Night Parade Fusion Playing Cards - Live on KS

[DoubleOOJ]

Hello everyone!

We met a lot of great people here with our previous projects, Hanami Hanafuda and Sensu Hanafuda. We wanted to share our upcoming project with all of you!



Night Parade Fusion is a poker-sized multipurpose hanafuda/poker deck that can be used to play both Eastern and Western games.

Night Parade contains 54 unique yokai-themed illustrations.
Every month/rank is designed to form a scene.



Night Parade will also include a 16-page color booklet with the rules for Orochi.


The art for Night Parade was inspired by traditional hanafuda, japanese folklore, and ukiyo-e artists from the mid 1700s to the late 1800s. The art of Night Parade will also be featured in a yokai-themed word game we will be launching next year.



When is the Kickstarter?
We have not yet set a date for the Kickstarter launch, but we will post an announcement here when the time comes. To ensure you don’t miss it, we encourage you to join our mailing list. (^_^)

The Night Parade Fusion Kickstarter is now live!

Who will be printing the deck?
Expert Playing Card Co. (EPCC)
Taiwan Facility
Classic Finish
Uncoated Tuck




What is Hanafuda?
Hanafuda (known in Korea as 'Hwatu') are floral-themed playing cards that are rich in symbolism and popular in Japan, Korea, and Hawaii. Hanafuda cards have 12 suits. Each suit is named for a month (e.g. June) and each month is represented by a flower (e.g. Peony).

Hanafuda can be used to play numerous games, including traditional classics such as Koi-Koi, Hachi-Hachi (88), Go-Stop, and many more.



What is a Fusion deck?
Since traditional hanafuda cards lack pips and indices, we designed our own hanafuda indices. We combined these indices with traditional hanafuda imagery and standard poker indices to create a multipurpose deck that could be used to play both Eastern and Western games. The Fusion deck is also a great way to learn and teach hanafuda.

We modified our Fusion indices.
If you are familiar with our previous Fusion decks, then you will notice that we made some changes to our Fusion indices.

Since the card ranks correspond to the hanafuda months (A = January, 2 = February, 3 = March, and so on), we simplified the indices by removing the floral month indices.

For this project, we also updated the hanafuda type indices to match the yokai theme.



What is the Night Parade?
The Night Parade is an element of Japanese folklore that collectively refers to all the yokai that enter the human world at night. In some stories it is an orderly procession traveling the roads and in others it is an unruly horde spreading pandemonium.



What are Yokai?
Yokai is a broad term from Japanese folklore. While it is often translated as monster, spirit, or demon, yokai actually includes a whole menagerie of supernatural beings, forces of nature, strange phenomena, and other unearthly mysteries. Yokai even includes humans who have been possessed, transformed, or spirited away.

The tiny creatures that make your floorboards squeak at night? Yokai.
Great great granny’s old sandals that run through the halls singing at night? Yokai.
Colored balls of light that float over the ocean at night? Yokai.
Earthquakes? Caused by the giant catfish yokai.
The bumps at the foot of your bed? Your feet…. Probably.

Will there be two deck formats in this campaign?
Currently we are only planning on one format. While our previous Hanami and Sensu decks had two formats, Night Parade was designed to merge the best qualities of our hanafuda and fusion deck designs into a single deck with full bleed art and indices.

Are you making a Night Parade edition of your hanafuda rulebook?
We are not currently planning to make a Night Parade edition of our Hanafuda Games rulebook. However, you can still use the Night Parade Fusion cards to play any of the games in either of our previous rulebooks. And, Night Parade will include the rules for a new hanafuda game.



Tell me about the new game included with Night Parade.
Orochi is a game that we designed and created specially for our Night Parade deck. It is a fast, fun, and strategic shedding/climbing game that can be played with 2-4 people.

Orochi is named after Night Parade’s December Bright, Yamata no Orochi, the most powerful card in the game.



Sign up for our mailing list to stay up to date on our future releases!

Thank you for taking the time to read our post and check out our project! (^_^)
We look forward to reading your feedback!
Jason & Antonietta

EDIT: Based on the feedback we have received so far, we made a few edits to the post. The printer info and images were updated to reflect this.

[Justin O.]

Is it just me or are none of these linked images working?

edit: are working now! gorgeous deck with a lot of really nice illustration work. I will have to look up this company's previous decks, I would love to see more of their work

[brownsl]

They work fine for me but maybe he edited his post to fix them.

I really like these and will definitely be backing this campaign.

[wingedpotato]

I thought I'd maxed out on Hanafuda decks, but this version is inspired and suitably different from your previous two (which were excellent). I'm in.

[BaconWise]

This deck looks fantastic. Have you considered doing an ad card as an extra to keep the extra text off of the red Joker? That would be my only suggestion to keep the look cohesive. Awesome work and I am curious to see how pricing/shipping looks. Good luck and thanks for sharing this!

[DoubleOOJ]

Thank you all for your kind words.
This is our fourth project now, but it always feels like the first when you first share it and wait for the comments.

@Justin O. Glad our work caught your attention. (^_^)

@brownsl Thanks!

@wingedpotato Happy to hear that we convinced you into another deck. (^_^)

@BaconWise Thanks for the feedback. We never did an ad card before, but we will keep that in mind. As for pricing/shipping, we’re still awaiting our quotes, but we’ll hopefully have that info soon.

[hsbc]

This looks fantastic Could there be a stretch goal to print with EPCC, or even USPCC/Cartamundi?

[JuFiN]

This deck looks amazing please do it justice by going with a different printer! It’s simply not the case that the factory in PRC is the same quality as that of the Taiwan factory

[DoubleOOJ]

This looks fantastic Could there be a stretch goal to print with EPCC, or even USPCC/Cartamundi?

This deck looks amazing please do it justice by going with a different printer! It’s simply not the case that the factory in PRC is the same quality as that of the Taiwan factory

Thanks for the feedback, we’re happy you like the art. (^_^)

Here’s some of what we’ve been told by LPCC:
“We recommend the next print run you print with our new facility right near Hong Kong, which now we have fantastic quality and lead times of only around 6 weeks, which really helps with turnaround time.”
“We have a new facility right over the border in Hong Kong which we have a long term contract with to produce cards exclusively for Legends and our partners Expert. They have huge capability as they are traditionally a packaging company and with our help now have a playing card division that is to our specifications, which means very fast lead times and full control of printing. We use the same papers for the cards as in Taiwan.”

Also, if I’ve understood our conversations correctly, this new PRC facility is near Shenzen, while their old PRC facility was in Shanghai.


Our project requires a 16-pg booklet and a custom tuck to fit it.

LPCC was able to do both.

USPCC told us that they outsource custom-sized tucks to China and require a 5000 unit minimum & 5 month turn-around. This isn’t feasible for our current design.
Our other options would be to package the book outside of the box, or to offer a digital booklet instead. However, we like the idea of the booklet packaged inside the tuck as a complete unit, so we would rather not abandon that idea just yet.

We will continue exploring our possibilities/options with LPCC, EPCC, USPCC, and Cartamundi.

[BaconWise]

...we like the idea of the booklet packaged inside the tuck as a complete unit, so we would rather not abandon that idea just yet.

A non-standard, or thicker tuck box would cause some problems for carat cases, sleeves, or even some displays that have a set depth. I can't speak for everyone, but I would prefer a loose booklet, rather than having it stored in the tuck case with the cards. I know it makes sense to keep it together to have the Orochi rules, but I think it works better separate. If they were separate, you might be able to look at the upgraded printers as you won't have to reach a huge minimum or a huge delay for a custom-sized tuck case. Just my two cents. I look forward to seeing this launch!

[DoubleOOJ]

@BaconWise That’s an interesting point that we had not considered. We’re boardgame collectors, so we initially only saw it as a negative to have them separate. Thank you for your feedback, we’ll definitely consider it.

We’d love to hear what others think about this too. Anyone else want to share your thoughts and opinions on this?

[Casual Pixels]

A non-standard, or thicker tuck box would cause some problems for carat cases, sleeves, or even some displays that have a set depth.

Fully agreed.

Having an oddly sized/shaped tuck boxes is a negative. I do have a couple, so it's not an absolute deal-killer, but they're a pain and having a normal tuck box is really important.

Edit: I wanted to add that everything else about this deck is wonderful. Beautiful art and I really like the concept of creating four-card "scenes". They're very nicely executed.

[brownsl]

...we like the idea of the booklet packaged inside the tuck as a complete unit, so we would rather not abandon that idea just yet.

A non-standard, or thicker tuck box would cause some problems for carat cases, sleeves, or even some displays that have a set depth. I can't speak for everyone, but I would prefer a loose booklet, rather than having it stored in the tuck case with the cards. I know it makes sense to keep it together to have the Orochi rules, but I think it works better separate. If they were separate, you might be able to look at the upgraded printers as you won't have to reach a huge minimum or a huge delay for a custom-sized tuck case. Just my two cents. I look forward to seeing this launch!

+1

[wingedpotato]

I could go either way on the tuck. I have many off-size tucks in my collection, so one more wouldn't bother me, but I understand why more hard-line collectors prefer a standard size.

[hsbc]

It's awesome of you to actually listen to feedback here Some ideas: could you fit the rules onto the two extra cards? Maybe the booklet could come in a small envelope like gaff packs do sometimes?

[theCapraAegagrus]

I'm not a fan of inserting the booklet in the tuck case.

[DoubleOOJ]

Thank you all for the great feedback! (^_^)

We will go back to a standard tuck and keep the booklet outside the tuck.

It's awesome of you to actually listen to feedback here

We sincerely appreciate everyone’s feedback. We put a lot of love into the deck, and constructive feedback helps us make it even better. (^_^)

Maybe the booklet could come in a small envelope like gaff packs do sometimes?

Yes, this is what we are currently exploring. A clear plastic packet/envelope/sleeve for the booklet that can be packaged alongside the deck.

We are getting new quotes and exploring our options for printers.

[Räpylätassu]

This is awesome!

Also if anybody wants to learn about traditional Japanese woodblock prints, David Bull on Youtube is awesome! Just be careful when you watch his videos on bed or a couch, his voice is rather soothing. One of the best channels of unintentional ASMR on Youtube.

[hsbc]

We are getting new quotes and exploring our options for printers.

Go with USPCC or Cartamundi! If you can't get top-tier printing funded on KS with such amazing art then nothing matters and god is dead [MURRAY]

Also please have a matte tuck. And/or embossing

[BaconWise]

Also please have a matte tuck. And/or embossing

+1000. I think we can all agree a flat, glossy, standard tuck would be a travesty with this beautiful artwork. I would be one sad hombre.

[hsbc]

Uncut sheets would also be incredible

[DoubleOOJ]

Thanks for the continued feedback!!

We are talking to USPCC and learning more about the possible features. Matte and embossing do sound nice, but no promises yet (~_^).

Is there a preference of Classic vs Premium stock?

We are also checking out what Cartamundi offers.

Uncut sheets would also be incredible

Yes, we want to have uncut sheets as well. (^_^)

Also if anybody wants to learn about traditional Japanese woodblock prints, David Bull on Youtube is awesome!

Thanks for sharing. We’ll have to check it out.

If you can't get top-tier printing funded on KS with such amazing art then nothing matters and god is dead [MURRAY]

Thanks! (^_^)

[STLBluesNut]

Thanks for the continued feedback!!

Thank you for participating on the forum. Some designers just write us off as a niche crowd. I don't know the numbers as far as the % of the overall community we comprise, but it goes a long way with folks here to have active and meaningful discussion with designers. We appreciate it.

There are many great designers that stop in here. Some of what make them great is not only their art but active participation, great customer service and listening to feedback.

Sent from my Galaxy 8 using Tapatalk

[shermjack]

...we like the idea of the booklet packaged inside the tuck as a complete unit, so we would rather not abandon that idea just yet.

A non-standard, or thicker tuck box would cause some problems for carat cases, sleeves, or even some displays that have a set depth. I can't speak for everyone, but I would prefer a loose booklet, rather than having it stored in the tuck case with the cards. I know it makes sense to keep it together to have the Orochi rules, but I think it works better separate. If they were separate, you might be able to look at the upgraded printers as you won't have to reach a huge minimum or a huge delay for a custom-sized tuck case. Just my two cents. I look forward to seeing this launch!

+1

Sorry for the late response, but I have been away for the past two weeks without internet access, so I have a lot of old posts to go through. Please note that I designed the Carat Cases to be slightly larger than your average tuck to accommodate for odd sized tucks and the Carat X1 can fit decks with thickness of up to 2.2cm and width up to 6.9cm (the average USPCC deck is 18cm thick and 65.5cm wide.

[Merlebird]

I'm sorry to be coming to the thread late as well; I haven't been poking my head in much here lately. Hopefully you all are still taking feedback on the design.

First: thank you, thank you, thank you for the redesign of the fusion indices. As someone who stayed away from the Hanami Fusion deck because I didn't like the look of the indices, I really appreciate the effort that's been made here to make the new iteration cleaner and more refined. Just a couple of points on this:

• The indices for animals and brights might be confused at a glance. You could solve this problem by enlarging the inner square of the bright index or by using a hollow circle for the animal index.
• Using a different icon for each type of ribbon renders their relationship to each other non-obvious and could make taking tanzaku yaku (a set of five ribbons of any type) counterintuitive even for players familiar with hanafuda. (I also think the simpler geometric designs of the indices for the brights, animals and chaff are easier to read and more aesthetically pleasing than the caricatures used for the ribbons, but that's a matter of personal taste.)

As far as the card faces are concerned, I think you knocked them out of the park. It's obvious that considerable thought has been given to translating the motifs of traditional hanafuda into the new thematic context, such that the cards are recognizable even without reference to the indices. (The transformation of the sakura curtain into the yōko's kimono for the March bright is particularly inspired.) The chōchin-obake incorporated into the design of the January and March poetry ribbon cards - and February's as well, I assume, though it's not pictured - is, I think, a little jarring, especially by comparison to the kitsunebi and kodama which can be worked in a little less obtrusively; but again, this is personal taste.

This tuck, honestly, I think would work fine as a regular glossy. Rather, I'm not sure what features you could use with the current design that wouldn't feel forced. Embossing never hurts, I guess? Maybe some UV spot gloss? (Does anybody offer glow-in-the-dark UV spot gloss?) If you wanted to incorporate more bells and whistles you would probably need to redesign with them in mind from the start, rather than tacking them on at the end of the process just because people like them.

My major quibble with the tuck is your font choices. First, the English lettering: I am very much not suggesting that you pull some godawful stereotype off your nearest Chinese takeout box, but surely Arial Narrow isn't the only alternative? For a deck with so much personality it's unremarkable, underwhelming and, well, boring, to the point that I think it actively detracts from the design. Changing it would easily be the single biggest "simple" improvement you could make. You could take it in any number of different directions, but the lettering used on various covers for Lafcadio Hearn's Kwaidan might be a good place to start looking for inspiration; I've attached some versions I found interesting. (Not this one, though, yuck.)

On the choice for the Japanese lettering - and I understand and accept that I am going to be screaming into the void about this every time, with every deck that uses kanji or kana, until the heat death of the universe - it's the same complaint. Meiryo is a modern Japanese typeface. Insofar as it has any personality at all, it's the wrong one for this theme. Please consider using something like seal script or brush script. You can see various renderings of the two kanji here: 花 札

The back design... from an execution standpoint there's nothing wrong with it. The composition is fairly standard, but it's widely used because it works. But I think using the chōchin-obake as the focal point of the design sets up the wrong tonal expectations for the deck. The vignettes that make up the card faces do an excellent job of evoking the tone of historical versions of the Night Parade: whimsical, yes, but also grotesque, even frightening. This little guy's character design is just so cartoonishly cute that all I can think of when I look at it is Yo-kai Watch or Gegege no Kitarō. It's certainly not a dealbreaker, but I think I would lean toward, if possible, actually putting the Night Parade on the back design. A winding train of horribles, snaking in from the vanishing point (beyond the border of the card, maybe?) would be interesting to see.

TL;DR it's real good but I have many opinions about how you could make it more gooder. kthx bye

[hsbc]

Well UC is the last place I ever expected to see someone bring up Hearn - he's also known by his Japanese name, Koizumi Yakumo, and his life was fascinating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lafcadio_Hearn" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[DoubleOOJ]

@STLBluesNut
Thank you. We sincerely appreciate constructive feedback. It’s the best way to make a project stronger. (^_^)

@shermjack
Thanks for the info. We’ve decided to switch to using a standard tuck size, but this is still good info for the future (and for anyone with a Carat Case).

@Merlebird
Thank you for giving such extensive & detailed feedback! We don’t have time tonight, but we’ll post a detailed response tomorrow. (^_^)

[macstrat]

We are getting new quotes and exploring our options for printers.

Go with USPCC or Cartamundi! If you can't get top-tier printing funded on KS with such amazing art then nothing matters and god is dead [MURRAY]

Also please have a matte tuck. And/or embossing

Would have to agree. Cartamundi and a matte tuck. TBH I wasnt even thinking about embossing. Just simple and classy.

[DoubleOOJ]

I'm sorry to be coming to the thread late as well; I haven't been poking my head in much here lately. Hopefully you all are still taking feedback on the design.

We are always open to feedback. (^_^) We just can’t change anything once it prints! (~_^)

First: thank you, thank you, thank you for the redesign of the fusion indices. As someone who stayed away from the Hanami Fusion deck because I didn't like the look of the indices, I really appreciate the effort that's been made here to make the new iteration cleaner and more refined.

Thanks. Although, it wasn’t something we heard often, we did receive similar feedback from a few of our hanafuda-familiar backers. For this deck, we wanted to strike a more artistic balance between the indices and art. Whereas, the flower indices on our previous decks were designed to be teaching tools to help beginners adjust to identifying cards based on the flowers.

The indices for animals and brights might be confused at a glance. You could solve this problem by enlarging the inner square of the bright index or by using a hollow circle for the animal index.

We experimented with many different designs for the symbols during development. The symbols are clearer in-person. Here is a larger image of them:

Using a different icon for each type of ribbon renders their relationship to each other non-obvious and could make taking tanzaku yaku (a set of five ribbons of any type) counterintuitive even for players familiar with hanafuda. (I also think the simpler geometric designs of the indices for the brights, animals and chaff are easier to read and more aesthetically pleasing than the caricatures used for the ribbons, but that's a matter of personal taste.)

That’s a fair point. Aside from being thematic, we chose our current symbols for the ribbons so that they could be differentiated from the other three card types (Bright, Ten, Chaff). The Brights, Tens, and Chaffs have more simplistic symbols, while the Ribbons have corresponding yokai symbols.
And, while the relationship between the three ribbon types may not be as obvious at first glance, compared to a regular deck, their more-complex yokai symbols are the bonding feature that set them apart from the other cards.
The booklet will have a reference chart for card identification to help with this process as well. We are also planning to include a reference card in the deck.

As far as the card faces are concerned, I think you knocked them out of the park. It's obvious that considerable thought has been given to translating the motifs of traditional hanafuda into the new thematic context, such that the cards are recognizable even without reference to the indices. (The transformation of the sakura curtain into the yōko's kimono for the March bright is particularly inspired.)

Thank you! Antonietta put many months into the art and design (and did a great job!:)). We spent weeks deciding which yokai to use, which yokai could be grouped together, which yokai fit which month, and how to make the months recognizable. And, since the art is going to feature in our future word game, we also had to consider how it would affect its mechanics.

This tuck, honestly, I think would work fine as a regular glossy. Rather, I'm not sure what features you could use with the current design that wouldn't feel forced. Embossing never hurts, I guess? Maybe some UV spot gloss? (Does anybody offer glow-in-the-dark UV spot gloss?) If you wanted to incorporate more bells and whistles you would probably need to redesign with them in mind from the start, rather than tacking them on at the end of the process just because people like them.

Agreed, we are still deciding on which tuck features will harmonize well with the design. Antonietta originally envisioned a linen feel for the tuck (similar to our Sensu deck). But, we are open to hearing feedback on features that people feel will fit the art.

I understand and accept that I am going to be screaming into the void about this every time, with every deck that uses kanji or kana, until the heat death of the universe

that is one of the best ‘pet peeve’ remarks I’ve ever read.

My major quibble with the tuck is your font choices. First, the English lettering: I am very much not suggesting that you pull some godawful stereotype off your nearest Chinese takeout box, but surely Arial Narrow isn't the only alternative? For a deck with so much personality it's unremarkable, underwhelming and, well, boring, to the point that I think it actively detracts from the design. Changing it would easily be the single biggest "simple" improvement you could make. You could take it in any number of different directions, but the lettering used on various covers for Lafcadio Hearn's Kwaidan might be a good place to start looking for inspiration; I've attached some versions I found interesting. (Not this one, though, yuck.)

On the choice for the Japanese lettering - and I understand and accept that I am going to be screaming into the void about this every time, with every deck that uses kanji or kana, until the heat death of the universe - it's the same complaint. Meiryo is a modern Japanese typeface. Insofar as it has any personality at all, it's the wrong one for this theme. Please consider using something like seal script or brush script. You can see various renderings of the two kanji here: 花 札

Thanks for the feedback and examples to illustrate your point. Antonietta is exploring the tuck font to see if she comes up with something more exciting. Although the fonts aren’t Arial Narrow or Meiryo, we get your point (~_^) We used a more simplified style for clarity and simplicity. However, it is worth looking at again and we will explore the font design more.

The chōchin-obake incorporated into the design of the January and March poetry ribbon cards - and February's as well, I assume, though it's not pictured - is, I think, a little jarring, especially by comparison to the kitsunebi and kodama which can be worked in a little less obtrusively; but again, this is personal taste.

The back design... from an execution standpoint there's nothing wrong with it. The composition is fairly standard, but it's widely used because it works. But I think using the chōchin-obake as the focal point of the design sets up the wrong tonal expectations for the deck. The vignettes that make up the card faces do an excellent job of evoking the tone of historical versions of the Night Parade: whimsical, yes, but also grotesque, even frightening. This little guy's character design is just so cartoonishly cute that all I can think of when I look at it is Yo-kai Watch or Gegege no Kitarō. It's certainly not a dealbreaker, but I think I would lean toward, if possible, actually putting the Night Parade on the back design. A winding train of horribles, snaking in from the vanishing point (beyond the border of the card, maybe?) would be interesting to see.

Point taken. The lanterns do photobomb the scenes a bit. (^_^)
It is in part Antonietta’s style, the friendly/playful demeanor we chose for the lanterns, and the fact that we wanted the ribbons (in this case the lanterns) to stand out a bit.

We will post pictures of the entire deck in the Kickstarter preview (coming soon).

Thank you, Merlebird, for giving such extensive & detailed feedback!

[shermjack]

Looking forward to the launch of this project