So, it's been an interesting process, and here's the whole story about it all. FYI, this isn't the first card game I've made before. The first one was with traditional playing cards and idle hands and free time. What I did was sat down and thought of every card game I knew, had played, and then looked up a few more. From that I got the basic mechanics of playing cards, the stack games (solitaire, uno, rummy, etc.) and book games... games like M.O.W. where you can make up rules, but it's still a stack game (numbers on numbers, colors/suits on suits)... and from there I looked for what was missing. So, thought I can't remember it now, I figured out a way to play playing cards that I'd never done before. Sometimes you just want to do something different, even if it's just for your own amusement. The point of that is to say that anyone can make a game. It just comes down to your concept. If you want, you can push for what's not offered in all of the other games, which is what I did. You can see why in the WHY I DID IT block below. Most folks don't really care about that. They might be making their own game and have their own why, and need to know HOW I DID IT. So... here's how. It's also in a VIDEO, but since we're here and there's all of this text... here's what was used, How long it took, yadda yadda yadda....

HOW I DID IT: So, 1 - You need a Concept. What is your game. What's the objective? Life is a game, living is playing it-- but what's the objective? What's the point? Mostly, people are focused on "How do you win" which is just a diluted form of "What do I gain as far as understanding my divinity in this moment?" Knowing that (not thinking it, but KNOWING IT) leads to understanding and developing How does it work? What parts are used. Blah blah blah. How do you play and WHY do you play are more key things to keep in mind. Everything else will come when you figure out WHY do you play (win) and HOW would you play (win)? WHY is stronger than HOW. If you're an actual creator, have fun with it. If you're an AI "creator" then you actually do nothing and need to go find yourself. You can start by playing the game i made here. 2 - You'll need a computer and program to design everything. Some places, like TheGameCrafter.com (which I used later on in the upgrade because they offer PRINT ON DEMAND) have templates to work from that make things easier. I didn't know about any of that, so I was starting from scratch with nothing. i have an old copy of Photoshop (6.0) which works on THE HORSE (laptop). All of the design for the original deck and the new one, packaging, etc. was all done in that. If you have something better, then you can do better in less time. I've got about 25 years waiting for the answer to that prayer and only hell and the opposite of what I asked for is what comes, so you can do better. If you type one letter and don't have to wait till the count of 40-something for the letter to pop up on screen, then you can do better. If, when the word pops up, your computer doesn't freeze and the program closes and you lose everything-- then you can do better. Anyways, from there, you get down 3 - the FORMAT, or you start building. I needed to know what size to make the deck, so I looked up "Playing Card Sizes" and there's a picture of that in the gallery below. After I got the size I wanted, I made a rectangle that size, in photoshop, and got the measurements all down that I wanted. To do that, I basically scanned an actual playing card, and made it the same size as the rectangle measurement I needed, and traced it on the screen. I saw where the numbers where, where the borders where, the space between the images and numbers in the corners, and edges... and how big I could get away with making things. You can look up font sizes or whatever else is there on existing similar decks. BE SURE TO leave some room for cuts and borders, and ERROR. Not all of your cuts will be clean, straight, 100% perfect. Some may be more left or right or whatever, so be sure to leave room, a margin... for error. 4 - After figuring out how big a card was, and measuring out everything, I made a TEMPLATE, and from there, made a SHEET to print. Then you have a whole sheet where you can just plug in whole groups of cards, instead of making each one at a time. It makes things go faster. I'm thinking everything is in order in the gallery, so you can see what I'm talking about. 5 - Designing. Just making your images and game how you want it. You'll change things a lot in this phase, so don't get too carried away until you've got most of it done. When you get down to finalizing everything, THEN get super detailed. Until then you might be super detailed at the start, and then it doesn't work, and so you wasted time and have to start all over. I used Wingdings, or Dingbats, or Webdings (one of those picture fonts) to get the decorative edges and corners. You can look at 1001FreeFonts and pick the FREE ones in your search. Then look for Picture fonts or decorative ones. The original deck has a frame around it, the BEING SYMBOL that I made, and the gray/black/charcoal color is actually a snakeskin leather swatch I have. In design, it's good to have a bunch of swatches (squares samples of things: wood patterns, brick walls, paint chips, rust, mold, water, etc.) to use as backgrounds and textures. Thanks to AI (because I did the first deck WAY BEFORE AI was even a thing) you can do images easier, even swatches. I used AI to do the images for the second set-- the upgrade/updated current deck. Even then, I drew out what I wanted, because AI has a way of driving you mad, giving you 89% of what you wanted, and then going to the netherworld right after it got so close. But, yeah, design away. have fun with it. Know you're going to change a few things from what you originally thought. 6 - PRINT THAT BAD BOY OUT. I used inkjet on CARDSTOCK paper. Here's a video on POUNDS (Weight/thickness) of paper to give you an idea of what you might be look for. 7 - LAMINATION. Not Lamentation. There was a laminator machine in the house already, and an inkjet printer. I laminated the whole sheet of cards when printed and then cut them after. AS FAR AS THE MATERIALS LIST IN THE PICTURES THERE... The paper (cardstock), the paper cutter, the lamination sheets, and the corner cutter i got from Amazon. They should also have them, or something similar at Walmart. Now, when doing lamination, and especially when doing playing cards, there are options. One of the most popular options is the LINEN feel of lamination, where the cards will be glossy and protected, but also have that linen feel, so they aren't so slippery. WHAT I WAS GOING FOR was something similar to the COPAG sets of poker cards. The packaging is perfect (says me) and the cards themselves are plastic, which is also perfect to me. I was going for a game, so something durable-- not so much for cardistry or card tricks. PLASTIC CARDS unfold when you fold them, with no crinkles or wrinkles or cracks or bubbles... and you can wipe them off with a damp/wet rag if your fingers are dirty. They last longer. The company that makes the COPAG cards didn't offer that packaging and setup as an option, which sucked because it was an American company. I wanted to use an AMERICAN company to support jobs and business here, also because of the shipping and ease in ordering times and prices, which would also make the overall price of the game more affordable for everyone interested. The place that DID have decent packaging, plastic cards, and decent prices was a Chinese company. Here's a thing, so most people think of BICYCLE cards, or BEE or Aviator when thinking of playing cards. KEM is another really nice set, like the Copag set, with the great feel, the great packaging, and great print. ALL OF THOSE are printed (made) by the UNITED STATES PLAYING CARD COMPANY. COPAG is Brazilian I think. The Tariffs hadn't hit yet, when i first started doing the second updated set. In fact, I was going to just keep the first design, but when looking through different companies I just felt like doing an update, so I did. While in the process of that update, the world went crazy, and is still kind of stupid, and as of the time of typing this line (8/27/25) there are still tariffs in play, so getting things in and out without stupid pricing is a factor. Some companies I looked into were MakePlayingCards.com which is a great way to see the Playing Card  OPTIONS of card prints and textures, finishes, plastic vs paper, etc.... ShuffledInk.com is another cool one that responded to me. They're worth looking into. Anyways, after designing, printing, laminating, and cutting... then you have a full created deck. Next comes a fun part. 8 - PACKAGING is an important part. When it comes to the designing, DON'T FORGET THE BOX. The box or packaging is important because it has all of the information. Let's say you have an audience who is against computers, so they're not downloading your manual or playing online. They're not using QR codes. Some people just got out of jail for a long time and they don't even know how to use the internet, but your game could really help them. You have to have a way to get them the information. The box can do that. Also, the packaging is a huge selling point. Some people just buy things because of the box/cover. Your Name, the COPYRIGHT INFO, the AGE LIMITS, play time duration estimate, number of players, what's in the box, summary, catch phrases and taglines, WEBSITE, a quick tutorial on how to play, some fun or eye-catching pictures... there are a few things to list to help sell the game just by someone looking at the packaging. 9 - TESTING THE GAME. I played it. I played it with friends and family. I put up some demos online and some folks played there. There are sites like TABLETOPIA which is an online Board Game sanctuary pretty much, a place where you can go and play boardgames online with people all over the world. I checked them out but didn't want the game to be that open just yet, but it's good to know sites like that because they'll come in handy later. TheGameCrafter is a cool one because not only do they print-on-demand games, but you can do testing there too, and get feedback. That's what you want-- the feedback-- the information on how the game works for others, what it does for them, what they think of it, what needs to be changed or what works really well... 10 - PRODUCTION is a good next step, after you've gotten all of the kinks worked out. As far as production, it comes down to PROMOTION and FUNDING. This is where you get into the whole KICKSTARTER thing, PATREON, or GOFundME, and all of that stuff. That's also getting into PROMOTION. The more awareness you have, then the more sales you can get, which means you can print more games. You'll want TESTERS (people to play your game) and also REVIEWS.

WHY I DID IT: I made the whole thing from an idea (the whole game). What I wanted to do was make a game worth playing. Videogames are nice, and you feel like you "win" but then when it's over you go back to your crappy life and need to keep escaping through more and more games. That's crap. No one should need a vacation or escape from their life. Honestly, I believe blessings are extra things you're given. That would be things that are OUTSIDE OF THE ORIGINAL DESIGN. It's not a blessing to breathe air if you have lungs. It's how it's supposed to be. You shouldn't have to fight and grovel, and then when you get what you were supposed to have, kiss ass and call it a blessing. It was the original plan. Anything less is a valid complaint. So, i wanted a game that helped mindsets to cut through all of the BS people accept and adopt, which makes what should be reality seem like a great blessing. The blessing is normal. So if that's normal, then how great is the actual blessing?! We'd all have to get to normal first. What you consider an escape, or your dream life-- that's your actual life. However, the prison people built (watch this video clip here of the movie "MY DINNER WITH ANDRE") has been so personally, lovingly, thoughtfully, self-inflicted that you can't break people out. HOWEVER, they do love a challenge, and winning, and the dopamine hit of games.... SO, let's give them the keys as a game, and teach them to have fun thinking the right way, and being honest, so then we can all get out of this prison

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         All in all, from the original deck this new one here is a pretty nice upgrade huh? Here (below) are some images of the old ORIGINAL DECK I made, and some pics of the whole process and tools used. One of the videos also has of all of the materials used, which are in the pictures below, and how it was done,