicultural woman who was
raised in the South, who waspart of the community.
So the game takes place insideof Mama Naya's house, which is
like a New Orleans style house,which it's like very common for
people to have businesses intheir home.
(01:45):
We kind of just created herbased on being inspired by the
city.
Fin (01:49):
I guess I do like that idea .
I like the idea, as you say, ofthat kind of um you're walking
down the road and somebody beingable to offer you a tarot
reading.
That's not something I've everexperienced in the uk it's very.
Devin Reid (02:00):
I've only seen it in new Orleans.
Fin (02:02):
Is it something in the water, something in the ley
lines?
What is it that causes that?
Devin Reid (02:06):
energy.
But I think culturally in theUS, in the American South, for a
long time, historically, newOrleans was a place for all of
the people who didn't reallybelong in the strict rules of
Christianity of the South.
For a long time it's been aplace for people that were
multi-ethnic or people that weregay or people that were pagan,
(02:28):
and so I think that you justhave had so many people for so
many years here.
You know, being in thiscommunity, that it's also like.
Also, the city is like verymagical itself.
You know there's a lot of likefantasy lore here.
There's a lot of ghost lorehere.
It's kind of a, you know, atnighttime it's kind of a spooky
city, so there's a lot of.
There's a lot of ghost lorehere.
It's kind of a, you know, atnight time it's kind of a spooky
(02:48):
city, so there's a lot ofthere's a lot of energy here,
you know.
Fin (02:50):
Ah, it sounds like a wonderful place I'd dearly like
to visit.
Okay, so back to the game.
First of all, I need to askabout the art style.
Now I'm of a certain age whereto me, it's not quite as old
school as it may be.
Um, it looks yeah, yeah, sure,sure it looks like um a sierra
online game or a lupus arts gameI'm glad that you understand
this.
Devin Reid (03:09):
This is great.
Yeah, it's uh, the it wasdesigned to be like.
When I say old school computerera, I mean like old school,
like when I was growing up.
Um, I'm a millennial, so oldschool to me would be like the
era of, like, the windows 95,the windows 97 era not really
before that, there's a wholeslew of games that existed
(03:29):
before that but like, even likethe 2000s era of games.
I wanted to make something inthat art style and we started
doing prototypes and, um, youknow, we had a some market
research and, well, we alsowanted to make something that
was kind of stood out from othertarot card apps that were out
there yeah, I mean looking atthe, uh, the art design,
obviously it seems to be riderwaite smith, but with a twist.
Fin (03:51):
How have you evolved, that's?
Devin Reid (03:53):
that's a great question.
That's a great question, yeah,so I wanted to make we worked
with an artist to do the cards,uh, the art for all the cards.
I wanted to make sure that wewere using a tarot deck that was
familiar to people, so we chosethe Rider Waite deck instead of
, like, a more esoteric deck.
The cards are almost they'renot exactly exact translations,
(04:14):
but they're kind of like pixelart translations of the Rider
Waite.
You know, we wanted the artistto have freedom, but we also
wanted to keep as much of theRider Waite symbolism as
possible.
Fin (04:24):
I see Out of interest, which was the most challenging
card to transfer into a kind ofdigital medium like this.
Devin Reid (04:31):
When you're making pixel art you only have, like,
so many physical pixels to workwith, so you have to like,
condense things.
And so cards like the Wheel ofFortune that have a lot of like
symbols, like tiny symbols andwords on them and stuff those
cards when you're trying tocondense them, are more
difficult than like the like.
The ace of cups is just a.
It's basically a cup of watercoming out.
Fin (04:52):
It's not as detailed as some of the other cards I
actually, uh, in a an interviewtwo days ago, we pulled out the
wheel of fortune and I've neversat and looked at it for any
length of time.
It's a card that very rarelycomes up for me and it's really
weird.
I mean, you've got things.
Yeah, it's a very strange card.
I mean, normally you'd justassociate it with the wheel
itself, but, as you say, all ofthe motifs like the snake around
(05:14):
it.
In fact I have it just here fromthe last reading that I had and
yeah, so you've got your littlesphinx on the top there, you've
got this snake-like serpentthing, obviously showing the
difference between sort ofheaven and hell and the
punishment and the blessingsthat could be bestowed upon you.
But this thing's like there's agoat with wings at the bottom
(05:37):
here and it's bizarre wings atthe bottom here and, yeah, it's
bizarre.
So, yeah, so I was looking atthat and thinking if I was to
sit down and, you know, in thestyle of monkey island, try and
reinterpret that that's.
That's going to be a big ask.
Approximately how long did thewhole project take?
Devin Reid (05:51):
that's a great question.
Um, it took us about six monthsto do do everything from start
to finish, so it's pretty fastas far as a production cycle
goes and um but we have a lot oflike.
Fin (06:02):
We have a lot of updates and stuff we want to add, but we
wanted to get it to a polishedpoint where we could share it
with people and then kind of addon to it okay, and if I was to
uh go into steam and I've putout my, my hard-earned pennies
and I'm loading up your game, oruh, it's, it seems, halfway
between a game and then a kindof like art installation halfway
(06:23):
between that and a kind of, uh,your personal journey, it's
what?
Yeah, yeah, how would youdescribe it?
What is it?
Devin Reid (06:32):
um, yeah, I'd say um .
You've described it very welljust there.
It is a personal journey.
It is a, it is a tool that youcan use like a tarot deck to
help you, um, do insightfulreadings that you can do for
your own solo readings withouthaving to like do it yourself,
if that makes sense.
(06:52):
And so it is kind of a gamebecause it's interactive.
It's if you were, you know,it's kind of almost like the way
a visual novel is a game onsteam, um, but it's much more
like personal than that.
Like a visual novel is like astory that someone's telling and
this is a thing that you aredirectly interacting with and it
is about you as a person, whichis kind of unique in the game
(07:12):
space in general, as it beingabout you, not like a character
that you're role playing.
Fin (07:17):
Okay, there's a in-person game that I've seen called Wreck
this Deck, where what you do isyou get a.
I think it's marketed as aTTRPG, I'm not sure.
Basically, you download a PDFand you get a deck of playing
cards.
It's a way of customizing adeck, defacing a deck as part of
(07:38):
a game.
It has this huge communityaround it.
Are you going to be?
It's building community aroundthis guy.
Devin Reid (07:45):
Yeah, yeah, for sure , you know we've been.
I just finished making it.
So now I'm like, oh, I shouldstart marching this thing.
Yeah, I should have done thisearlier.
But yeah, I would love to dothat.
You know it's funny.
You mentioned the in-persongame.
We were pretty inspired,actually for the whole project
at the beginning, by those oldlike carnival or arcade machines
(08:06):
with the animatronics, whereyou like put in a input and then
it, like spit, gives you like acard and then, like the person
like talks to you like thezoltar machines, you know.
And so we originally we weretrying to figure out a way to
make a physical cabinet that youcould put at a bar, that, like,
people could get a tarotreading from, and so we were
like, well, let's make thesoftware first.
(08:28):
And so we're still not done,we're still working.
On the other part, it'd bereally cool to have little
cabinets at bars people couldget a reading yeah, so you've
already got my brain whirring onthat.
Fin (08:36):
I mean, would you use something like a, a raspberry pi
, in there to drive it um?
Devin Reid (08:40):
yeah, definitely, it's definitely, that's probably
what I would, that's probablywhat we would start with, at
least.
I mean, that's, that's the mostaccessible thing.
I mean it depends on, like Ithink, at the beginning we would
definitely use Raspberry Pi,something like that, a little
microcomputer program,everything in Python.
Fin (08:55):
And in terms of playing the game, I'm sat there and, as I
say, I've loaded this up.
What kind of?
Just talk to me about the kindof the experience I would get
from it.
So would I be doing single cardpulls?
Cool, yeah, how would?
Devin Reid (09:08):
it work right now.
Right now it is like limited inthat way, because it is a very
like a little capsulatedexperience and we're out, we
weren't, we're playing on.
We have like a roadmap forexpanding to other things.
But right now, you know, thegame starts and the music plays.
And the music is very likeimmersive and creepy, and you
and the first thing you see isMama Naya's house and it's like
(09:29):
nighttime in New Orleans and thewind's blowing.
Then you like enter the houseto start the reading.
So it's a three card call past,present, future just simple.
At the beginning you choose aintention and then, after you
choose an intention, you choose,you pick your three cards from
a spread.
What I really like about thatis that the way that we did it
(09:49):
was very true to tarot.
So it's not like there was twoways we could have done that in
the backend.
We could have had the spread be.
Every time you click a card, itjust randomly generates a tarot
card, or what I did was kind oftook it the step further to make
it more realistic.
I basically shuffled the cardbefore the scene starts and then
there, when they're spread out,they're literally just upside
(10:12):
down.
So you are literally choosingthe right one, Like you would in
an actual tarot reading,instead of it just being
generated behind the scenes.
So it's like just shuffled, butthen when it's spread out, all
of the cards are what they areunderneath, which is a very cool
feature.
Then after that, you just gothrough each card.
At first, mama Naya gives you anintroduction to the full
(10:34):
reading and then she gives you amore in-depth reading for your
past, your present and yourfuture card and then she gives
you a summary based on all threeof them together.
We looked at a lot of the otherterror apps that are out there
and we couldn't really findanything that was like giving
people actual cohesive readings.
Almost all of them were justbasically, you would, you would
pull, you would pull three cardsand then it would just show you
(10:56):
the like encyclopedia page foreach card and kind of leave you
to your own interpretation.
But mom and I like takeseverything into account and she
talks in her own voice and shelike has like a deep hospitality
and like she's talking to youinstead of you just reading like
a, like an article, if thatmakes sense.
Fin (11:15):
I see.
So it sounds like the otherapps or software platforms.
It's almost like pictures on aquilt, whereas what you're
creating here is more of atapestry.
Is that right?
Devin Reid (11:24):
Yeah, that's a good way to put it exactly because,
like, if mom and I takes intoaccount your other cards when
she's doing the readings, alsoyour intention, which I've never
seen anybody, uh, doing evenjust that.
I've seen people like set anintention, but then it just says
what the thing is at the top,but every single one of your
readings is like so if youchoose, like your romantic life
as one of the intentions, and ifyou choose that all the
(11:46):
readings for all the cards aregoing to be about your romantic
life instead of just being, like, showing you the definition of
the card and you because, like,the idea is that she's doing the
interpretation to help you,because she's the tarot reader.
Fin (11:59):
I love this idea.
I mean, I am possibly yourtarget market.
I am a software first geek.
I have been reading tarot cards, I think, for about 30 years
now, and I love this idea.
Can you remind me when is duefor release?
When's it going to drop?
Devin Reid (12:14):
I would say because I think we're running into some
problems with Valve.
I would say probably by the endof the month it could be live
on Wednesday or it might takeanother week for us to resolve
some things on the back end withthem.
Fin (12:28):
Super.
And my last question for you isbecause I'd like to kind of
really enjoy, immerse myself inthat kind of New Orleans
experience.
If I was to sit playing this orinteracting with it, what
should I be drinking?
What's a good New Orleans drinkfor me to drink in my hand?
Devin Reid (12:43):
Very, very, very good question.
I love that.
I'm a really big cocktail guyalso, so I really appreciate
this question.
Um well, my first, my firstthought would be you know, a cup
of warm tea, because that'slike the first thing I would
think of with tara.
Let's see new orleans drink.
Oh, I know what you would have,uh, if a very new orleans
(13:03):
cocktail that I would drink andretail with would be a, which is
a, um, classic cocktail with abasically, uh, it's basically a
rye whiskey.
That is almost straight andthey keep talking, basically
they, they rinse the glass withad, they rinse the glass with
absinthe.
Uh, it's, it's.
They had a tiny bit of sugar, soit's almost like an
old-fashioned, but it's got gotsome like effervescentness to it
(13:26):
and it's also a, uh, veryhistorical drink in the city
also sounds like it's going tobe lethal if you have more than
one yeah, yeah, but it's verygood and it's, it's, uh, it's
made with sazerac rye, which isa rye that's made in new orleans
, so that's, that's the drinkthat I would have, uh, if I was
at mama naya's house that's aDevin Reed.
Fin (13:47):
Thank you so much for joining me today.
Devin Reid (13:49):
Yeah it was great talking to you.
Fin (13:50):
I'm looking forward very much to playing Mama Naya's
house on Steam when it'sreleased.
This bonus episode of Tarot Interviews came about as
unexpected fortune allowed me tointerview Devin Reed about a
new tarot card based computergame he's been working on.
Devin Reid (00:16):
The game is called Mama Naya's House of Tarot and
it's a digital tarot cardreading app inspired by New
Orleans and old school computergames.
Unlike other digital tarot cardapps, the readings are personal
and no two readings are everthe same.
You know, we had a lot of funbringing Mama Naya to life, so
we're excited to share this withthe community.
Fin (00:37):
So I was desperately curious what was the main
inspiration behind Mama Naya?
Was it a family member, someoneyou know?
Devin Reid (00:43):
So I live in New Orleans and I moved here about
two years ago.
You know New Orleans has a richhistory that blends cultures
from all over the earth, butit's also like a huge I don't
know if you've ever been here,but it is a huge center for
magic and witchcraft and tarot.
It's literally all over thecity.
Mamma Naya was basically justinspired by all of the witches
(01:03):
in town and all of the tarotreaders that are just litter the
streets in the French Quarter.
They have like card tables setup just doing readings
everywhere in the city.
If they don't have their ownbrick and mortar location,
there's just all over thestreets doing readings
everywhere.
Also, that means that, like,the witches live among us as New
Orleanians, if that makes sense, and so they're not just like
(01:24):
these estranged group ofcounterculture people.
They are our neighbors.
We wanted to create a witchy,multicultural woman who was
raised in the South, who waspart of the community.
So the game takes place insideof Mama Naya's house, which is
like a New Orleans style house,which it's like very common for
people to have businesses intheir home.
(01:45):
We kind of just created herbased on being inspired by the
city.
Fin (01:49):
I guess I do like that idea .
I like the idea, as you say, ofthat kind of um you're walking
down the road and somebody beingable to offer you a tarot
reading.
That's not something I've everexperienced in the uk it's very.
Devin Reid (02:00):
I've only seen it in new Orleans.
Fin (02:02):
Is it something in the water, something in the ley
lines?
What is it that causes that?
Devin Reid (02:06):
energy.
But I think culturally in theUS, in the American South, for a
long time, historically, newOrleans was a place for all of
the people who didn't reallybelong in the strict rules of
Christianity of the South.
For a long time it's been aplace for people that were
multi-ethnic or people that weregay or people that were pagan,
(02:28):
and so I think that you justhave had so many people for so
many years here.
You know, being in thiscommunity, that it's also like.
Also, the city is like verymagical itself.
You know there's a lot of likefantasy lore here.
There's a lot of ghost lorehere.
It's kind of a, you know, atnighttime it's kind of a spooky
city, so there's a lot of.
There's a lot of ghost lorehere.
It's kind of a, you know, atnight time it's kind of a spooky
(02:48):
city, so there's a lot ofthere's a lot of energy here,
you know.
Fin (02:50):
Ah, it sounds like a wonderful place I'd dearly like
to visit.
Okay, so back to the game.
First of all, I need to askabout the art style.
Now I'm of a certain age whereto me, it's not quite as old
school as it may be.
Um, it looks yeah, yeah, sure,sure it looks like um a sierra
online game or a lupus arts gameI'm glad that you understand
this.
Devin Reid (03:09):
This is great.
Yeah, it's uh, the it wasdesigned to be like.
When I say old school computerera, I mean like old school,
like when I was growing up.
Um, I'm a millennial, so oldschool to me would be like the
era of, like, the windows 95,the windows 97 era not really
before that, there's a wholeslew of games that existed
(03:29):
before that but like, even likethe 2000s era of games.
I wanted to make something inthat art style and we started
doing prototypes and, um, youknow, we had a some market
research and, well, we alsowanted to make something that
was kind of stood out from othertarot card apps that were out
there yeah, I mean looking atthe, uh, the art design,
obviously it seems to be riderwaite smith, but with a twist.
Fin (03:51):
How have you evolved, that's?
Devin Reid (03:53):
that's a great question.
That's a great question, yeah,so I wanted to make we worked
with an artist to do the cards,uh, the art for all the cards.
I wanted to make sure that wewere using a tarot deck that was
familiar to people, so we chosethe Rider Waite deck instead of
, like, a more esoteric deck.
The cards are almost they'renot exactly exact translations,
(04:14):
but they're kind of like pixelart translations of the Rider
Waite.
You know, we wanted the artistto have freedom, but we also
wanted to keep as much of theRider Waite symbolism as
possible.
Fin (04:24):
I see Out of interest, which was the most challenging
card to transfer into a kind ofdigital medium like this.
Devin Reid (04:31):
When you're making pixel art you only have, like,
so many physical pixels to workwith, so you have to like,
condense things.
And so cards like the Wheel ofFortune that have a lot of like
symbols, like tiny symbols andwords on them and stuff those
cards when you're trying tocondense them, are more
difficult than like the like.
The ace of cups is just a.
It's basically a cup of watercoming out.
Fin (04:52):
It's not as detailed as some of the other cards I
actually, uh, in a an interviewtwo days ago, we pulled out the
wheel of fortune and I've neversat and looked at it for any
length of time.
It's a card that very rarelycomes up for me and it's really
weird.
I mean, you've got things.
Yeah, it's a very strange card.
I mean, normally you'd justassociate it with the wheel
itself, but, as you say, all ofthe motifs like the snake around
(05:14):
it.
In fact I have it just here fromthe last reading that I had and
yeah, so you've got your littlesphinx on the top there, you've
got this snake-like serpentthing, obviously showing the
difference between sort ofheaven and hell and the
punishment and the blessingsthat could be bestowed upon you.
But this thing's like there's agoat with wings at the bottom
(05:37):
here and it's bizarre wings atthe bottom here and, yeah, it's
bizarre.
So, yeah, so I was looking atthat and thinking if I was to
sit down and, you know, in thestyle of monkey island, try and
reinterpret that that's.
That's going to be a big ask.
Approximately how long did thewhole project take?
Devin Reid (05:51):
that's a great question.
Um, it took us about six monthsto do do everything from start
to finish, so it's pretty fastas far as a production cycle
goes and um but we have a lot oflike.
Fin (06:02):
We have a lot of updates and stuff we want to add, but we
wanted to get it to a polishedpoint where we could share it
with people and then kind of addon to it okay, and if I was to
uh go into steam and I've putout my, my hard-earned pennies
and I'm loading up your game, oruh, it's, it seems, halfway
between a game and then a kindof like art installation halfway
(06:23):
between that and a kind of, uh,your personal journey, it's
what?
Yeah, yeah, how would youdescribe it?
What is it?
Devin Reid (06:32):
um, yeah, I'd say um .
You've described it very welljust there.
It is a personal journey.
It is a, it is a tool that youcan use like a tarot deck to
help you, um, do insightfulreadings that you can do for
your own solo readings withouthaving to like do it yourself,
if that makes sense.
(06:52):
And so it is kind of a gamebecause it's interactive.
It's if you were, you know,it's kind of almost like the way
a visual novel is a game onsteam, um, but it's much more
like personal than that.
Like a visual novel is like astory that someone's telling and
this is a thing that you aredirectly interacting with and it
is about you as a person, whichis kind of unique in the game
(07:12):
space in general, as it beingabout you, not like a character
that you're role playing.
Fin (07:17):
Okay, there's a in-person game that I've seen called Wreck
this Deck, where what you do isyou get a.
I think it's marketed as aTTRPG, I'm not sure.
Basically, you download a PDFand you get a deck of playing
cards.
It's a way of customizing adeck, defacing a deck as part of
(07:38):
a game.
It has this huge communityaround it.
Are you going to be?
It's building community aroundthis guy.
Devin Reid (07:45):
Yeah, yeah, for sure , you know we've been.
I just finished making it.
So now I'm like, oh, I shouldstart marching this thing.
Yeah, I should have done thisearlier.
But yeah, I would love to dothat.
You know it's funny.
You mentioned the in-persongame.
We were pretty inspired,actually for the whole project
at the beginning, by those oldlike carnival or arcade machines
(08:06):
with the animatronics, whereyou like put in a input and then
it, like spit, gives you like acard and then, like the person
like talks to you like thezoltar machines, you know.
And so we originally we weretrying to figure out a way to
make a physical cabinet that youcould put at a bar, that, like,
people could get a tarotreading from, and so we were
like, well, let's make thesoftware first.
(08:28):
And so we're still not done,we're still working.
On the other part, it'd bereally cool to have little
cabinets at bars people couldget a reading yeah, so you've
already got my brain whirring onthat.
Fin (08:36):
I mean, would you use something like a, a raspberry pi
, in there to drive it um?
Devin Reid (08:40):
yeah, definitely, it's definitely, that's probably
what I would, that's probablywhat we would start with, at
least.
I mean, that's, that's the mostaccessible thing.
I mean it depends on, like Ithink, at the beginning we would
definitely use Raspberry Pi,something like that, a little
microcomputer program,everything in Python.
Fin (08:55):
And in terms of playing the game, I'm sat there and, as I
say, I've loaded this up.
What kind of?
Just talk to me about the kindof the experience I would get
from it.
So would I be doing single cardpulls?
Cool, yeah, how would?
Devin Reid (09:08):
it work right now.
Right now it is like limited inthat way, because it is a very
like a little capsulatedexperience and we're out, we
weren't, we're playing on.
We have like a roadmap forexpanding to other things.
But right now, you know, thegame starts and the music plays.
And the music is very likeimmersive and creepy, and you
and the first thing you see isMama Naya's house and it's like
(09:29):
nighttime in New Orleans and thewind's blowing.
Then you like enter the houseto start the reading.
So it's a three card call past,present, future just simple.
At the beginning you choose aintention and then, after you
choose an intention, you choose,you pick your three cards from
a spread.
What I really like about thatis that the way that we did it
(09:49):
was very true to tarot.
So it's not like there was twoways we could have done that in
the backend.
We could have had the spread be.
Every time you click a card, itjust randomly generates a tarot
card, or what I did was kind oftook it the step further to make
it more realistic.
I basically shuffled the cardbefore the scene starts and then
there, when they're spread out,they're literally just upside
(10:12):
down.
So you are literally choosingthe right one, Like you would in
an actual tarot reading,instead of it just being
generated behind the scenes.
So it's like just shuffled, butthen when it's spread out, all
of the cards are what they areunderneath, which is a very cool
feature.
Then after that, you just gothrough each card.
At first, mama Naya gives you anintroduction to the full
(10:34):
reading and then she gives you amore in-depth reading for your
past, your present and yourfuture card and then she gives
you a summary based on all threeof them together.
We looked at a lot of the otherterror apps that are out there
and we couldn't really findanything that was like giving
people actual cohesive readings.
Almost all of them were justbasically, you would, you would
pull, you would pull three cardsand then it would just show you
(10:56):
the like encyclopedia page foreach card and kind of leave you
to your own interpretation.
But mom and I like takeseverything into account and she
talks in her own voice and shelike has like a deep hospitality
and like she's talking to youinstead of you just reading like
a, like an article, if thatmakes sense.
Fin (11:15):
I see.
So it sounds like the otherapps or software platforms.
It's almost like pictures on aquilt, whereas what you're
creating here is more of atapestry.
Is that right?
Devin Reid (11:24):
Yeah, that's a good way to put it exactly because,
like, if mom and I takes intoaccount your other cards when
she's doing the readings, alsoyour intention, which I've never
seen anybody, uh, doing evenjust that.
I've seen people like set anintention, but then it just says
what the thing is at the top,but every single one of your
readings is like so if youchoose, like your romantic life
as one of the intentions, and ifyou choose that all the
(11:46):
readings for all the cards aregoing to be about your romantic
life instead of just being, like, showing you the definition of
the card and you because, like,the idea is that she's doing the
interpretation to help you,because she's the tarot reader.
Fin (11:59):
I love this idea.
I mean, I am possibly yourtarget market.
I am a software first geek.
I have been reading tarot cards, I think, for about 30 years
now, and I love this idea.
Can you remind me when is duefor release?
When's it going to drop?
Devin Reid (12:14):
I would say because I think we're running into some
problems with Valve.
I would say probably by the endof the month it could be live
on Wednesday or it might takeanother week for us to resolve
some things on the back end withthem.
Fin (12:28):
Super.
And my last question for you isbecause I'd like to kind of
really enjoy, immerse myself inthat kind of New Orleans
experience.
If I was to sit playing this orinteracting with it, what
should I be drinking?
What's a good New Orleans drinkfor me to drink in my hand?
Devin Reid (12:43):
Very, very, very good question.
I love that.
I'm a really big cocktail guyalso, so I really appreciate
this question.
Um well, my first, my firstthought would be you know, a cup
of warm tea, because that'slike the first thing I would
think of with tara.
Let's see new orleans drink.
Oh, I know what you would have,uh, if a very new orleans
(13:03):
cocktail that I would drink andretail with would be a, which is
a, um, classic cocktail with abasically, uh, it's basically a
rye whiskey.
That is almost straight andthey keep talking, basically
they, they rinse the glass withad, they rinse the glass with
absinthe.
Uh, it's, it's.
They had a tiny bit of sugar, soit's almost like an
old-fashioned, but it's got gotsome like effervescentness to it
(13:26):
and it's also a, uh, veryhistorical drink in the city
also sounds like it's going tobe lethal if you have more than
one yeah, yeah, but it's verygood and it's, it's, uh, it's
made with sazerac rye, which isa rye that's made in new orleans
, so that's, that's the drinkthat I would have, uh, if I was
at mama naya's house that's aDevin Reed.
Fin (13:47):
Thank you so much for joining me today.
Devin Reid (13:49):
Yeah it was great talking to you.
Fin (13:50):
I'm looking forward very much to playing Mama Naya's
house on Steam when it'sreleased.
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