Spirit Fire Update #23: Dashboards, Disciplines, and Other Developments

From the desk of someone who reads all your questions and cares deeply about each and every one.

Hi, Hi!

Glad you are here, let's catch up! 

We see you. You don’t need to do anything right now. Just exist. That’s plenty.

Gosh. So much. Lots of whiteboard sessions and rapid prototyping have resulted in systems flowing smoothly and cleanly. Now, with that work seemingly done, we’ve recently been back in the trenches of the deep-work of writing cards, mapping out storylines, playtesting the skill-test spreads, and stress testing the branching-narrative / pack-opening / open-world aspects of things. 

This last part is a LOT. It can’t really be overstated how much additional work is generated by the open world nature of this game. Here’s one of our designers, Tom, rambling on this subject:

“The amount of variables we have to consider for every moment in this game is wild. What if they go here first and attempt this quest before they go over there? Does that break anything? Will they have the context they need to understand this card? No? Okay…how do we make sure they have that context before they get here? Okay, they need to complete this other quest first. How can we invisibly guide them into doing that? And wait—what happens if they completed this other other quest before trying this, and the environment has been changed as a result? Yeah that definitely messes with this. Should we move this quest earlier somehow, or maybe we introduce additional ways to approach it so you can still pull it off even if you already did the other other quest and all the rifts have opened…?”

He went on like this for a while, and started using very specific (but made up and irrelevant) examples. 

The point is—there’s a reason so many open world video games feel sort of lifeless and are made up mostly of a series of fetch quests and busywork. It’s VERY time consuming to make an open world that tells compelling stories that reward exploration. Very time consuming. As we’ve learned. 

There’s so much we’ve been working on, but here are some that have a visual aspect we can show you, because visuals are fun.

Dashboards

The player dashboard has been streamlined to focus on three core aspects of Spirit Fire: Illumination, Intensity, and Renewal. A fourth aspect, known as Awe, functions as a wild spirit fire—rare, versatile, and appropriately laced with abilities that don’t show up often…but when they do, they matter. 

You’ll find a tiny cheat sheet for the Rest phase beneath where your flicker pad goes. We’re hiding these types of little helpful details wherever we can.

Disciplines

We’ve been deep in the rhythm of cardplay—testing how the deck-building system interacts with "flow" mechanics, capacity constraints, and spirit fire requirements.

These have seen some gentle redesigns. Also, Ssme cards ask for a certain number and type of Spirit Fire in your capacity—like Obtain Equilibrium (above)—which requires 3 renewal in your capacity). Others trigger based on a linked chain of matching Spirit Fire types on the cards you’ve played—like Touch of Magic (below). This “flow” mechanic has been a surprisingly rich addition—offering a kind of quiet elegance to decision-making.

Paired with your resolve actions, this system creates a focused but flexible loop of interaction. Fewer choices per moment. More depth per choice. Cognitive load has dropped. Strategic depth has soared. That was the goal, so we’re thrilled to see it coming together.

There are some more new developments here, but you’ll need to understand a tweak we’ve made to spark cards first to get it. So…

Spark Cards

Spark cards are your internal flame. They represent the subtle shifts in will, memory, and energy that shape how you show up in the world. You’ll begin the game with mostly basic spark, and over time unlock advanced spark as your character matures.

You have a deck of these spark cards. In very simple terms this deck is your life, and when you reach the bottom of it, the game is over. Effects will cause you to expend (“kindle”) the top card of that deck, faceup, into a depleted spark pile. That face-up spark is your “active” spark, and it has a triggerable effect on it. 

You can activate that effect using the “burn” ability. 

Refresher: you have a deck of “discipline” cards that you draw into your hand and then play into a set number of card slots. This is the game’s primary mechanic. These discipline cards combo and build off each other, so having more cards in play is a key part of the strategy. But, you’ll need to clear out those slots to make room to play new cards. The “burn” action lets you clear cards out of those slots to your discard pile. 

Normally, “burning” just clears space to play more cards, but, remember that off to the side you have your spark deck and the depleted spark pile with a single face-up “active” spark on top. Like this one.

When you burn cards out of your capacity, you may (thematically speaking) flow the spirit fire from those cards into your active spark to fuel that spark’s effect. Think of it like channeling that spirit fire energy. So, on the Deep Perception spark above, if you used your burn action to clear 3 cards from out of your card slots, you could trigger that spark’s ability. 

This means we now have a system where clearing your card slots to play more isn’t just an upkeep thing, it’s also how you fuel other effects.

Put more simply: playing cards into your card slots causes effects and combos and all the things, but so too does removing them, resulting in this ongoing flow of cards in-to and out-of play in a loop that’s interesting at all points.

Developing your spark deck to have effects that pair well with your build is a fun part of character development. To add to this, certain abilities let you rekindle your spark, digging through the depleted pile and choosing one to return to the top, making that card active. Occasionally, you can stoke, shuffling depleted spark back into your spark deck—effectively extending your personal life/timeline and giving you a degree of control over which spark you get to see repeatedly.

This system is quietly powerful. It reflects your character’s internal arc—not just what you do, but what it costs you, and how you carry it forward.

Here are a few more: 

Rest / Keyword Cards

Rest cards have evolved into a centerpiece system we’re really proud of.

They’re acquired throughout the game’s quests and challenges, and during rest you’ll spend your resolve charges (which we’ll have to explain another time) to activate these rest effects. Many of these effects are very powerful (albeit expensive) and they accomplish the goal of making resting not just some rote “reset” phase, but a strategic part of your experience that brings development and growth to your character. Resting shouldn’t be something you feel “meh, I guess I have to rest now so I can get back to the fun part” about. Now, resting is also a fun part that you look forward to. 

Each rest card is double-sided. The front offers rest effects. After resting, you flip the rest cards to reveal a perk and a keyword that affect your next round. Perks give you a small mechanical boost—think of it like a situational advantage going into your next phase. But the keyword? That’s even more interesting.

Keywords are rare and potent. They’re required to bypass specific gates and obstacles, and they only activate when your conduit is lit. If your conduit goes dormant, your keyword powers down too. This tug-of-war between power and rest cycles is part of the game’s soul. Having access to different keywords is one of the principal ways you gain access to hard to reach places, shortcuts, and many of the game’s secret nooks and crannies. Unlocking a rest card with a new keyword opens (sometimes literally) many new doors to your character.

Conduits and Quirks

Okay, let’s talk conduits.

After you rest, you choose a conduit to connect to. It starts in its dormant stage. You can light it by meeting certain burning requirements through play. So, like with the spark effects above, burning cards out of your card slots does more than make room to play more cards—it can also fuel the lighting of your conduit. Once lit, your conduit does two things:

1. It activates one of your keywords

2. It gives you a unique ability you can trigger at any time—though doing so flips your conduit back to dormant, disabling your keyword

That tradeoff is a strategic trade-off. It’s about timing, identity, and sacrifice.

And then there are quirks. Each conduit comes with a few “quirk” cards that get shuffled into your discipline deck and are tied to your conduit’s mood. Think of quirks as personality cards, and whenever they come out of your deck your conduit does…something. Sometimes they’re just weird little moments of charm. Other times they’re a bit more impactful. Often their effects scale to have greater impact if your conduit is lit. They don’t always help (some conduits are very very helpful but their quirks…aren’t), but they’re always fun to interact with.

Encounters

We’ve done a lot of cleanup here—and the result is a system that’s lighter, clearer, and more memorable. Encounters are no longer confused with quests, and are more like … encounters. 

They’re specific to the area of the realm you’re in—draw a triangle encounter in triangle territory, and so on. They don’t involve skill tests or anything too involved, they’re just a thing you came across that resolves when you draw them. Maybe you find a shortcut. Maybe a shortcut finds you, but you wish it hadn’t. Maybe you lose your footing in some questionable muck. Their main function is to make the different areas of the realms have personality and character. Scary areas will have scary encounters that can hurt you. Friendly places will have friendly encounters that friendly you. 

Sometimes, encounters move to your milestone track—tracking your slow uncovering of a realm’s mystery. Other times they're a momentary flavor. But they always reinforce a sense of place. 

Sometimes cards will get added to the encounter decks (or removed) as the realm evolves. Maybe your actions cause a friendly place to become less friendly — shuffle these mean cards into the previously friendly encounter deck. Now that friendly forest starts to feel a lot more foreboding as you explore it. 

These evolving encounter decks let us keep the realms alive and active, regardless of what quests you’re pursuing, and they enable the realm to evolve as you play, contributing greatly to the open-world aspect of the game.

Quests / Skill Tests

This is where the most effort has gone—and it’s paying off.

Quests are the engine of narrative and choice, and they break down into realm quests and personal quests (which can be performed in any realm), each of which can be persistent or single-use. That framework has allowed us to shape some quests into ongoing threads (activities, places, things, or NPCs you can interact with repeatedly) while others serve as intense one-time choices or challenges that change how your journey unfolds.

Not all quests involve skill tests, but today let’s talk about the ones that do—

Many quests will require you to overcome a skill test challenge in the game’s skill test book. Each skill test is a mini game designed to represent the type of skill check, and that challenge is then tweaked by a few things. Under your control: approach cards let you alter how skill tests are handled—giving you agency and personality over the shape of challenges. Meanwhile, each quest also modifies tests with two core variables:

1. A tweak to how the test is performed

2. A redefinition of the “star” result on the variable die

This system makes every skill test feel distinct. The vibe of negotiating with a Water Spirit? It shouldn’t feel like haggling with a street vendor. And now, it doesn’t. You’re bringing your experience and personality and knowledge to each skill test, and each test has variables, so the experience is similar in all of the ways you need it to be, but a fresh challenge every time.

As you can see from this persistent quest card below (It Still Whispers), you can be at any mystical node (in any realm!) with 6 illumination in your capacity to attempt this quest. You don’t have the context to understand what “It Still Whispers” means or what you’re trying to do, so for the sake of example pretend this card is titled “Face Inward, Overcome Burdens”. When you meet the condition on the front of the card, you can flip this quest over and attempt the challenge on the back. That challenge will likely pit you against a skill test, and if you pass the test, will result in you getting to remove a burden from your deck. 

Because this is a persistent quest, you can perform it repeatedly, so long as you meet the conditions on the front of the card. So this challenge may be one you return to now and then when you need to get some burdens out of your deck. 

Skill tests themselves are one of the areas still undergoing the most development, but here are some context-less screen shots for you to see some of the things we’re working on. Refresher: you have various components that will be placed into these skill tests and then you will manipulate those components through your card play in order to attempt to pass the test. 

That seems wall-of-text enough for one development update, but hopefully you can feel things snapping into place and systems coalescing into something that’s all speaking a single language. That’s how it feels in practice, and we’re so excited to share it with you.

And now, a note from Tom:

Hey all! 

Coming at you with a quick plea from The Guy Who Used To Write These Updates But Now Doesn’t Because He Is Being A (Mostly) Good Boy And Leaving That To Others While He Focuses On Game Design…But Is Back For A Moment Because A Thing Needs To Be Said. 

The plea is this: BE KIND. I know the internet can rob us all of our humanity, and I understand being disappointed with timeline things but please remember there are people on the other side of your screen. Some of the messages and comments we’re getting lately are…crossing lines. 

I get that this project's development cycle is untraditional. I’m grateful you’re here and taking part in that journey. Dev is moving well (as you can see above), but is still too fluid for a reliable timeline. No amount of intellectual debate in the comments or horrific threats over email can change that. I get that this isn’t the crowdfunding expectation. Lesson learned. We will never launch a game this early in the development cycle again. 

Regardless, be kind. Even if you have arguments against everything I just said—nothing justifies the types of messages this team has been receiving. Please keep our community spaces (like our Discord server) livable places for the community. Share your thoughts and concerns, sure, but remember that there’s a threshold to what’s appropriate. Don’t send emails and DM’s that make people cry, or fear for their family’s safety. Know that negative public comments can embolden truly vile private ones, so if the thing you’re going to inject into the conversation doesn’t really need to be said, maybe find the grace and peace to let it be and not pile on. 

I guess what I’m asking is this—if you’re able, embrace this project where it is. Share your thoughts as necessary, of course, but remember that every minute we spend firefighting comments and emails is a minute we’re not spending on the game. We’re a tiny team. Me writing this right now means I’m not designing. If the fluid timeline is not for you, we understand, shoot us an email, and we’ll sort out a refund. But I truly hope that you stay. You’re here because you saw something in this that spoke to you. The people here are working their butts off to reward that vision and instinct with something worthy of you and we’re committed to succeeding at that.

Anyway, thank you for reading this and (hopefully) understanding the full heart of it. Truly. And thank you for bringing your humanity. We’ll keep bringing ours. Alright—back to Amber.

-Tom

This was a long one! Thank you for caring enough to spend this much time with us today. 

If you’ve had thoughts about Spirit Fire, curiosities, or even small intuitions you can’t quite name, we’d love to hear them. You can comment, hop into our Discord, or drop us a note. We’re right here ready to connect. No question is too weird, no concern too small.

You can find us in Discord (click here), floating around with kind humans and gentle nonsense,  or go full-official and email us at groundcontrol@orangenebula.com

We love helping. We really do, Tom’s request for civility and decency notwithstanding. (Seriously, helping is one of our hobbies).