Haunted Almanac (2021) is a book I genuinely didn’t think would ever exist. It’s an anthology, published by Games Omnivorous, of Nate Treme’s game designs from 2018 to 2021, most them in fact. I never thought this would happen partly because of how they exist individually. They’re all different formats, different sizes, different purposes, many are handmade. I have so much of the stuff that makes up this book in the original versions that were sent out to patrons and it just doesn’t seem possible that they could be standardized into a book.

Credit for that, I think, mostly goes to Gontijo, who did a fantastic job of converting all those disparate sizes and shapes into a cohesive whole, but without sacrificing their individual characters. The book still feels like Nate’s work in a fundamental way. As someone with a modicum of design skill, this strikes me as an impressive accomplishment.

Taken all together, this is one of those books that just feels important to me; I can picture some weirdo like me fifty years from now plugged into the cerebro-net posting about how Haunted Almanac is the lynchpin of 21st century microgame design and how it is a shame that so many hard copies were left planetside during the evacuation of earth. Drop haulers occasionally bring copies back from their salvage dives, but ship-to-ship postage is just ridiculous these days.