Rainbow Brainskull Oracle Deck

My Experience with Rainbow Brainskull Oracle Deck

I picked this up because my old oracle app got a bad update and started crashing every time I tried a 3-card spread. I’d heard about the physical Rainbow Brainskull deck from a friend in a Discord server, so when I saw the app existed, I figured I’d give it a shot. First thing that surprised me? The art is genuinely wild. Like, I’ve seen some surreal stuff before, but Ethan McIntyre’s mix of skulls, rainbows, and pop culture references feels like a fever dream I actually want to stay in. I remember pulling the “Cosmic Pizza” card late one Tuesday night after a rough day at work, and the interpretation actually made me stop and think. That doesn’t happen often for me. I’ve used it for both quick daily draws and longer 5-card spreads for bigger life questions. The interface is clean enough, but I’ve hit some lag on my Galaxy A54 when flipping through the card gallery too fast. The journal feature works, though I wish it auto-backed up to cloud storage because I lost a few entries after reinstalling the app. Support finally got back to me after a week about a sync issue, but the response was pretty vague—just “try clearing cache” which I’d already tried twice. Still, when the app works, it’s a solid replacement for my old deck app. The customization for spreads is nice, but the default interpretations are honestly good enough that I rarely tweak them.

Features Worth Noting

For a paid app, you get a full 72-card deck without any of those “unlock pack 2” microtransactions that plague other oracle apps. The shuffle animation is smooth—I actually prefer it to physical shuffling because I can hit shuffle 10 times in 2 seconds if I want. The custom spread builder is decent: you can save up to 8 custom layouts, name them, and assign positions like “challenge” or “hidden influence.” I set up a spread called “Tuesday Mess” for my weekly check-ins. The daily push notification with a random card is surprisingly relevant most days, though sometimes it feels random just for the sake of randomness. You can share individual card interpretations as images to social media, which I’ve used to text friends when a reading hits weirdly close to home. The journal entries can include photos, which I didn’t think I’d use, but now I snap a pic of my physical workspace before each reading to track my mood. There’s also a “reverse card” toggle in settings, which changes the meaning based on the card being upside down. I leave it off because I’m lazy, but my roommate swears by it. Regular updates do add new spreads and sometimes tweak the card descriptions, though I haven’t seen a new card added in the last three months—just UI fixes.

What Needs Work

Here’s where I get frustrated. The biggest problem is the app’s habit of crashing when I switch between the journal and the deck too quickly. It happens maybe once every couple of days, but on my commute last Thursday, it crashed three times in five minutes and I almost tossed my phone out the bus window. Another issue: the search function in the card list is weirdly slow. If I type “death” to find the Death card, it takes a solid 4 seconds to filter. For a paid app, that’s embarrassing. I also hate that you can’t export your journal as a PDF or text file. I wanted to print my year-end reading summary, but nope—you’re stuck inside the app. Support is my biggest complaint though. I sent a query about the crash issue three weeks ago. Got an auto-reply immediately, then a human response 6 days later saying “we’ll look into it.” Followed up twice. Crickets. For an app that costs money, I expect actual help. The font size is also too small in the interpretation text, and there’s no slider to adjust it. On a small screen like my A54, I have to zoom in manually, which messes up the layout. Not ideal when I’m trying to do a calm reading.

Pricing

It’s a one-time purchase, no subscription trap. I paid maybe $4.99? Don’t remember exactly. For what you get—72 cards, a journal, custom spreads, no ads—it’s fair. But I’d pay $2-3 less if I knew the app would have these stability issues. You’d think for the price of a coffee, you’d get a polished experience, but it’s more like a coffee that sometimes comes lukewarm. If they fixed the crashes and added export options, I’d say it’s a steal.

Developer Notes

Ramin Nazer is the dev, and from what I can tell, it’s a small operation. The app has a “Contact Us” button that goes to an email. The last update was a month ago, and the patch notes just said “minor bug fixes and performance improvements.” I wish they’d post a changelog somewhere visible. The app mentions “frequent new content” in its description, but I haven’t seen any in a while. I get it—indie devs have limited time. But if you’re going to sell a paid app, at least communicate when you’ll fix stuff. I’d rather have a “known issues” page than guesswork.

Security & Privacy

It doesn’t ask for weird permissions—no camera, no location, no contacts. Just storage access for saving journal images. The privacy policy is one-page and says they don’t sell your data. I checked on a third-party tracker checker and found no sketchy connections. For a small dev, this is better than some big-name apps I’ve used. My only minor worry: the journal entries are stored locally, so if your phone dies, they’re gone. No sync to a server. That’s fine for privacy, but risky for people who write a lot. I keep my own backups.