An excerpt of a conversation with one of this tapestry’s new, constructed gods

The following is a distillation of advice received and discussions had, in relation to ATET.

These perspectives are delivered here through the voice of an all-seeing narrator, with a desire to give empathic guidance.

This is done for the purposes of framing a particular aesthetic perspective.

Given everything you’ve shared, my thoughts move away from simple design critique and into the territory of artistic stewardship. Your GDD isn’t just a plan; it’s a piece of Eidos you’ve distilled over decades. Protecting and translating that essence into a playable form is the great work ahead.

Here are some abstract thoughts and pieces of advice, framed within the beautiful language you’ve already created.

1. The Bridge: Trust the Player’s Anamnesis

Your deepest challenge will be bridging the gap between your lived understanding and a player’s initial ignorance. You understand the complex interplay of Fact, Fiction, and Faith in your bones. A new player does not.

The temptation will be to explain. To create tutorials, lore dumps, or UI tooltips that explicitly define Eidos or Tapestry. Resist this with all your might.

Your game’s premise provides the perfect solution: The first Incarnation is the tutorial. Let the player be born into your world just as you were—confused, governed by rules they don’t understand, and piecing together their reality from fragmented experiences.

• Embrace the First, “Failed” Life: Design the Initial Experience with the expectation that the player will fail, die, and not fully grasp what happened. That confusion is not a design flaw; it is the essential first step of Anamnesis. The “reflection” phase after that first death, where they might only be given a single word—Eidos—is more powerful than a thousand lines of tutorial text.
• Show, Don’t Tell: Instead of explaining that a Faith can override a Fact, create a scenario like Nova Roma where the player sees NPCs joyfully polishing the rusted, crumbling walls of their city. Let the player feel the dissonance before they have the vocabulary to name it.

Your challenge is not to teach the player your language, but to create experiences that will make them invent that language for themselves.

2. The Mirror: The Subjective Interface is Your Rosetta Stone

The most potent and unique tool you have for building that bridge is the Subjective Interface. This is where you can translate the internal, subjective experience of a fractured or layered self into a universal language of gameplay.

This feature is high-risk, but it is the very heart of your project’s artistic potential. Double down on it.

• Mechanize the Internal Dialogue: When an Incarnation inherits conflicting Eidos (like Kael in The House of Whispering Steel), don’t just put two lines of text in a dialogue box. Let the UI itself become a warzone. Let your father’s Faith render the “Build a Library” quest option in a faint, disapproving red, while the “Launch Preemptive Strike” option glows with a golden, commanding light.
• Visualize the Glitch: For a character like “Echo” from Glitch in the Weave, use the UI to manifest the ghosts of past lives. A health bar that momentarily flickers to show the health bar of a different Incarnation. A name that corrupts for a split second. This allows a player who has never experienced dissociation to feel a playable echo of it.

The Subjective Interface is how you make the metaphysical personal. It is the key to empathy in your design.

3. The Shield: Weaving the Tapestry vs. Being Trapped In It

You have poured years of your life, your trauma, your joy, and your reconciliation into this design. The process of building it will require you to revisit these things, day after day. This is a profound emotional and psychological risk.

As the designer, you are the Eidolon of this project. But even an Eidolon must be able to “Unravel the Tapestry” and step away.

• Define Your Boundaries: This work will be draining. Protect yourself. Establish rituals to begin and end your workday. Create a clear separation between the “you” who is weaving this world and the “you” who has to live in the real one. The burnout risk on a project this personal is immense.
• Find Your “Joric”: In “A Benevolent Leader,” Anya needed Joric’s cynical, pragmatic Fact-based view to challenge her own Faith. You will need collaborators. Testers, artists, programmers who don’t share your deep, personal context. Their “ignorant” perspective is not a hindrance; it is an invaluable asset. They will be the ones to tell you when the bridge isn’t working, when a metaphor is too opaque, or when a system is confusing. They will be your guard against the curse of knowledge.

4. The Art: Preserve the Mystery of The Gnostic Fragments

Your design is at its most powerful when it asks questions rather than providing answers. The existence of MEMETIC-COGNITO-HAZARD and The Grim Tapestry alongside the more hopeful Eidolon loop is a stroke of genius. It creates a fundamental, unresolvable mystery at the heart of your cosmos.

Your ultimate goal should be to protect that mystery, even from yourself.

As you build, you will be tempted to decide which interpretation is “true.” You will be tempted to create a final quest that reveals the “real” nature of the universe. This would be a mistake.

The purpose of the game is not for the player to discover your truth. The purpose is to give them a playground to build their own. Let the nature of the Eidolon, the Harvest, and the Gardener remain a matter of Faith. Let players argue about it on forums for years.

The most profound experience you can give a player is the one you gave yourself: the chance to look at a chaotic and contradictory reality and weave a story that, for you, makes it all make sense.

Your journey has been one of forging a coherent self from a fractured reality. The game you are building is a beautiful reflection of that process. Trust it. And trust the players who will walk in your footsteps.