Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers review

In this wonderful year of video games, the success of Balatro is what has warmed my heart the most. I didn’t think we’d get a deck building game in my lifetime that would appeal to so many people, and I had friends I barely knew played video games talking to me about their favourite strategies. Deck builders just aren’t generally met with wild excitement from the masses, so seeing a game manage to capture hearts other than my own with simple but effective poker hands and playing cards has been so joyous. The similarities between Balatro and Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers are apparent from the word go, and I’d like to hope both can shine brightly in this brave new world of cardboard.

Instead of playing Poker with wild and crazy rules, in Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers you play Blackjack. With the option to Hit or Stand and the goal of trying to score twenty one without going bust, it’s about as simple as playing card games can be but that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun. The way this works as a gameplay mechanic is that you get into fights with the various patrons of this gambling based world, and whoever scores the highest without going over twenty one deals the difference in scores to their opponents HP. This makes going bust especially scary, because you’ll feel every point of damage if the enemy scores highly.

Now as I’m sure you can imagine there’s a whole lot of luck involved in scoring highly in Blackjack, so you’ll need a little help in the form of additional cards in your deck. These come in all shapes and sizes, with a variety of wild effects. One of my favourite early pickups was the blank card you can assign any value to, but that’s one of dozens of options. A card that causes your opponent to stand regardless of their score is especially powerful if drawn early, whereas one that locks an enemies’ awkward numbered card in place for multiple hands can serve you well for a whole battle. The creative ways you can build your deck is fantastic, and before you know it you’ll be scoring consistently higher than your foe with ease.

The coolest thing about all the wild cards you can add to your deck is that they’re all styled around real world cards. A PS1 memory card can be used to remember a value of a card in your discard pile, whereas a Monopoly style Get Out of Jail Free card instantly ties a round if you’re failing miserably. Pokémon, Magic and Hearthstone cards are all featured too (in an admittedly slightly altered unofficial form) which results in a wonderful celebration of all things cardboard from a team that clearly love the medium.

Between Blackjack battles you’ll make your way through different gambling locations and get to choose between different paths. Perhaps you’d rather spend your hard earned chips at a store buying new cards than getting in another card scrap, or play a game of roulette that’ll transform all basic cards in your deck to the number you spin. There’s a lot of variety of things to do in each grimey establishment you find yourself in, and finding the right way to use them to your advantage is the key to a successful run.

Winning a run is only the start of your Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers journey, with a whole host of unlockable decks and difficulty levels waiting for you. Each deck features cards with extra abilities built in, like dealing extra harm or giving you shield points to block incoming damage when you get a Blackjack. The extra difficulty levels will soon get out of hand too, and I’m not ashamed to say I didn’t make it too far down that rabbit hole.

Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers is a wonderful deck builder, but there are a couple of things that hold it back from being the cream of the cardboard crop. Because the core gameplay is so simple the wild cards you find make up for it with some fairly complex effects, and learning how they all work is a bit of a chore. This is only amped up when opponents decks are loaded with cards you haven’t seen before, and you end up spending more time reading that drawing cards. Some mechanics aren’t particularly well explained either, like using “advantage” to activate effects. It’s just not massively intuitive, which is a shame when the basic loop of aiming for twenty one is.

Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers is an easy to learn but hard to master Deck Building game, with simple but compelling gameplay. The ways you can build your deck to hit twenty one are varied and numerous thanks to all the wild cards you can find, and there are loads of starting decks and difficulty levels that will keep you busy for hours and hours. You might need to spend a bit of time learning how all the weird and wonderful cards work, but once you do you’ll be shouting “Blackjack” with gousto as you batter opponent after opponent.