[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.
