At the heart of Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers is a simple choice: stick or twist, hit or stand, do or do not (there is no try). In a game where the aim is to play cards that total as close to 21 as possible, knowing when to play another or when to stick with what you’ve got is essential to your forward progress.
Play too aggressively too often and you’ll surely go bust, but failure to push yourself and take a few risks will see you slowly bleed health until it’s too late and you’re way too easy to beat.
What it is and what it isn’t
Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers takes the basic formula of Blackjack and then injects it with some sort of mutagen. The resulting game is a fascinating study in pushing your luck, with more twists and turns than I thought the theme could sustain. Not only is your deck full of standard playing cards, but there is also a huge number of bespoke cards that come with a wide array of abilities. Mixed together, they ensure a completely unique gaming experience.
A lot of people will come to Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers fresh from Balatro, which has proven to be one of the year’s indie darlings. So let’s get the comparisons out of the way first: Balatro is a masterful solitaire deckbuilder, but it doesn’t play much like poker. D&DG, on the other hand, is much closer to Blackjack, the game that inspired it. The casino theme aside, it’s not really that similar to Balatro.
In D&DG you take it in turns with your opponent to draw cards from your individual decks. The total of your played cards must not exceed 21, and going beyond that number so will see you bust and lose that hand. Going bust means a score of 0 for that round, and you lose health equal to the difference between your score of 0 and your opponent’s final total. For example, if you go bust and your opponent scores 18, you’ll lose -18 health. If you had 15 and stuck with that, and your opponent still got 18, you’d lose -3 health. Bad, but not that bad.
Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers is interesting because it takes the basic formula of Blackjack and then dials the drama up to 11 thanks to a huge assortment of oftentimes surprisingly nuanced playing cards. You add these cards to your deck over time, usually as rewards or via encounters between matches, of which there are many across the five locations you’ll visit during any given run.
The Blackjack deckbuilder
The strength of your deck will ultimately determine your success, especially as you start to encounter more challenging opponents. There are four different starting decks, although there are many more to unlock as you play. Each of the suits – hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades – has its own properties. For example, winning with 21 with hearts and you’ll get some health back, while other suits give you shields or deal bonus damage to your adversary.
The cards in your deck not only affect your own hand but they can also cause problems for your opponent by overloading them or stealing cards that they just played. Not only that, but you can have cards in your deck that are played to your hand for later, and not directly into the ongoing round (see the screenshot above). Thus you might have a card in hand that lets you assign its value when played – very useful when hitting that all-important target of 21.
While the use of each card might not be immediately apparent, after a while I started to understand how you can build different decks to suit different challenges. This lesson was, in part, learned when I encountered an opponent who was basically impossible to beat with the deck I had. My opponent’s ability to easily score 20 while also getting shields meant that no matter what I did, her shields went up and up and up until I got bored and restarted the game.
My unbeatable adversary taught me that you need to build a versatile deck that can support a variety of encounters. It’s not just about hitting 21 – you also need to consider how to hurt your opponent.
Should you stick or twist?
What impressed me the most about Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers is how much potential variety there is when building your deck. Battles are quick and exciting, for the most part, and there are many opportunities to earn money, health, or edit your deck in-between matches, which breaks things up and always gives you something new to think about.
I’d also like to go on record and say how funny D&DG is – there are tons of reverent little nods and Easter eggs hidden throughout the game and I found myself chortling away on many occasions. The humour might not be universally appreciated, but I liked it.
I also liked the visuals, which add to the charm of the experience. I’ll be honest, after a while I switched the audio off and listened to my own music and podcasts while playing, but in a game like this, that’s not a major issue in my book. The focus here is on interesting decisions and finding satisfying synergies.
All in all, I’ve really enjoyed my time with Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers, even if I was sometimes a little confused about how the cards interacted with one another. Confusion aside, I think the majority of the frustrating moments I had can be traced back to the fundamentals of Blackjack, rather than to design decisions made by developer Purple Moss Collectors.
The playful atmosphere, the pacey battles, the clever card mechanics, and the just-one-more-round gameplay ensures a compelling and snappy experience with tons of depth that will take a long time to fully unpack. If that sounds like your thing, Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers may well be a hit for you!
Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers is out now on PC Steam (Lin, Mac, Win) and I played the game via a code provided by publisher Yogscast Games and their friends in PR – thank you for that!
