Day 28 - Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers (Demo)
Deckbuilder, Rougelite, Youtube Game ·
Skeeter’s Take:
Look, I’ll get it out of the way - I’m going to be comparing this game to Balatro quite often. We’ve talked about this fabled “Balatro” so many times, I won’t rehash explaining it here. Sam does a great quick overview in his Night of the Full Moon review, for those looking to familiarize themselves with it. It seems Balatro has started a new sub-genre in the Deck Building Rogue-Like scene that centers around turning Casino games into roguelikes. I’ve seen slot machine rogue-likes, roulette rogue-likes, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a craps rogue-like out there. Hell, we’ve even seen a Solitaire roguelike. Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers is a Black Jack Deck Building Rogue-like that fits nicely at home in this new (what I’m calling) “Casino” rogue-Like deck building genre. It’s clear D&DG takes influence from Balatro. However, Balatro looks and plays like a video poker game. It’s bright, flashy, quick and mainly centers around the overall Jester/Harlequin theme and getting dopamine from watching numbers get bigger. D&DG flips this around and puts you in a dirty fantasy tavern to play its strange version of Black Jack. I want to be clear that I don’t think taking influence from a game is a bad thing, and I definitely don’t see it as a takeaway from D&DG. All ideas start somewhere and can lead to new things. I’m sure Balatro took influence from something before it (Slay the Spire, perhaps?) and I’m all for seeing new ideas in the same genre. Just wanted to clear that up. Thankfully, D&DG feels like its own thing and isn’t just trying to ride the wave of “Balatro-Types”. For one thing, D&DG plays way different than Balatro does.
Take a look at the playing board above. I’m going to assume most of you are familiar with how Blackjack works (if not, you can Google it, you heathens). You (left) and Opponent (right) face off against each others hands. Just like Blackjack, you are trying to get to 21 without going over, the caveat being the opponent acts sort of as the “Dealer” and you are trying to beat whatever they play on their side. Let’s say for instance I stood on the 11 above (PRO TIP- DON’T DO THIS) and my opponent, the bard, stands on his 8. I would win the hand by 3, and that difference gets subtracted from his health, taking it from 21 down to 18. This mechanic alone adds a surprising amount of depth to the game. For example, if your opponent busts, they essentially cannot block any damage you throw at them. I found myself gambling to try to get higher numbers sometimes knowing it couldn’t get blocked, only to end up busting my hand as well. Other times I found myself under the opponent by one, wondering if I should just take the one point of damage, or make that risky hit on 17 to see if I could eek out the win. This is really where D&DG shines. It stays true to its roots and keeps that Blackjack Gameplay at the center of its focus, but adds enough elements to keep it interesting, varied, and more complex. If you win the game, you get a choice of three cards to add to your deck. These cards can vary widely from manipulating the Bust limit for you and your opponent, to subtracting amounts from your total, and some cards get added to your hand. You always have access to the cards in your hand, but most cost “Advantage” to play (you can see the count on the orange chip in the example board above). You gain advantage by selecting a blind and fulfilling what is said on the blind. In the example, I have the blind that adds advantage everytime I play a card with value higher than 11. This is a great way to add an additional layer of complexity control to the player, and I’m all here for it.
I had a moment that really made me fall in love with this game. I get this a lot when playing roguelikes I really enjoy - it’s something I call the “Jimmy Neutron Brain Blast moment”. It’s the moment that usually happens early on when you are still learning all the items (or in this case cards) for the game and your brain suddenly puts it all together. I find this happens most when you discover a new item/card that recontextualizes all the previous item/cards you had seen on the run. Suddenly, you start seeing all the builds fall into place, you get a vision. It’s the “Ah-ha!” moment. It’s when the game finally “clicks”. I had this moment pretty early on, and by accident. I met a wizard at the tavern who started with three cards in his deck - two 1 cards (not an Ace, 1s exist in D&DG), and a card that copied another and added the copy to the deck. The idea behind this Wizard’s deck was he was to start slow, but eventually ramp up cloning all his ones and be able to hit any number of times to get the exact number he needed. This is already a great deck build in concept and I had no idea that was possible at this point. But then something happened. I played a card that removed his card with the “Copy” ability, effectively locking him in to a 2 count maximum between his two remaining cards. I proceeded to absolutely annihilate him. This wasn’t quite a “Jimmy Neutron Brain Blast”, but it made me realize I could do something I didn’t even know was possible and gave me that big ol’ rush of dopamine I play these kinds of games for. For the extremely short amount of time I spent with D&DG, I had several of these moments where combos came together in my hand by accident. (I’m sorry y’all, I had photos of this, but they didn’t save).
I think now is a good time to state - this is only the demo version of the game and there hasn’t been a full release yet. I have some small complaints about facing the same enemies in mostly the same order, and I’ve been seeing a lot of the same cards right now (though that’s probably due to me not having much of the cards unlocked yet. These complaints are so small, they don’t really matter and I have a hard time knocking points off a game for a Free Demo that is likely to change in the future anyway.
Overall, I think Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers is a great time for anyone interested in the “Casino-type” genre. It’s got enough of a unique play style and aesthetic to set it apart from other competitors in the game (Balatro). The very literal comparison is when you are at a casino, sometimes you want to play 5 card poker, and sometimes you want to play blackjack. I’m glad Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers exists for me to get my blackjack fix.
Recommend: Absolutely, please check this out. I think this is a great game and am excited to see the full release.
Replay Percentage Chance: 90%
Time Played: 3.5 hours
Sam’s Take:
Some alarm bells went off when playing this game. The first came when I first got to add a card to my deck and I saw this:
Uh oh, is this one of them rip-off games?
I gave them the benefit of the doubt, jokers appear in regular card decks after all, it’s not necessarily a Balatro reference. Then in my next pack:
Oh…
Okay… so we are directly using Slay the Spire cards in a game we plan to charge money for… is this okay?
I don’t mean that question to be rhetorical, I’m being dead-serious, is it okay? It’s not like this game plays anything like Slay the Spire. The card doubles a card’s value, which mimics the strength doubling effect of the original card, but it’s in a totally unique context. If the art was something else I wouldn’t think twice about it, and who am I to say you can’t wear your inspirations on your sleeve?
After I played a little more and the alarm bells died down, I can say with more confidence that, yes, we are in the clear here everyone. This game plays very differently to both Balatro and Slay the Spire. It obviously is inspired by Slay the Spire, but those cards function in a different ruleset and do different things, if anything they are a thank-you note. Also this guy has been working on this game for over a year. Balatro existed in some form at this point, but it wasn’t the success it is now after the 1.0 release, so this doesn’t read to me like trying to jump on a bandwagon (possibly pushing the release forward to keep up with the hype train, but that’s just good business friends).
I wanted to mention all this because like Skeeter, I too enjoyed this game and found it to have quite a bit of depth in its deck building and the different opponent decks/ai. You can build decks that try to never hit 21 and just do direct damage, you can build a deck of all aces, you can fairly easily load up on face cards and just go for consistent 20s. Every one of these strategies are powerful, but also have weaknesses that certain enemies will exploit. You’ll find something that will cause you to struggle with any build (at least the ones that I’ve been able to create). I haven’t played super long, but so far there isn’t a silver bullet, it seems varied and well play-tested.
This is one of those games that makes me glad we’re doing this project. If not, I would have seen this, rolled my eyes, said “Balatro rip-off” and bailed. Being forced to play through this and see that it really is doing it’s own thing with an actual deck vs deck Magic the Gathering format made me realize that I had been jumping to conclusions with the rip-off accusations. Try the demo out, it’s fun and free and not some weird bandwagon cash grab. Just a dev that likes deckbuilders making another deckbuilder.
If the survival crafting FREAKS are allowed to pretend Valheim is doing anything new, then I get to have Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers. I haven’t played Valheim. I’m sorry, I just wanted to sound cool.
Also I won’t play Valheim. Please stop asking me to play Valheim.
Recommend: Yea
Replay Percentage Chance: 50%
Time Played: 1 Hour
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