Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers

Finally got to this in my backlog and I gotta say, I really don't understand these negative reviews. Despite its looks, this is just as strategic as Balatro and honestly a bit more my speed. The crux of the game is leveraging your odds and knowing when to throw in the towel. Your goal is not to play as many cards as you can to get some crazy number, it's about making smart choices and ideally getting a really nasty deck. I went back-and-forth against the President with a few duplicated Hierophant cards and a couple business cards for a good 10 minutes before losing to a dragon, and I think that's the beauty of a game that really leans into what it wants to be like this does. The sound design and music is fantastic, the gameplay loop eases you in while still refraining from becoming mindless, and is absolutely rife with references (don't think I didn't see what you did with the Bard's chip count). There's about every "King" or "Queen' pun you could think of (shoutout [i]Queen of the Stone Age[/i]) and such a variety of cards that you're encouraged to keep playing whether you're winning or losing — which I think is the most important part. There's also a surprising amount of customization through your "tavern ID," which only further invests me in both the gameplay and tavern-crawling environment. I'm glad to see the Balatro developer himself endorsed this, but sad that people have compared this so unfairly in the first place when this already stood out among an extremely saturated genre at launch. This truly feels like a dungeon crawler and is even bite-sized enough to run on my MacBook, which is something that understandably fewer and fewer devs are allowing but certainly wins it bonus points from me. Check it out.

One of the best roguelike deckbuilders ever for me, but one of the most frustrating games to 100% Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers is made in such a way that even though it's based on Blackjack, you have vast absurd means to interfere with how the game plays out. In a way I think it's genius. There are so many cards, I mean, cards, not the numeric cards but rather cheat cards, these are your tools to mess with your opponents play, but the same goes for them, they will hijack you back too. The goal is forming the most unfair deck to ensure nobody can win against you. Due to game's nature, every run is kind of funny and chaotic. Rng still exists but you have a lot of ways to manipulate it as well. And if you don't know Blackjack, it might be a very good opportunity to learn it through this game since it teaches you super quick. I have nothing negative to say about the game itself, maybe except there could be PvP mode, it would probably a banger but oh well, achievements rant below: As for the achievements, ugh. Beat the game with every starting deck 5 times (to unlock their corresponding max difficulty) among 17 unique decks. Not to mention some of these decks are horrible to play on the highest difficulty. And then there's this massive card pool, and you'll have to beat the game using each of them at least once. It's a grind fest of restarts and more runs. But all in all, Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers gets a solid A+

this has got to be one of the worst games ive ever played. out of curiosity i restarted the game 50 time. the first hand is a guarenteed loss. the ai is actually RIGGED to win the first hand. 38 times it got a 2 card 19 or 20, 10 times it got a 21 and in all 50 restarts it doesnt lose the first hand. if your game is literally rigged from the start than youre actually garbage game developers.

addicting gameplay, no real financial concequences.

3/5 A fun game overall - I would give it a lukewarm recommendation. I feel as though I enjoyed the game more before I realized that most decks boil down to one of a couple of strategies with different coats of paint. Those strategies are fun enough and can be interesting to get to, but with the ways the game has to optimize your deck early, the time you spend getting to that point is usually not that long.

[h1]Dungeons And Degenerate Gamblers Review[/h1] [h2]Positive[/h2] [list] [*] Art is decent. Each area has its own board theme. The card artwork is generally decent. [*] There's room for cleverness in how to spend advantage, even if the number of choices you have is very constrained. [*] Blackjack is a fun theme. [/list] [h2]Negative[/h2] [list] [*] There needs to be more cards/trinkets. I feel as though I see the same cards over and over again. [*] You have a very limited number of choices throughout a match, and most of your time is not spent thinking. [*] Generally, you can play this game drunk/high and probably win more often than not. [*] A significant portion of the starter decks are not very distinct. [*] Despite being thematically different, the areas don't feel mechanically distinct to me. [*] The writer(s) frequently use authorial narration to let you know the blackjack game runners are evil. It gets tiring and there's nothing to substantiate it other than the employees' occasional distress. The game spends a lot of effort telling you why the people are bad and not showing you. [/list] [h2]Summary[/h2] Overall, it's a mediocre deckbuilder that mostly plays itself. The theme is decent, but the writers bash you over the head with their opinion too much.

[h1] Summary [/h1] [b]Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers turns Blackjack into a roguelike deckbuilder, but misses the mark entirely.[/b] Instead of being excited to explore all the new cards and abilities, you are punished for engaging and forced to play a narrow, mindless, and boring strategy if you want any chance of winning. Playing on higher difficulties just makes refining your deck into that strategy more annoying than anything. [h1] Introduction and Mechanics [/h1] You start out with deck selection where the first decks you unlock are small decks comprised of just each single suit from a full deck. Later unlocked decks are primarily the same thing but with a couple cards changed or added for a gimmick. Completing a deck on any difficulty unlocks the difficulty up for that deck, which changes a game rule or adds a card to your deck which cannot be removed. This game draws a lot of comparisons to Balatro and I see some similarities; this is no exception: deck and difficulty selection feels very similar in concept. And of course, they're based on a deck of cards at their core. Once you've started your run, you're mostly just drawing in hopes of getting lucky enough to draw high without busting, aiming for 21 as you'd expect from standard Blackjack. Base damage dealt to the player or CPU is the difference in your hand totals with busting counting as 0. Each suit has a special ability when you reach max hand value (21 by default): hearts heals you, spades give you shield/blocks damage and expire at the end of the fight, clubs deal extra damage, and diamonds just give you money to spend. You start with a small collection of chips and early on and gain them from fights. This is the game's currency and you spend them in shops or events. The most notable event is near the start of almost every run: talking to the Counterfeiter, who allows you to increase or decrease the value of any numbered card in your deck for a small cost. You can also expect a few events through the run that allow you to prune your deck with varying levels of efficiency and control. It wouldn't be a deckbuilder if you were limited to just your starting cards though, so through the run you are given the opportunity to buy and trade additional cards, many with special effects or abilities tied to them and most with a numerical value as well. At some point early on, you may think that if the goal is to get a better total than your opponent and you're essentially playing Blackjack with abilities and card effects, you should be able to increase your max from 21, right? Well yes, but not really. One special card, the Rules Card, allows you to change the hand max to 20 or 22 for either you or your opponent. It's not even a stacking +1 or -1. Just 20 or 22. That's it. This is such an astronomical miss in game design, it's almost comical. Okay, the first obvious way to make the game fun was a bust. What about the special cards and their abilities? Well, most of them don't really help you reach a high total in any meaningful or consistent way and rarely have any synergies with other cards. A small selection of cards are offensive and can be used to try to bust your opponent or ruin their strategy, an even smaller selection are helpful for reaching a high total, but most are just random effects that once in a while sound clever or interesting on paper until you realize it just sucks if you're trying to win with any level of consistency. The collection of helpful cards are insignificant and diluted by such a huge mountain of trash that card effects in this game are basically a bust as well. [h1] Gameplay [/h1] So with all that, what does a run look like? How do you play well? What wins? What's bad? There is one singular goal: Get as close to 21 as possible. How do you do that? Just like in normal blackjack, your best strategy is drawing plenty of 10-value cards and aces/ones. This means off the bat, almost every special card is a no-go as they aren't an ace, 10, 1, or 0 value card. [b]You are discouraged and worse off for interacting with most special cards, leaving you with a bland deck.[/b] We are given toys and punished for using them. You will start almost every run off going to the Counterfeiter as he appears only a few fights into almost every run. In the rare case he doesn't, you reset. You'll change as many number cards to 10s or 1s as possible, ending up with something like a deck of 1 1 1 5 6 7 10 10 10 J Q K A. You'll draw until you see a total of at least 12 (hopefully 20 or 21), standing, and hoping your opponent doesn't pull some nonsense or beat you. Once you've played through your entire deck in a fight, it's reshuffled and you draw from it anew. Praying you hit only 10s, your ace, and 1s while avoiding your middle cards will be your strategy. This will be what you do every single battle. You will likely be able to prune a few mid-value cards from your deck during your run. If you're running a basic 13 card starting deck, you might just end up with no mid-value cards at all. There's the occasional 0.5 card (like an ace, except 1 or 0 instead of 11 or 1) you might be able to pick up, or the Rules Card (with a value of 0) which changes the hand max as described above, but that's mostly it. This is the game. Do this until the end, over and over. Higher difficulties just annoy you by increasing the strength of enemy decks or adding a 5 with annoying mandatory effects into your deck, which you cannot remove. There's an "advantage" mechanic I haven't even mentioned because it's [i]almost[/i] pointless if you avoid most special cards. And you will, because you don't want to lose. Once you've gotten to the final boss, do the same thing you've been doing to draw 21s, slowly whittle their HP away, and beat the game in the most boring way possible. Oh, and don't you think about using the Rules Card against the final boss, because the game stops you by literally just giving them a speech bubble saying "No! I make the rules here!" and your card is nullified. One of the few useful special cards is outright nullified in the final boss fight because the game said so. Not even from the boss playing a card that negates or counters it. Just ♥♥♥♥ you, that's why. How insulting. [h1] Final Thoughts [/h1] This game is just hot garbage. It had opportunities to be fun and interesting but decided that was too reasonable, so let's not. It's astounding this game has a "very positive" rating on Steam, but I suppose that's because people got blinded by a pixel art aesthetic which *can* have some appeal. That, and the publisher. I gave it a fair chance and played through much much more than I should've hoping it got good. It doesn't. Don't bother. If you want a card-based deckbuilder that rewards you for interacting with its powerups and added mechanics, go play Balatro if you somehow haven't already.