Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers

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Unfortunately I can't recommend this game. I love this game's humor and think that this game is occasionally great, but too often it devolves into a frustrating mess where none of my choices matter. I think that this game's biggest issue is the general lack of player agency. The problem is that the amount of agency you're given is completely decided by what cards you're fortunate enough to find during a run. Some cards give you more agency but most cards keep the status quo. I accept that a game based on Blackjack is going to be more RNG reliant than others but there are way too many times where I've played to the best of my abilities but poor RNG ends my run. Where I didn't flip up enough good cards or where my opponent flipped over consistently amazing hands and I simply lose due to factors outside of my control. Mechanics like Handy and Foresight help to alleviate this and I would argue that they are essential to success in this game. I want more mechanics like Handy and Foresight since they increase player agency. When you play a card with Handy it goes into your hand immediately and passes priority back to your opponent, and if you play the card from your hand it also passes priority back to your opponent. This allows you a two turn buffer to see what your opponent is up to while you weigh your options. And the card stays in your hand until you play it, meaning that you can wait until the perfect time to use it. When you get Foresight from an effect, you get to look at the top card of your deck. This allows you to know how much risk you'd be taking on when you take your next Hit. Mechanics like these prevent this game from being devoid of player agency. Flipping the top card of your deck with no knowledge is fun but it's less fun when that's all that you're allowed to do. I think that Lucky Charms (basically Relics) are a step in the right direction, though I think that every starting deck should start with a specific Lucky Charm rather than getting a random one at the start of a run. This would give them more of an identity and also help to make weaker decks feel less like useless garbage (cough cough Deck of Nothings cough cough). I also think that healing is far too scarce considering how often you're forced to take damage due to poor luck (or card effects). When I flip a 17 and my opponent has a blackjack, I can't afford to take the risk of Hitting again, so my best option is to stand and accept the 4 (+more if any of them were Clubs) damage. This type of situation happens a lot throughout a run. You're more likely to die from a thousand cuts than you are from one big swing in this game. But healing is so scarce and comes in such small quantities that you have no other choice than to get scratched until you die. I think that making Rest spots more frequent throughout a run would be an improvement in this regard. Enemy decks are also insanely optimized and lean compared to the player's deck even in the first area. Opponents frequently have well-established archetypes when you're struggling to cobble together a functional deck. This can be especially frustrating when enemies have direct damage or healing effects as those can cause really drawn out encounters where you have no chance of winning. It's so frustrating when enemies heal back damage that has been dealt to them or gain a bunch of Shields from a lucky Blackjack. It's part of the game but is incredibly frustrating because of a scenario like this: - My opponent constantly gets 18+ score. As a result, I can usually only do 3 damage to them. - Several turns go by with me scratching away at their HP. - They get a lucky Blackjack and heal back 21 damage, undoing everything I've accomplished throughout the fight. (Or they get a lucky Spades Blackjack and get 21 Shields, which basically grants them additional max HP that I now have to sift through.) And because of how small their decks are, achieving this is more likely than you'd expect. It can happen several times in a single encounter. There are also some enemies like the Bouncer whose deck is only 3 cards and consistently outputs Blackjacks. Against them you need to have interruption/interaction like swaps/burns/etc or you simply lose. This wouldn't be so bad if disruption cards weren't so rare. Standing is also frustratingly risky in this game. If you Stand before your opponent does then they will continue to play cards. Anything they do to mess with your cards becomes uninteractable at this stage. This punishes you for playing fewer cards than your opponent because it makes it all too easy for them to disrupt you. For example, let's say I flip over a Queen and an Ace, getting a Blackjack. I stand. My opponent continues to play cards. They flip over a Business Card. This lets them swap their 0 Value Business Card with any of my cards, cutting me off of my Blackjack while contributing to their own score. They can continue to play cards. I cannot. So if this play causes me to lose the round, I am forced to take damage because I couldn't keep playing after my opponent messed with my score. I really feel like Standing in general should be less risky for the player, or cards like Business Card either A) cannot affect a player that's already Stood or B) Allows the affected player to continue playing if they have already Stood. It may seem weird to focus on one specific card but it is a very common card in the enemy's decks. You have to contend with cards like this constantly. The card design in this game can be clever and often gets a laugh out of me, though I question how many of these cards were made because they would make a positive impact on gameplay and how many of them are made because it'll get a laugh out of the player. Let's take a card from the most recent update, for example: The Steam Trading Card. This card constantly gets passed back and forth between the players, leveling up each time it's played. Once it's level 5 it gives you a Foil Booster Pack. This design is very clever, playing off of the way Steam Badges work, and getting a Foil Booster Pack card is a great benefit. The problem is that this effect only happens if this card gets played 5 times during *one encounter*. And for half of those required plays, it's in the opponent's deck. So this means that most of the time, it's a glorified 7 of Diamonds that keeps switching control. This can occasionally be good but it means that this clever design falls short since you're unlikely to see it "do its thing". There are many cards like this in the game- very clever, but they lead to less than stellar gameplay. I wanted to like this game because the humor is perfect for me. All the references to other card games and adding rules text to anything that could be considered a card (like a Credit Card or a Blood Donor Card) is really charming. I constantly find myself laughing at the clever enemy deck designs and goofy cards (I love that the IT Guy is a card gamer, for example). Unfortunately it isn't enough to carry this game. If the developer can fix the lack of player agency then this would become an easy recommendation from me.

3.5/5 - Mild recommendation - a good play if you like balatro / deckbuilders & know how to play blackjack. Reason for mild recommendation: there's a current lack of clarity here in how many cards work - some say 'foe takes damage' while others say 'takes damage' - sometimes these mean it's always your enemy taking damage, other times it means you're taking damage, etc. There's also a few glitches that happen sometimes - for example if you play geralt twice in a row - you only get to burn one card, the other burn doesn't happen. Basically, any good roguelike has to operate like balatro or slay the spire, players shouldn't have to guess at the effects and they should operate exactly the same each time and in predictable ways. Clarity issues and glitches make this really hard to play, and often when something behaves unexpectedly the only way around it is to restart the game and replay the encounter again. At the moment it's playable for me, but I reckon beginners will struggle - especially ones who haven't played balatro / deckbuilders and who aren't sure about the rules / probabilities for blackjack.

son of balatro and black jacket

g

si

good