Book Club January 2026*
Anamnesis by Samantha Leigh at Blinking Birch Games
What you need to play:
- The Anamnesis source material
- A tarot deck (the Strange Beast deck is my favorite)
- Pen/pencil and paper/audio recorder
This review of Anamnesis continues the book club review catch-up project I'm working through. Anamnesis was our January 2026 book club selection. I LOVED this solo. This was the first game we played that uses a tarot deck, and it was delightful. Anamnesis is a solo journaling game where you have lost your memory and are pulling tarot cards as memory prompts to start to understand your past and move forward in the present. I played through twice; the first session, I used the Strange Beast tarot from Heart of the Deernicorn and the second session, I used the Crow tarot from MJ Cullinane. Both sessions were enjoyable, with the Crow tarot being much sassier, as Strange Beast is very sweet and lovely. One of the reasons I loved this solo so much was the difference I got between decks. I haven't played with all of my decks, but I imagine playthrough would be different for all of them. It could also be fun to use oracle cards, though I don't know how you would divide the deck properly.
Anamnesis is a slim booklet, coming in at 23 pages that includes the interior cover pages, but it packs a punch. This is a great game for folks new to solos who really enjoy journaling, because it has a very simple play structure and is more dependent on your imagination to move the story along. As a writer, this was a lot of fun for me. I took the prompts and my first thought and really ran with it. I went as dramatic as possible and it was great. To play the game, you divide the deck into the major arcana and each suit (cups, pentacles, swords, wands) into sub-decks. To start, you pull a card from the major arcana, this represents your past and will inform your decisions in the game. The gameplay is divided into five acts, one for each grouping of cards, where you pull three cards from your sub-decks and use those for your journaling prompts. This is one of those games where you can go as fast or as slow as you want. I took about an hour and a half for my sessions, because I was really enjoying the prompts and getting into my story. You could probably finish a session in 45 minutes, if you just wanted to get something quick in.
Book club members (BKMs) used a number of different tarot decks, including the classic Rider Waite, Disney Villains, and others. It was a lot of fun to chat about our favorite decks and to hear from folks who weren't as versed in tarot as I am how they interacted with the game. We all enjoyed it, but a number of BKMs felt this was an emotionally intense game and appreciated the Safety message in the book. There was some confusion as to why our character was supposed to have amnesia, I just assumed you weren't supposed to know and moved on, one of our BKMs came at it as waking up from an alcoholic black out, lots of different options.
In book club, we talked about how you could play this as a two player, and potentially pick cards for your partner, or switch off. We also talked about using an oracle deck and what you would need to do to modify the gameplay. I asked the BKMs if what perspective they played in, first person, etc., and most started in first person journaling style, which was how I played my first session. For my second, I decided that I was gathering the story to be able to tell as lore around a campfire, which added a fun aspect to the game for me. Playing more open ended, and not using the exact meanings of the cards helped a lot of folks. Anamnesis suggests using the traditional meaning, or finding inspiration in the card design or the name of the card, so there many ways to craft your narrative. This gives a lot of flexibility in gameplay and can be a lot of fun.
Final thoughts: This is a very reasonable price point, about the same as a decent sandwich and plays very differently depending on which tarot deck you use. I would recommend this for folks who enjoy tarot and mystery. This is a very introspective book, and I think you could use it to work out lingering issues, or just peek into your psyche a little more.
My final card was the Hanged Beast, full of letting go and seeing the word anew. What memories wait for you?
* This review was published well after the book club event.