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# A tarot deck grows out of Paloma Dawkins's videogames
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/paloma-dawkins-fools-journey-tarot/
- Published: 2026-08-24T17:45:08.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-24T17:45:08.000Z
- Description: The Fool's Journey converts characters from Museum of Symmetry and the Apocablyss universe into 22 archetypes, debuting at MUTEK Forum August 26.
- Author: Kill Screen Staff
- Tags: Paloma Dawkins, The Fool's Journey, Apocablyss, tarot, MUTEK, Montreal, ecology, Game Art

Paloma Dawkins has spent a decade building videogames that behave like ecosystems—*Gardenarium*, *Museum of Symmetry*, the ongoing Apocablyss universe—and now those worlds are folding back into one of the oldest play technologies we have. At a [MUTEK Forum](https://forum.mutek.org/en/news/mutek-forum-2026-announces-expanded-programming-under-theme-symbiotic-frequencies?ref=killscreen.com) keynote in Montreal on August 26, Dawkins unveils *The Fool's Journey*, an oracle deck from Apocablyss Studios that converts characters from those games into archetypes: 22 cards that keep tarot's ancient structure while trading its imagery for Dawkins's psychedelic flora.

The [project page](https://palomadawkins.com/tarot-deck?ref=killscreen.com) calls the deck "a vibrant palimpsest to traverse the many worlds we inhabit, both natural and created." The event description in [the keynote announcement](https://www.instagram.com/p/DbzLfTXifW8/?ref=killscreen.com) goes further—a "playable system for transformation" built on divination's recombinatory logic, which is to say: shuffle, draw, interpret, repeat. Any game designer will recognize the loop. Tarot is a procedural narrative machine that predates the computer by five centuries, and Dawkins is porting characters to it the way other studios port to Switch.

Don't let the look fool you. The event copy describes the deck as cultivating "a lusory attitude" toward change—Bernard Suits's term, from *The Grasshopper*, for the voluntary embrace of unnecessary obstacles that makes play possible at all. Pointing that attitude at uncertainty itself is the kind of move Dawkins has been making since [*Gardenarium*](https://www.killscreen.com/gardenarium/), whose vivid phantasmagoria we relished a decade ago, and since [our profile](https://www.killscreen.com/paloma-dawkins/) of a practice that sees the natural world through games. Dawkins, now an MFA candidate in Critical Ecological Practices at Emily Carr University, will also be doing readings with the Apocablyss deck at the festival, which runs August 26 to 28 under the theme Symbiotic Frequencies.

We have followed Paloma Dawkins for a decade because nobody else covers where games leak into the rest of culture. The free newsletter catches what we find next.

[Follow along free ](https://www.killscreen.com/start/?ref=radar-cta)