Memoria Playing Cards by Thirdway Industries

Designer Giovanni Meroni of Thirdway Industries has released yet another fascinating series of playing cards full of stories and rich illustrations. Currently funding on Kickstarter, Memoria is a deck of playing cards that unlock your memory.

The series tells of the protagonist who travels in the void searching for life’s purpose. The protagonist happens to be YOU. In the void, you meet with a witch who grants you three wishes. You have used two wishes, in which the first one is to tell who you really are, while the second one is to erase your memories. Now, with the third and final wish, you are allowed to look into the Shard of Memories to discover the memories. These shards are in the form of decks of playing cards, which are these decks!

There are 4 decks available during the campaign. The standard edition set of the series is Entropia and Ancestrale. The limited-edition set (only 888 print runs made of each limited edition) is Entropia Argentea and Ancestrale Aurea.

The tuck boxes for the decks will be made by Boschiero & Newton – marking this series to be the first one that employs them for the tuck box production. For Entropia and Ancestrale, the tuck boxes will be done on premium matte paper stock with two layers of foiling, embossing, interior artwork printing with metallic ink.

The tuck boxes for both Argentea and Aurea will be using an experimental material of mirror paper. It is a highly reflective foiled paper that can reflect objects like that of a mirror. It is complete with embossing and interior artwork printing with metallic ink. The cards for these editions will be gilded – silver for Entropia Argentea and gold for Ancestrale Aurea.

The cards will be printed by Cartamundi – the back of the cards will use full cold foiling. Entropia has the blue and silver color scheme, while Ancestrale has the red and gold color scheme. The artwork featured interlocking geometric hexagonal lines with chains and showed a series of mazes, stairs, and stained glass shards.

The numbered cards will have a custom layout – the pips are arranged on a circular pattern within a hexagonal frame and a stained glass background. Diamonds and Hearts will have a red background with gold and azure accents. Spades and Clubs will have a blue background with red and gold accents.

The court cards will always be the center of the lore in every TWI deck series. Entropia and Ancestrale each will have a set of different courts. This shows the Jack of Hearts from both editions to see they are all different. The left one is Ancestrale “Memory of Betrayal” and the right one is Entropia “Memory of Hate”.

All of the artworks are beautifully done in full detail that shouts the character of the court cards and the Jokers. The faces of the cards have a thin white border, allowing for the artwork to expand to the fullest to show all those painstaking work by Giovanni.

If you wish to dive deep into the story of this series, there is a book provided as an add-on (along with a collectible coin). The book will have a full story about the characters shown in both court cards and jokers, as well as secrets, insights, and interpretation.

The pledge starts from $26 on Kickstarter for a single deck between Entropia or Ancestrale – $48 for a standard set of Entropia and Ancestrale. Also, gilded decks, uncut sheets, booklet, boxset, and dealer coin are available as add-ons.