Update: Before we get into it, I’ve just noticed that Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers has a release date, and it’s not too far off. If you get to the end of the article below and want to play the game yourself, it will be landing on PC Steam across Linux, Mac, and Windows.
Original: With Steam Next Fest in full swing, I’m going to continue digging into the games that are catching my attention, and the next title on my list is good ‘un. It goes by the name of Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers, and it was pitched to me as a good game if you like Balatro. I bloody love Balatro and I’ve been playing it non-stop since it landed earlier this year, and so I was happy to take a look at a game that is trying to do something similar.
Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers – or D&DG as I’ll refer to it from now on – is from an indie studio called Purple Moss Collectors and it is being published by Yogscast Games (who, I would like to note, are on a great run when it comes to publishing rogues: just look at their catalogue on Steam to see what I mean). While you could definitely say that this new game is Balatro aligned, I’m not going to make further connections between the two, because one is a mash-up of poker and solitaire, while the other is a roguish take on blackjack.
Blackjack, or twenty-one as it is sometimes called, is a face-off between two or more players who are trying to score as close to 21 as possible, using a standard deck of playing cards. D&DG takes that basic premise and injects it with steroids to create a really compelling and addictive little roguelike deckbuilder that has captured my attention over the last few days.
What is Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers?
D&DG stands apart from its card-playing cousins thanks to a series of interesting design decisions that are initially built around the basic rules of blackjack but quickly change direction. Here’s how it all works.
At the start of the game you enter a bar and therein are challenged to a game of cards by the bartender. He is your first opponent, and you need to beat him by scoring closer to 21 than he does. If you were to score 20 and he 16, four points would come off his health bar. If you were to bust and score over 21 then your score for the round would be a big fat zero – were he to register 14 before sticking, the difference between your scores (in this case 14) would come off your health bar.
At the start you pick your suit. Each one represents a different difficulty setting, which I thought was neat. To start with you will probably pick hearts because that will help you recover lost health (spades offer shields, diamonds give you money, and clubs, the hardest deck, deal extra damage). Once you feel comfortable with the basics, you will want to try the other suits and see how things change, or even go random and let fate choose.
Once you’ve beaten an opponent, you can recover some health or trim your deck via special events, many of which have multiple options to choose from. You can also grab new cards, and this is where things get really interesting. These new cards are very different from those in the standard deck, and soon you’ll be able to super-charge your plays by stealing cards from your opponent’s deck or playing cards that you’ve got held in your hand (see the image below).
Twenty-one ways to lose
D&DG is a roguelike deckbuilder which means that there is an unpredictable element as well as progression between hands and across opponents. For example, your health bar remains depleted after a match, so it pays to play with caution as it is much more painful to bust and take big damage than it is to fall short by a couple of points. What’s more, if you take lots of damage during one match, you’ll have low health for the next one, so plan ahead and take care.
As the opponents become more challenging, not only do their health bars elongate, but they also get more powerful cards. Apparently there are over 250 of them in the game, and according to the Steam page there are “tarot cards, business cards, birthday cards, hall passes and more”. Consider me intrigued.
It won’t be long before you can’t just push through with brute force and you have to react to what your opponent is doing, changing tact during a round based on the cards they play. There is a lot going on, and more than once I ended up in trouble without truly understanding how it happened. I did appreciate the tooltips that popped up when hovering over a card, regardless of who was holding it. However, I think some card descriptions weren’t always crystal clear to me.
The big question is: will I come back to this tavern for another round or two once the game is out in full later this year?
A bit of confusion aside, I thought the demo was tremendously promising, and I can’t wait to see what the finished game plays like. I really enjoyed the aesthetic, which I can see has just had a much needed overhaul. It’s simple enough to pick up and enjoy but also has the depth to keep giving you interesting decisions to make, and I’m sure I’ve only scratched the surface of what Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers has to offer. So yeah, bartender, hit me with another – I’m feeling lucky.
